M V 19 31
2014
MASSIMO VIGNELLI THE BIOGRAPHY
M V 19 31
2014
MASSIMO VIGNELLI THE BIOGRAPHY
INDEX 05-09 + Massimo Vignelli Career + Vignelli Association image from right: Massimo and Lella Vignelli on their young ages.
11-15 + Massimo Vignelli Famous Work + Massimo towards Typography
image from left, Top to Bottom: Some of the few famous works of Massimo Vignelli: American Airlines Logo, Knoll Design Book
17-23
+ Massimo Vignelli & New York City Map + NYC Old design map & New designed map + Controversy Design Issues + The Subway & The city
04. 10. 16 quotes
Massimo Vignelli Inspirational Words as Designer in each pages of cover chapter.
‘‘If You can Design One Thing, You can Design Everything.’’
BIOGRAPHY
assimo vignelli The man who has been practising design in New York for nearly 50 years, during which time he has made a big impact on all forms of design, from graphic design, to furniture, to clothing. All the while he has steadfastly maintained his Modernist approach to all design problems. ‘We brought discipline to design,’ he claims. ‘We are systematic, logical and objective – not trendy. Trends kill the soul of design. Modernism took out all the junk, and postmodernism put it all back in.’ Born in Milan, Italy, in 1931, he left school at sixteen to work as an architectural draftsman, then studied architecture in Milan and Venice between 1950 and 1953. Inspired by Swiss Modernists such as Max Huber and Antonio Boggeri, however, he was drawn to graphic design. Many of Vignelli’s projects are regarded as classic examples of modern design, including the corporate identity for American Airlines (1967); the graphics for the United States National Park Service (1977); the subway map for the MTA New York City Transit Authority (1970); and the interior design of Saint Peter’s Church in New York (1977), where the studio’s ‘total design concept’ ranged from the organ to the furniture to the silver communion accessories, and more.
Massimo Vignelli and his wife, Lella at their workplace
VIGNELLI ASSOCIATION Working firmly within the modernist tradition, Vignelli aimed for design that was "visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless"—a slogan of sorts for his New York design studio, Vignelli Associates, which he founded in 1971 with his wife, Lella.
grow up no matter what." Vignelli also remarked on his luck, believing that if he had been born in the generation before or after his own, he would have either been part of the war or part of the national rebuilding effort, and not a designer.
"If you can design one thing, you can design everything," Vignelli had been known to say, and he lived by this maxim. He helped shape the visual and cultural landscape of the 20th century with work ranging from branding for the likes of many housewares, signage, books, furniture, exhibitions, architecture graphics, and interiors.
Vignelli first became design obsessed as a teenager, after visiting the home of his mother's interior designer friend. He’d never fully realized that most everything around him had been dreamt up by a human being, and became captivated by the idea. He started reading all the design books and magazines he could get his hands on, and sketching ideas for furniture he wanted in his room.
Born in pre-World War II Milan in 1931, the young Vignelli and his classmates would regularly have to leave school after hearing bomb alarms and run to a shelter. "I don’t know how I existed," he told the Epoch Times in 2012 of his life before discovering design but "children
At age 16, he began studying and working in the office of a local architect. Since design schools didn’t exist at the time, at 18, he left Italy to study architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, then the Universita di Architettura
in Venice. Soon, he was running in the same circles as architecture greats like Le Courbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, and Charles Eames. In an interview with Bigthink, he called his young self an architecture "groupie." Vignelli met his future wife, Lella, at an architecture convention and they married in 1957. Three years later, they opened an "office of design and architecture" in Milan, designing for European firms like Pirelli, Rank Xerox, and Olivetti. The pair moved to New York City in 1965, and by 1971, they’d established Vignelli Associates. Vignelli was as skilled at articulating his design philosophy as he was at actually designing—his aphorisms are as distilled and elegant as his visual work. "The correct shape is the shape of the object's meaning," he once said, describing his preference for a creative process that investigated its subject from the inside out. He wrote books aimed at sharing his wisdom with younger creatives, such as The Vignelli Canon (2009) and Vignelli A to Z (2007). Speaking to Debbie Millman for her book How to Think Like A Great Graphic Designer, he offered an eloquent explanation of what design, in its broadest sense, is really for: It is to decrease the amount of vulgarity in the world. It is to make the world a better place to be. But everything is relative. There is a certain amount of latitude between what is good, what is elegant, and what is refined that can take many, many manifestations. It doesn’t have to be one style. We’re not talking about style, we’re talking about quality. Style is tangible, quality is intangible. I am talking about creating for everything that surrounds us a level of quality.
Massimo and Lella Vignelli painted by Jessica Helfand
In his last, gravely ill days, Vignelli's son, Luca, sent out an unusual and touching request: that anyone who had been influenced or inspired by his father's work send him a letter. Designers from all over the world penned notes of appreciation, awe, and gratitude to the man who's been called the "grandfather of graphic design," and many posted those letters online as well, with the hashtag #dearmassimo. The outpouring of love from the design community is perhaps a stronger testament to Vignelli's influence than even the most prestigious award.
‘‘The life of a designer is to fight against the ugliness.’’
THE ARTWORKS
VIGNELLI'S FAMOUS WORKS Vignelli worked in a wide variety of areas, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. His clients at Vignelli Associates included high-profile companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale's and American Airlines. His former employee Michael Bierut wrote that "it seemed to me that the whole city of New York was a permanent Vignelli exhibition around 1981. To get to the office, I rode in a subway with Vignelli-designed signage, shared the sidewalk with people holding Vignelli-designed Bloomingdale’s shopping bags, walked by St. Peter’s Church with its Vignelli-designed pipe organ visible through the window. At Vignelli Associates, at 23 years old, I felt I was at the center of the universe."
American Airlines In 1967, Vignelli’s design firm, Unimark International, got a pretty epic commission: designing the logo for American Airlines. Vignelli created something strikingly simple – two As, one red and one blue – to indicate the company’s gimmick-free professionalism. The client insisted that Vignelli incorporate a little more American symbolism, so he added the geometric, X-shaped eagle.
Knoll International American Airlines may have been Vignelli’s biggest commission of 1967, but his personal favorite was for another design entity: the furniture company, Knoll. Knoll hired Vignelli to create its entire graphic identity, from logo to stationary, to brochures, to advertisements. All components were based on the grid.
Heller Ware One of Vignelli’s famous sayings was “if you can design one thing, you can design everything.” True to this, Vignelli did not limit himself to just graphic design. With his wife Lella, he opened Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in 1960 for his work in product design. Among their most famous products are the Heller Stacking Dishes (1964) and Handkerchief Chair (1983).
TYPOGRAPHY BASED VIGNELLI The advent of the computer generated the phenomena called desktop publishing. This enabled anyone who could type the freedom of using any available typeface and do any kind of distortion. It was a disaster of mega proportions. A cultural pollution of incomparable dimension. As I said, at the time, if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead! Typefaces experienced an incredible explosion. The computer allowed anybody to design new typefaces and that became one of the biggest visual pollution of all times. In order to draw attention to that issue I made an exhibition showing work that we had done over many years by using only four typefaces: Garamond, Bodoni, Century Expanded, and Helvetica. The aim of the exhibition was to
show that a large variety of printed matter could be done with an economy of type with great results. In other words, is not the type but what you do with it that counts. The accent was on structure rather than type. I still believe that most typefaces are designed for commercial reasons, just to make money or for identity purposes. In reality the number of good typefaces is rather limited and most of the new ones are elaborations on pre-existing faces. Personally, I can get along well with a half a dozen, to which I can add another half a dozen, but probably no more. Besides those already mentioned, I can add Optima, Futura, Univers (the most advanced design of the century since it comes in 59 variations of the same face), Caslon, Baskerville, and a few other modern cuts. As you can see my list is pretty basic but the great advantage is that it can assure better results. It is also true that in recent years the work of some talented
Garamond, 1532
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
Bodoni, 1788
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
Century Expanded, 1900 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
type designers has produced some remarkable results to offset the lack of purpose and quality of most of the other typefaces.
parts of a message by using space, weight, and typographic alignments, such as flush left, centered or justified.
One of the most important elements in typography is scale and size relationship. Naturally there are many ways of understanding and expressing typography. I am not interested in describing all the different possibilities as much I am in expressing my point of view and my approach.I see typography as a discipline to organize information in the most objective way possible.
when a specific type design may be appropriate, mostly for a logo or a short promotional text, particularly in very ephemeral or promotional contexts. These are not our typical areas of involvement but whenever a brilliant solution is found I appreciate both the intent and the results.
I do not like typography intended as an expression of the self, as a pretext for pictorial exercises. I am aware that there is room for that too, but it is not my language and I am not interested in it. I don’t believe that when you write dog the type should bark! I prefer a more objective approach: I try to make as clear as possible the different
I strongly believe that design should never be boring, but I don’t think it should be a form of entertainment. Good design is never boring, only bad design is.
Futura, 1930
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
Times Roman, 1931 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
HELVETICA, 1957 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
‘‘We like design to be visually powerful, intelectually ellegant’’
THE SUBWAY MAP
MODERNIST MAP Most every dweller of a city with a robust public transit system comes to identify their boundaries with the lines, angles, and colors of its subway map. This is true of my hometown, Washington, DC, at least since the popular adoption of its Metro system in the 80s. It’s many times truer of my adopted city for ten years, New York, whose more than 100-year-old subway system has given urban historians enough material for lifelong study. The history of the NYC subway maps offers a specialized area for students of design, who must surely know the name Massimo Vignelli, the modernist designer who named the DC Metro and created the notorious 1972 NYC Transit map that, writes the MTA (Metro Transit Authority), “reimagined the MTA New York City Transit subway system as a neat grid of colored lines surrounded by a beige ocean.” The map will be familiar, and perhaps even a token of nostalgia, to New Yorkers from the era, who may also recall the complaints the MTA received for the map’s “geographic inaccuracies” and “aesthetic confusion.” Nonetheless, “design fans […] celebrated the map and made it a coveted souvenir of trips to New York. It later became part of the postwar design collection at the Museum of Modern Art.” Vignelli, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 83, worked closely with his wife Leila on a wide range of design projects—his motto, “if you can design one thing, you can design everything.” A great many of those subway riders in 1972 may have disagreed. While previous and subsequent maps, including the current design, provide a geographically precise rendering of the five boroughs, with details of major avenues and parks and waterways in simple greens and blues, Vignelli’s map is formal and abstract, more art object than guidepost. As a newcomer to the city, I used my pocket-sized MTA map to guide me around on foot as well as by train (this was before smartphones, mind you), but this would be quite difficult if not impossible with the ’72 version. Yet in his reassessment of the design, Vignelli says that he should have stripped away even the few geographical references he did include because “the people couldn’t relate the geography with the stations.” For Vignelli, “there is no reason why this geography has to be literal, it could be completely abstract.” How this would better help riders navigate the hugely extensive system isn’t at all clear, but what is apparent is Vignelli’s commitment to form over utilitarian function. It’s a commitment that served him very well as a designer, though not, it seems, as a cartographer.
His own map from 1972:
“Every line a different color, every stop a dot.” When the NY MTA hired Vignelli to develop a new plan for subterranean navigation, he was tasked with streamlining the wayfinding process for riders and bringing New York into the future. Train routes were straightened into neat angles to make a tidy diagram out of the actual snarl of criss-crossing tunnels. Forty years later, graphic designers still laud Vignelli's map as a triumph.However beautiful, it is geographically abstract, bearing only inadvertent resemblance to the actual street grid above. For example, the Vignelli map portrays the 50th St stop on the Seventh Ave line, now the 1 train, to be west of the 50th St stop on the Eighth Avenue line, now part of the C and E, confusing New Yorkers with hardened mental pictures of the city in their mind and sending tourists wandering westward into Hells Kitchen hunting for non-existent subway stops. Just seven years after it was released, the MTA replaced Vignelli's “diagram,” as he calls it (because maps only represent geography) with traditional map.
2012 “The Weekender” But, Vignelli is back in the subway diagram business. With the help of a new design team, he created “The Weekender,” a digital interactive subway map directly inspired by the 1972 hand-drawn diagram. “It doesn’t make any sense to print a map anymore. In a digital era, a map should be a digital map. All this information could become alive at the moment. So basically, The Weekender... will, should, become the regular map for all the stations. No more printed map. Printed maps are a trap for tourists.”. “The blinking dots... are terrific. When you think actually, that there’s all this work in subway all the time, you get an idea of the complexity of the job, and what it means to run a transit system. It’s great. It’s a passion.”
CONTROVERSY DESIGN ISSUE No sooner had the Metropolitan Transportation Authority introduced a new map of the New York subway system on Aug. 7, 1972, than complaints flooded in. Many stations seemed to be in the wrong places. The water surrounding the city was colored beige, not blue. As for Central Park, it appeared to be almost square, rather than an elongated rectangle, three times bigger than the map suggested, and was depicted in a dreary shade of gray. The map was, indeed, riddled with anomalies, but that was the point. Its designer, Massimo Vignelli, had sacrificed geographical accuracy for clarity by reinterpreting New York’s tangled labyrinth of subway lines as a neat diagram. Each station was shown as a dot and linked to its neighbors by color-coded routes running at 45- or 90-degree angles. Mr. Vignelli had used his design skills to tidy up reality.
Design buffs have always loved his map for its rigor and ingenuity. When the future graphic designer Michael Bierut made his first trip to New York in 1976, he took one home to Ohio as a souvenir. But many New Yorkers were outraged by what they saw as the misrepresentation of their city, while tourists struggled to relate Mr. Vignelli’s design to what they found above ground. In 1979, the M.T.A. bowed to public pressure by replacing his diagrammatic map with a geographical one. On the eve of its 40th anniversary, the story of the Vignelli map reads like a cautionary tale of a gifted designer expecting too much of the public or, as my grandmother used to say, being “too clever by half.” But its fate may have been different had the M.T.A. implemented Mr. Vignelli’s original scheme correctly.
By 1972, he had established a New York design studio, Vignelli Associates, with his wife, Leila, and worked on the design of American Airlines’ corporate identity and signage systems for the Washington Metro and New York subway. An imposing personality with a highly disciplined approach to design, he so impressed the M.T.A. executives with his handling of the signage project that they invited him to redesign the subway map and rushed the result into production without submitting it to the usual rounds of consumer research. But the M.T.A. only introduced one of four maps designed by Mr. Vignelli with the intention that, collectively, they would give passengers all the information they needed to navigate the subway. The diagrammatic System Map demonstrated how to get from A to B, but it was to be accompanied in each station by two Geographical Maps, one of the entire network and another of the local neighborhood, and a Verbal Map that explained in words how to go from place to place. Mr. Vignelli had never envisaged it being used without them. Would his critics have felt differently had his System Map been reinforced by the other three? Perhaps, and even if they still disliked it, the others may have compensated for what they regarded as its shortcomings. After all, there were other problems with the System Map. Mr. Vignelli had modeled it on the hugely popular 1933 diagrammatic map of the London Underground designed by Harry Beck, a freelance draughtsman who compiled it in his spare time. Beck’s “diagram,” as he called it, applied similar organizational principles, arguably with even greater rigor. Unlike him, Mr. Vignelli had included some geographical references, by identifying Central Park and areas like Manhattan and the Bronx. He has since regretted doing so, arguing that the map should have been wholly abstract, devoid of such distractions. But Beck’s design was gentler in style, particularly in its choice of typography, while Mr. Vignelli used the searingly modern font Helvetica. The response to each map also reflected the architectural character of its city. London is such a huge, sprawling historical muddle that its citizens (like me) are generally relieved to see it simplified in Beck’s “diagram” and cheerfully forgive him for misrepresenting the wonky River Thames as being straight and Angel station as being level with Old Street, when it is further north. Whereas New Yorkers pride themselves on knowing their way around the orderly geometric grid of their streets, which explains why many of them felt they had nothing to gain from a shrunken Central Park and oddly located stations. Mr. Vignelli has another theory. He believes that his System Map fell foul of what he calls the “verbal people,” whose ability to understand maps and other diagrams is less sophisticated than that of “visual people” like himself. “The verbal people, they can never read a map,” he said in the 2007 documentary “Helvetica.” “But the verbal people have one great advantage over the visual people, they can be heard.”
THE SUBWAY AND THE CITY When Massimo Vignelli, one of the greatest graphic designers of the 20th century, was close to death in mid-May, his son Luca informed the whole design community—at Vignelli’s request—so we could say goodbye with our thoughts and with a letter. The world will have to move on without him. Still, the world—and especially New York—would not be what it is without Vignelli’s elegantly rigorous touch. Imagine the NYC subway left to meander down a designless track, loosely organized around a crowded and illegible map, or, even worse, marred by a haughty, serifed typeface instead of a clean, democratic Helvetica. Imagine a New York without the iconic “Bloomie’s” logo and its intersecting o’s, or its equally well-known “big brown bags” (that would be Bloomingdale’s, for you out-of-towners). Washington D.C. would be affected as well—no Metro to speak of, as Vignelli is the one that suggested the name. The effect would spread to the whole country: a crucial decade, 1964 to 1974, would be
left without distinctive stackable melamine dinnerware in bright colors; and some American corporate staples—from American Airlines before the recent makeover, to Knoll—would not look as stylish, incisive, and as, well, American. Massimo Vignelli, in tandem with his partner in work and life, Lella, is a pillar of MoMA’s history and collection, as well as a titan in the history of design. The Vignellis’ influence and friendship with the Museum spans three generations of curators, from yours truly, traveling back in time to Mildred Constantine, who had a crucial role in the adoption of good design by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the New York City subway system.