Copystudio. Graphic design as an act of creation. by Antonella Giardina In the beginning was the egg. In fact, to be precise, in the beginning was a fish from which the egg was born. Perhaps, it would be even better to say that in the beginning was form; more precisely, egg-form from which any other living form freely originated, starting with the legendary egg-fish omelet, henceforth eaten by the heroic children who populated the earth. Until...one fine day, on a wonderful, triangle-shaped island, Copystudio was established – a workshop of visual arts, admirable signs, prodigious symbols and tales. A cosmogony. Summarizing the design activity of Copystudio conjures Hesiodic and mythological imaginations, evoking an attitude towards creativity that involves every sign of visual communication, starting with its sole founder, Carlo Scribano. A permanent training ranging from underground comics to avant-garde graphic design, from cinema to music, from art to craftsmanship, from surrealism to dadaism, from the paradoxical to the oneiric, from anthropology to botany, from folklore to fashion. The methodology of approach is comparable to a contagion-like process, an explosion of ideas that irrepressibly runs on the thread of a hybridizing wordplay, of Freudian slip, of the archaic etymon or popular expression, in order to create namings that become poetic openings. An inherent talent that reveals a rare combinatory and imaginative power, capable of producing through creative grafts and an ability to juxtapose, a proliferation of innovative visual forms that propel the language of graphic design and its symbols 2
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towards an ancient and archaic dimension. Copystudio’s graphic style has nothing in common with the codified and crystallized languages of the International Style; nor is it inspired to universal languages allegedly understandable to everybody. It springs from a maieutic activity – like a midwife, it brings the new to life through a visionary force embedded in dense and actual experiences, which in turn act as flywheels of new and fascinating verses. The variety of associations and signs is as different from modernist ideological mottoes – design is one – as it is from stylistic proposals aiming at the standardization of tastes, colors and typographic compositions. In other words, typography is basically a rigorous form of craftsmanship. The designs unfurl as the precious threads of the skein every life is formed of: the lives of clients, of territories, of objects, myths and memories. Running the gamut of scales, it happens that a nondescript street corner receives a praise; a hidden passion, jealously concealed, comes to the fore to become an appreciated story; interstitial messages elicit either attention or oblivion. Copystudio’s successful activity thrives on professional and artistic contributions; valuable partnerships, which turn the concept of system and its vibrant process into an accurate and truly special reality. Designers, architects, philosophers, administrative consultants, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters, IT consultants cooperate within an admirable cross-disciplinary frame resulting in a total that is so much more than the sum of its parts. This well-balanced and skillfully mixed excess is the context within which the original act of graphic design reverberates when it is creation.
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Profile Copystudio is a visual arts laboratory that deals with graphics design. It develops identity systems, communication for companies and products, interior design, from the concept to the definition of elements that characterize their recognizability. Team Carlo Scribano Elisea Paolino Alice Luppi Arianna Mendola Ivana Nikolavicic www.copystudio.it
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Works 2014-2020
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6 Mangiabove 2014
56 THE AXER 2018
10 Ciccio Sultano 2015
60 Dolci Fonderie Ciomod 2018
14 Atletico Farina 2016
66 UVA 2018
24 Circolo 2016
70 La Cucina di Donna Carmela 2019
30 Cantunera 2016
74 Wa:it 2019
36 Pesceduovo 2017
76 Angela Laganà 2019
42 Sguardi Siciliani 2017
80 Ribelli 2019
50 Amara 2017
84 Zencho 2020
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Mangiabove Sicilian rural guest house oriented towards eco-friendly international tourism and attentive to details and quality of services. Mangiabove transposes, through the visual identity, the vocation of the young property for the maintenance of the pre-existing original in a contemporary key with visual incursions ranging from collage to a taste for naturalistic iconography, to typography with movable type. An informal and “cool” contemporary bucolic.
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Sguardi Siciliani Seven hand-crafted panettone fruitcakes, seven Sicilian ways of seeing things, the key to the greatness and uniqueness of Sicily in painting, music, theatre, cinema, religion, literature, in the popular traditions. The depth of the seven approaches corresponds to the quality of ingredients, the accuracy of the process, the wonderful result. Altogether, they reflect, on parallel planes, the culture and traditions of the island at the center of the Mediterranean Sea.
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Dolci Fonderie Ciomod Dolci Fonderie Ciomod (manufacturers of a typical chocolate from Modica) commissioned us with a brand for a product line inspired by zero-kilometer Sicilian
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ingredients. We transformed a no-frills package, a solid and zero-impact case into an ethnic-political (geoeditorial) project: combining ingredients, territories and local newspapers in order to
obtain an aesthetics that is form starting from the content and narrate information and knowledge as the tenets of conscious consumption.
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