The Vignelli

Copyright © 2015 by Verlag Niggli AG. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the copyright owners.

First published in the United States of America by Verlag Niggli AG 115 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hsu, Sandra.

The Vignelli ISBN 1-56496-893-6 Z246.S23.2015 686.2’24 dc21 ISBN 1-56496-893-6 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover and text design Sandra Hsu

Contents

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Title 1 Contents 2 About 4 Design Principles

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Works 12 NYC Subway Map 14 Intervista 18 Knoll 20 Serenissimo Table 22 Sources 24

CONTENTS

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Massimo Vignelli at Design is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli.

About The Vignellis, Massimo and Lella, stand at the peak of their profession.

During the past 20 years, their design output has been prodigious in quantity, far-ranging in media and scope and consistent in excellence. Equally important is the influence they have had and the difference they have made.

Their work has led by example. They have contributed to design as individuals.

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The Vignellis were both born and educated in the industrial, more-European north of Italy, he in Milan and she in Udine, 90 miles away. Massimo’s passion was 2D—graphic design; Lella’s family tradition and training were 3D—architecture.

They met at an architects’ convention and were married in 1957. Three years later, they opened their first office of design and architecture in Milan and designed for Pirelli, Rank Xerox, Olivetti and other design-conscious European firms. But their fascination with the United States, which took root during

three years spent here after they were married, eventually grew strong enough to lure them away from Italy permanently. There is diversity here, and energy, and possibility, recalls Massimo, and the need for design. He cofounded Unimark in 1964, which ballooned and collapsed as the corporate identification boom of the late 1960s hyperventilated, then ran out of breath. In 1972, their present office was formed: Vignelli Associates for twodimensional design, Vignelli Designs for furniture, objects, exhibitions and interiors.

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Biography

Examples of Ms. Vignelli’s work have been included in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the MoMA, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Montreal, and Die Neue Sammlung in Munich. The Vignellis’ work has been the subject of two feature-length television programs that have been televised worldwide.

Massimo and Lella work together in two

Mr. Vignelli has taught and lectured on design in the major cities and universities in the United States and abroad. He is a past president of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGl) and the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AlGA), a vice president of the Architectural League, and a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

The Vignellis, Massimo and Lella, stand at

ways: he concentrates on what they call the 2D; she handles the 3D. He’s the visionary: I talk of feelings, possibilities, what a design could be. She the realist: I think of feasibility, planning, what a design can be.

the peak of their profession. During the past 20 years, their design output has been prodigious in quantity, far-ranging in media and scope and consistent in excellence. Equally important is the influence they have had and the difference they have made. Their work has led by example. They have contributed to design as individuals.

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Lella Vignelli was born in Udine, Italy. She received a degree from the School of Architecture, University of Venice, and became a registered architect in Milan in 1962. In 1958, she received a tuition fellowship as a special student at the School of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

In 1959, Ms. Vignelli joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Chicago, as junior designer in the interiors department. The following year, with Massimo Vignelli, she established the Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan. In 1965, she became head of the interiors department for Unimark International Corporation in Milan and in New York (1966).

Massimo Vignelli, was born in Milan, and studied architecture in Milan and Venice. He came to the United States from 1957 to 1960 on fellowships from Towle Silversmiths in Massachusetts and the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. In 1960, with Lella Vignelli, he established the Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan.

In 1971, the Vignellis established Vignelli Associates, where Lella Vignelli is now Chief Executive Officer. Seven years later, they formed Vignelli Designs, a company dedicated to product and furniture design, of which she is President.

In 1965, Massimo Vignelli became co-founder and design director of Unimark International Corporation. With Lella Vignelli, he established the offices of Vignelli Associates in 1971, and Vignelli Designs in 1978. His work includes graphic and corporate identity programs, publication designs, architectural graphics, and exhibition, interior, furniture, and consumer product designs for many leading American and European companies and institutions.

LelIa Vignelli is a frequent speaker and juror for national and international design organizations. She is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AlGA), the International Furnishings and Designer Association (IFDA), and the Decorators Club of New York.

Mr. Vignelli has had his work published and exhibited throughout the world and entered in the permanent collections of several museums; notably, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York; the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Montreal; and the Die Neue Sammlung in Munich. Two feature-length television programs on the Vignellis’ work have been aired worldwide. A monographic exhibition of the Vignellis’ work toured Europe between 1989 and 1993, and was featured in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Helsinki, London, Budapest, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Munich, Prague and Paris.

ABOUT

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Design Principles

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Syntactics

Mies, my great mentor said: God is in the details. That is the essence of syntax: the discipline that controls the proper use of grammar in the construction of phrases and the articulation of a language, Design. The syntax of design is provided by many components in the nature of the project. In graphic design, for instance, they are the overall structure, the grid, the typefaces, the text and headlines, the illustrations, etc. The consistency of a design is provided by the appropriate relationship of the various syntactical elements of the project: how type relates to grids and images from page to page throughout the whole project. Or, how type sizes relate to each other. Or, how pictures relate to each other and how the parts relate to the whole.

There are ways to achieve all this that are correct, as there are others that are incorrect, and should be avoided.

Syntactic consistency is of paramount importance in graphic design as it is in all human endeavors. Grids are one of the several tools helping designers to achieve syntactical consistency in graphic design.

Compact Stacking Dinnerware, a 1960s design that was (and is) produced by Heller, is one of the Vignelli office’s bestknown products.

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Semantics

Semantics, for me, is the search of the meaning of whatever we have to design. The very first thing that I do whenever I start a new assignment in any form of design, graphic, product, exhibition or interior is to search for the meaning of it. That may start with research on the history of the subject to better understand the nature of the project and to find the most appropriate direction for the development of a new design.

It is extremely important for a satisfactory result of any design to spend time on the search of the accurate and essential meanings, investigate their complexities, learn about their ambiguities, understand the context of use to better define the parameters within which we will have to operate. In addition to that it is useful to follow our intuition and our diagnostic ability to funnel the research and arrive to a rather conscious definition of the problem at hand.

Semantics are what will provide the real bases for a correct inception of projects, regardless of what they may be. Semantics eventually become an essential part of the designer’s being, a crucial component of the natural process of design, and the obvious point of departure for designing. Semantics will also indicate the most appropriate form for that particular subject that we can interpret or transform according to our intentions.

However, it is important to distill the essence of the semantic

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search through a complex process, most of which is intuitive, to infuse the design with all the required cognitive inputs, effortlessly and in the most natural way possible. It is as in music, when we hear the final sound, without knowing all the processes through which the composer has gone before reaching the final result. Design without semantics is shallow and meaningless but, unfortunately it is also ubiquitous, and that is why it is so important that young designers train themselves to start the design process in the correct way—the only way that can most enrich their design.

Semantics, in design, means to understand the subject in all its aspects; to relate the subject to the sender and the receiver in such a way that it makes sense to both. It means to design something that has a meaning, that is not arbitrary, that has a reason for being, something in which every detail carries the meaning or has a precise purpose aimed at a precise target.

How often we see design that has no meaning: stripes and swash of color splashed across pages for no reason whatsoever.

Well, they are either meaningless or incredibly vulgar or criminal when done on purpose.

Pragmatics

Whatever we do, if not understood, fails to communicate and is wasted effort.

We design things which we think are semantically correct and syntactically consistent but if, at the point of fruition, no one understands the result, or the meaning of all that effort, the entire work is useless. Sometimes it may need some explanation but it is better when not necessary. Any artifact should stand by itself in all its clarity. Otherwise, something really important has been missed. The final look of anything is the by–product of the clarity (or lack of it) during its design phase. It is important to understand the starting point and all assumptions of any project to fully comprehend the final result and measure its efficiency. Clarity of intent will translate in to clarity of result and that is of paramount importance in Design. Confused, complicated designs reveal an equally confused and complicated mind. We love complexities but hate complications!

Having said this, I must add that we like Design to be forceful.

We do not like limpy design. We like Design to be intellectually elegant—that means elegance of the mind, not one of manners, elegance that is the opposite of vulgarity. We like Design to be beyond fashionable modes and temporary fads. We like Design to be as timeless as possible.

Handkerchief Chair, designed in 1983, brought the elegance and design to the too-often styleless high density stacking chair with Handkerchief. Intended to evoke the windblown contours of a handkerchief floating through the air, the generously scaled, ergonomically sculpted shell offers spacious comfort and ample support.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

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The Serenissimo Table deconstructed.

The simple structure allows easy installation as well as customization.

Work

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Vignelli design, in both three dimensions and two, is highly architectural in character. Massimo's posters, publications and graphic designs seem to be built in stories, separated by the now-familiar, bold, horizontal rules. Basic geometry is respected. The investigative design process moves from the inside out: The correct shape is the shape of the object's meaning. The Vignelli commitment to the correctness of a design has taken their work beyond the mechanical exercise

of devising a form best suited to a given function. They've always understood that design itself, in the abstract, could and should be an integral part of function. More than a process and a result, design—good design—is an imperative.

Everything has its own order, they've said. You can't take a piece of music and scramble the notes. You can't take a piece of writing and scramble the words. You can't take a space and scramble the chairs around.

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In 1996, Massimo Vignelli designed the signage as well as the map for New York’s subway system—a modular array of changeable panels years ahead of its time that set the bar for all future transportation info-graphics.

NYC Subway Map THE VIGNELLI

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The most recognizable edition remains the most controversial.

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WORK

Designer Massimo Vignelli’s clean modern lines and bold colors changed the branding of the subway in 1972 and elevated the map to the level of modern art. It also distorts geography.

His map lasted just seven years before confused passengers convinced the MTA to replace it. Vignelli still staunchly defends his design, and in doing so, has offered some choice observations about other versions.

No sooner had the Metropolitan Transportation Authority introduced a new map of the New York subway system on August 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 Vignelli Map Digitized

The Weekender, a digital interactive subway map directly inspired by the 1972 hand-drawn diagram.

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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 a more traditional map.

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..

Here, the maps illustrate the complexity of design’s relationship to the truth. In principle, we cannot be expected to trust anything that is not truthful, yet many of the greatest design feats have set out to deceive us, albeit for good reason. Just as the symbols and characters on your computer screen were designed to disguise the unfathomable mathematical coding of its programs, designers have devised maps to help us to make sense of befuddling terrain or transport networks.

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.

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.

WORK

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Intervista

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The Italian architect and designer Lella and Massimo Vignelli designed 1989 Chair Intervista, which is a stationary Armchair that comes in two rotary versions—the 360° and the low swivel armchair twist.

they were also asked to designate a chair for use in interview segments. Since the couple could not find what they were looking for that purpose, they designed a special one and

When the Vignellis designed the whole image for the Italian television channel TG2, including graphics and stage design,

Linear, elegant design. Comfortable and welcoming, Intervista provides a single element that ensures a good, well-supported posture. Intervista 360 completes the series of the eternal ‘small armchair for the television studio’. The steel frame is padded with moulded polyurethane foam. Seat suspension is provided by elastic strips. The 360 armchair is mounted onto a base with a sphere crown that allows for rotation.

asked Poltrona Frau to manufacture it.

By virtue of being exposed every day on TV, the chair became extremely popular.

Typical of Frau, the quality details, including leather upholstery and an optional hidden swivel base, gave a level of refinement that made this chair an instant classic.

WORK

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Knoll

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In the graphic program that Vignelli produced for Knoll, one can see many of his ideas at work, from his preference for clear, organized space to his use of the new (at the time) Helvetica typeface, something Vignelli no doubt favors because of its versatile simplicity. This poster depicts the Knoll logotype in large letters that overlap to form an almost abstract pattern.

While a number of Knoll’s products are depicted as line drawings on the back of the poster, none are visible on its front. Alone, the colorful, bold type communicates beautifully the power and elegance of the Knoll brand.

Vignelli’s graphic program, which established a design grid to unify all visual and promotional aspects of the company, had a profound impact in the furniture industry, becoming the model for other manufacturers. Vignelli also planned and mounted the Knoll exhibition at the Louvre Museum in 1972. Knoll as a presence on the graphics horizon would not have been possible without photography to match the typographic design. Vignelli believed that photography also conveyed excellence in a very important way, and hired master photographers like Jon Naar, Aldo Ballo, Mario Carrieri, Guy Bourdin and Don Kennedy.

Known for its modernist furniture by designers such as Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, and Harry Bertoia, Knoll’s products are perfectly suited to Vignelli’s timeless aesthetic.

Paper Clip Table designed, image taken from Knoll Catalog.

WORK

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Manufactured by Acerbis and designed

by David Law, Lella and Massimo Vignelli, Serenissimo tables are truly what modern statements are all about.

Serenissimo Table THE VIGNELLI

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Cross fertilization has been a constant factor in their work; it is one of the pleasures of working within the wider filed of design. The encaustic finish on the legs of the Serenissimo table was suffested by Acerbis, and inspired by a Venetian tradition of finishing furniture.

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WORK

A favorite table, among the many the Vignellis have designed is the Serenissimo, made in Italy by Acerbis. Back in the mid1980’s the pair were interested in the juxtaposition of very thick legs and very thin tops. In typography they were using a lot of Bodoni typeface, which has thick vertical strokes and very thin horizontal ones. Perhaps this similarity was more subconscious than intentional but many furniture pieces designed around that time do reflect this preference for thick and thin.

Sources About

Vegnelli Design Principles

New York Subway Map

Intervista

Knoll

Serenissimo Table

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<http://www.vignelli.com/intro.html> <http://www.aiga.org/medalist-massimoandlellavignelli/>

<http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/arts/design/the-subway-map-that-rattled-new-yorkers.html> <http://www.wnyc.org/story/284042-vignelli-designer-of-famous-subway-map-defends-his-version-over-these-others-images/>

<http://poltronafrau.com/en/catalogue/collection/intervista>

<http://www.knoll.com/designer/Herbert-Matter> < http://www.knoll.com/designer/Lella-and-Massimo-Vignelli>

<http://www.vignelli.com/Designed_by_Lella.pdf>

SOURCES

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