“Obviously there are many ways in which to tell the same things. The execution is important because it represents the style of the Salone, just as the creative concept represents its character”,
“We delved into the past to find an innovative language, during the period in which Italian graphics stole a march on advertising, when artistic sensibility prevailed over business sense. When drawing was closer to design and therefore to our world. When a designer could be a Pizzigoni or a Pomodoro or even a Cascella.
When it was not just a matter of a date or an appointment, when there was no handbook (the Bible ! ) and no limits or obstacles to creative freedom”.
“There is a territory of border between art and advertising, a sort of free zone where the contamination is law. In this territory is born the symbol for the salone del mobile in Milan, the trendiest event of the year. Here’s our image abbreviation, between design and architecture, between vintage and future. I hope you enjoy it”.
……… Italian graphic designer Lorenzo Marini.
The creative image that Lorenzo Marini and his studio – Agenzia Lorenzo Marini Group came up with for the 2016 Salone – picks up on our prestigious graphic origins, given currency once again by experience on various fronts and Lorenzo Marini’s graphic skills, which have seen him become both an advertising man as well as a graphic artist over time.
This 55th edition is like a rebirth for the Salone del Mobile, an investment in creating through communication the Big Brand Feeling that will make this event into a contemporary icon.
Primary colours close to primary colours on a black background communicate energy as well as seriousness; numbers close to an eye form a dynamic brand, a unique and novel visual element, yet reassuring like our past.
The verbal message becomes even more assertive. “If you’re not there, you should be” indicates that there are two levels to certain occasions, where one excludes the other, you’re either in or you’re out.
It becomes a mental and spiritual involvement, the energetic centre of an event that is infinitely greater than its physical expanse. The space becomes liquid in relation to its content, in a horizontal format the dimensions change with respect to the vertical.
Once again, no longer a static page, but a banner, blurb, newspapers, three-dimensional sculptures and videos.
Here the message becomes animated, becomes geometry, lines that form a tapestry design in which architects and designers are perfectly at ease and where a horizontal cut creates an eye that opens, triggering the colours and squares that will make up the two 5s.
Wow is both an aural and an emotive promise.
55 is an occasion, not just a number. Phonetically, it is musical, memorable, repetitive. Semantically it celebrates without being ponderous, it affirms a point of arrival, lends weight to the entire celebration. It proclaims that we have decades of success behind us.
The eye is the midfield of the seen object, but also a symbol suggestive of a vision.
A communication works when it harnesses the sociology of the times, thus the Salone del Mobile is presenting a new image encompassing both past and future.
In the globalisation and digitisation era, all brand images are subject to ongoing revision in order to keep up with rapidly changing consumer needs, taste and choice.
Encompassing tradition yet looking to the future, geared to underscoring the past, or the technology of tomorrow, permanent innovation. As Einstein said: “I never think of the future: it comes soon enough” – the line separating past and future fluctuates and today seems nothing more than a fleeting moment.
It was, in any event, the first symbol used by the Salone in 1961. It is its origin, its birth, and the early years of the early successes.
Salone Poster 1961
The Salone is recognised as the global benchmark for design and the home furnishing system has evolved from trade fair to “must see” occasion, and its artistic language, permeating its history with visual and verbal synthesis, has held its public fascinated by its iconic area.
Salone del Mobile Posters 1930’s
Then in 1961, a small coalition of furniture manufacturers launched the Salone del Mobile with the aim of promoting the exportation of Italian furniture.
This quickly proved itself to be an excellent marketing vehicle for a highly fragmented industry that would otherwise have lacked the means to express its overall potential.
Salone del Mobile Posters 1962 to 2013
Since 1961, this trade show has evolved into what it is today – a massive, joyous celebration of international design, innovation, and creativity that dwarfs any other in comparison, and it only continues to grow.
Salone del Mobile is the world’s greatest design fair – at least in the number of exhibitors, attendees and land mass covered. It is the benchmark in the home-furnishing sector and an unique advertisement instrument for the Italian furniture industry.
Design pilgrims again flocked to Milan ahead of the Salone del Mobile – the world’s most important design fair and the unofficial start of the design season, and the chance to catch up with global design trends, and get inspired by seeing what’s fresh, eye-catching, and cutting edge
What happens in the Milan Design Week goes beyond the presentation of new products that everybody can easily find online.
A new web platform ( www.salonemilano.it ) employing the most cutting edge web design and digital communication trends, with user, visitor and exhibitor experience as its focus, accompanies them along the way in a bid to maintain an ongoing relationship and dialogue – before, during and after the event – making navigation more interactive, engaging and multi-channel.
Thanks also to a partnership with the Italian – Trade Agency ICE – the 2016 promotional plan rests on bolstering investments geared to boosting professional foreign visitor numbers and setting up the best contacts for B2B meetings.
About Lorenzo Marini
Lorenzo Marini is a communications “guru”, whose career as an art director is dotted with hundreds of national and international awards.
Prior to founding Lorenzo Marini Group, which is based in Milan and New York, he worked for the largest advertising agencies Italian.
A man of great culture and with many interests alternates his work with writing (he is the author of several essays and novels), painting and directing, and manages to capture of everything that surrounds him the creative side
Lorenzo Marini Biography
Lorenzo Marini was born in Monselice, Italy in 1958
He is an Italian writer and advertising expert.
After studying art and graduated in architecture in Venice in 1980, he worked for Italian advertising agencies : Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, Canard and Armando Testa Group
In 1997 he founded Lorenzo Marini & Associati based in Milan, an agency with branches in Forlì and Turin and in 2010 opened an office in New York
In his career as art director was awarded more than 300 national and international awards, including the Golden Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival for campaign Agnesi in 1985
Lorenzo Marini is a multidisciplinary artist who has been involved over the years in numerous activities: from cartooning, painting and in particular writing with the publication of some essay and 2 romance novels
He also hosted a Rai Radio 2 show called ‘Groundhog Day’ a program on creativity where he teamed up with Dario Vergassola
