Classici Italiani

Tipoteca, a world-class museum of printing and typography situated in Cornuda, Italy has a vast archive of historic woodtype. This project spans several years and three residencies spent exploring these letterforms and celebrating their craftsmanship via production of contemporary poster design. This series, Classici Italiani (Italian Classics) uses clever type play to communicate relevant themes in classic Italian film and opera. The posters are available for sale at Tipoteca and Etsy.

This poster series was honored with the "Outstanding Achievement Award" for posters in HOW Magazine's International Design Awards, several Gold ADDYs and on The Beauty of Letterpress site.

La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita (Italian for “the sweet life” or “the good life”) is a 1960 comedy-drama film written and directed by the critically acclaimed director Federico Fellini.

Poster Concept: The film depicts the new post-war decline in morality, so I felt that the title should sink or fall off the page. The typography chosen for the title is also quite old, and worm-eaten (tarlato in Italian). I really liked that the worm holes made the type look festive and playful, but once you knew what caused them they made an apt metaphor for the moral decline that the film speaks to.

Bicycle Thieves

Ladri di Biciclette (Italian for “Bicycle Thieves”) also known as The Bicycle Thief, is director Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose his job which was to be the salvation of his young family.

Poster Concept: For this poster I chose a geometric typeface so that I could hint at the wheels of a bicycle inside Vittorio”s name. I printed the “o”s separately, scanned the print and had a polymer plate made so that the “o”s could be debossed in a separate printing pass. Hopefully this communicates that the “bike” is now missing.

Eight and 1/2

8½ (Italian title: Otto e mezzo) is a 1963 comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini.

Poster Concept: Two large quotation marks
float in the upper portion of this poster. They surround nothing, because the main character in this film, a famous film director, cannot commit to how to finish his film. He is even quoted as saying: "I have nothing to say, but I still want to say it anyway." Type was selected and arranged to hint at the carnival-like atmosphere created by the characters and costumes in this classic film.

Tipoteca Woodtype Collection
Tipoteca has over 1200 drawers of woodtype collected from letterpress shops from all over Italy.

The Antonioni Trilogy

L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse are all films from Michelangelo Antonioni’s trilogy. L’Avventura is a film is about a young woman's disappearance (Anna) during a Mediterranean boating trip. Her lover and her best friend, during the subsequent search for her, become attracted to each other, and have a love affair.

Poster Concept for L’Avventura: Anna goes “missing” in this film and we are never quite sure if she is alive, dead, or perhaps even stalking her best friend and lover as they begin their affair while looking for her. The last A in the title has been spaced to the edge of the poster to help communicate Anna’s ambiguous disappearance.

HOW International Design Annual

The first series of posters printed at Tipoteca for the Classici Italiani project were awarded with a Best of Show in the Posters Category in the HOW International Design Annual in 2014.