GRAPHIC DESIGN AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION lR

Adriana Botti Monti was born in Milan in 1937. After attending classical high school, she was awarded a diploma from the School of Translators and Interpreters before attending the Faculty of Law at university. She collaborated with various women’s magazines, first as a translator, and then as a fashion journalist.

From 1960 onwards she was a consultant for la Rinascente in the advertising department. She dealt specifically with advertising for the APEM lines, curating the publication “Appointments in Europe. The APEM autumn/winter collection 1961-1962, with photography from international maestros.” In 1962 she became Art Director for the department, overseeing promotional material for the company, press releases and posters. In 1967 she became an executive, coordinating an incredible team that included Salvatore Gregorietti, Giancarlo Iliprandi, Serge Libis, Aldo Ballo, Oliviero Toscani, Carlo Orsi, and Guido Vergani. She created the Rinascente Office of Fashion and Style, where a young Giorgio Armani served an apprenticeship first as a window dresser and then as a sales assistant in the menswear department.

She received various awards, including the Corriere della Sera Award for Art Direction in 1967 for the press release Inverno luminoso moda aggressiva 1966, the Ferrania Award for her art direction contribution to the photography layout of the men’s fashion supplement Uomo lR, and the La Domenica del Corriere Award for her art direction contribution to the illustration of Deserto dervish.

In 1971, with the arrival of new management, Adriana Botti Monti left Rinascente. She worked for some months for “Vogue Italy”, followed by five years at Longanesi, before rounding off with “Casa Vogue” between 1979 and 1997.

Carla Gorgerino, a brilliant graphic designer, created posters and advertising pages in 1962 with a unique sense of the importance of material presentation in the graphic montage of characters, with shading and trimmed pages. Little-known in the Milan world of graphics, she introduced a new awareness of typographic paging, combining formal structure and visual memory in new ways that would only reappear at a later point in time, re-proposed by a restricted circle of other important designers.

Amneris Liesering Latis was born in Massagno in the canton of Ticino in 1924. After completing vocational school in Lugano, she started working as an assistant at the “Gazzetta Ticinese” newspaper, before becoming a journalist. In 1946 she married Mario Latis and moved to Milan where she worked with the Italian Swiss Radio broadcasting company.

In 1954 she joined la Rinascente. In 1956 she was entrusted with the artistic direction of the first large exhibition (the lR Grand Exhibitions) dedicated to the clothes and craftsmanship of various countries around the world, events which characterized the commercial and cultural offerings of the department store in the following years up to 1964. The first trade exhibition dedicated to Japan was an enormous success, followed by those of Great Britain, India, Mexico and the United States.

Elected chief of the Advertising Department, as well as creating advertising campaigns with photographers and graphic designers who made history in the Italian communication field (Serge Libis, Giancarlo Iliprandi, Max Huber, Lora Lamm, Roberto Sambonet), she continued to assist the store buyers in planning commercial strategies for the various sections of the department store.

Amneris Latis’ working partnership with Rinascente ended in 1964, when she branched out solely as a freelancer. In 1968 she founded AL Promotions, a consultancy agency for institutions and companies. She worked with other large European retail stores and organized what may be classed as the first exhibition of Italian design in 1968 in New York, an initiative commissioned by the Hallmark Gallery.

Her significant partnership with Rinascente is recorded in a rich and varied collection of materials stored by the Latis family: advertising catalogues, posters, invitations, brochures, tickets and publicity materials, as well as photographs of display sets (interior and exterior) and shop windows, still life shots, private letters and documents regarding the research work and preliminary planning stages for large-scale projects at la Rinascente. This rich patrimony of material highlights the effort put into this intense working relationship which led to absolutely innovative integrated communication results that were both effective and creative.

«From 1961 to 1963, I lived in Milan, Italy, and I worked for la Rinascente. Europe was still trying to get back on its feet after the Second World War and the continent was in love with all things American. I had only recently completed art school and I, on the contrary, was in love with all things European.

The posters that I created for la Rinascente were exhibited in the lR shops and offices all over Italy. La Rinascente has a long and important history in the use of posters for its institutional advertising. The concept of promoting a season or holiday instead of simple merchandise was unique. I was incredibly lucky to have the chance and freedom to use my graphic and artistic training to create these images. It was the job of a lifetime».

Pegge Hopper

Salvatore Gregorietti was born in Palermo in 1941, and is considered to be one of the leading lights in Italian graphic design.

In 1959, following his schooling at the Artistic High School of Brera in Milan, he moved to Zurich and attended the Kunstgewerbeschule, a vocational school of arts and crafts. In 1961, he returned to Italy where he began to collaborate with the Milan studio belonging to Massimo Vignelli.

In 1965, he became a partner of Unimark Internazional, a studio of graphic design and communication, alongside Massimo Vignelli, Bob Noorda, Franco Mirenzi and Mario Boeri, dealing mainly with graphic design issues regarding coordination of images, publishing, packaging, institutional and commercial communication.

In 1964 he began consulting work for the Advertising and Communication Department of Rinascente; he worked with Pier Giorgio Brovelli (commercial manager), Adriana Botti Monti (art director) and with the photographers Aldo Ballo, Serge Libis, Ugo Mulas and Oliviero Toscani. Gregorietti and Adriana Botti established a strong working relationship: together they managed to merge the culture of the image with architectural planning, thus arriving at the creation and production of rather special communication tools (posters, catalogues and notices for newspapers), where photography was key while the graphic design of the texts with its precision and proportion tended to blend in.

His work received important accolades, winning the Art Directors Club award for three consecutive years. He collaborated with important businesses and institutions: Pirelli, Agip, Sanpaolo, Confindustria, the Biennale of Venice, Fondazione Feltrinelli, Benetton, Prenatal; in publishing: Sonzogno, Bompiani, Sylvestre Bonnard, Feltrinelli; for periodicals: “Linus”, “Capital”, “Thema”, “Casa Vogue” and “Ottagono”, a magazine of design and architecture which won him the Golden Compass in 1979. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara and, in 1988,co-authored with Emilia Vassale La forma della scrittura (The shape of writing), republished by Sylvestre Bonnard in 2007.

“The ultraviolet light used in nightclubs had become very fashionable among photographers. I had used it just in that occasion. I had the model’s false eyelashes and nails painted this fluorescent orange, the same colour as the plastic earrings, and I looked for a piece to put on her forehead to act as a third eye. I wanted a painted piece of filigree, but even for a make-up artist that could not be possibly done. I rifled through underwear from a previous shoot. I found a rose, little more than some lacework taken from a slip. I cut it out and placed it on her forehead”.

Salvatore Gregorietti

Serge Libiszewski, better known as Sergio Libis, was born in San Gallo (Switzerland) on 3rd March 1930. Born into a family of photographers, he attended the three-year course of photography at Kunstgewerbeschule, the vocational school of arts and crafts in Zurich. In 1951, he gained his diploma with the maximum marks. He then began his working life at the graphic design studio of Heiniger-Muller.

His career was greatly influenced by a meeting with Max Huber, who encouraged him to move to Milan. Following his friend’s invitation, in 1956 Libis transferred to the Lombardy capital where he was taken on as a photographer in la Rinascente Advertising Department. He collaborated with the art directors Amneris Latis and Adriana Botti Monti, and graphic designers Max Huber, Lora Lamm, Giancarlo Iliprandi and Roberto Maderna. While working for la Rinascente he was able to meet and interact with Richard Sapper, Gian Carlo Ortelli, Bruno Munari, Roberto Sambonet, Marco Zanuso and George Coslin.

In 1961, he opened his own professional studio dedicated to still life photography, fashion and advertising images. In the following years, Libis continued to collaborate with la Rinascente, gaining a reputation for his innovative and revolutionary creativity. Libis created photo campaigns for the department store, destined to catalogues and advertising posters, proposing a new type of fashion shoot poised midway between a happening and reportage (as in Inverno passione mia and Vacanze di moda). Libis changed the paradigm of fashion photography: he captured moments of life and opted for spontaneous shots, abandoning the insides of the photography studio to take to the streets outside.

In the 70s and 80s, he created photo campaigns for Olivetti, Pirelli, Alfa Romeo, Giorgio Armani and Prenatal, where he became practically a film director on set. He worked increasingly with fashion magazines – his front covers for the “Annabella” magazine in that period entered the public’s collective memory along with his posters.

Born in Arosa in 1928, Lora Lamm is a Swiss illustrator and graphic designer. She worked for Pirelli and la Rinascente during the Seventies, becoming (along with Anita Klinz) one of the few successful female graphic designers in Italy.

few successful female graphic designers in Italy. After training at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich, Lamm started her professional career working for different agencies. In 1953, she settled in Milan. In that period of economic boom, many Swiss designers decided to transfer to Italy, tempted by the lively intellectual and cultural context as well as the progressive attitudes that were taking hold. These included Xanti Schawinsky, Max Huber, Carlo Vivarelli, Walter Ballmer, Aldo Calabresi and Bruno Monguzzi. Many of them worked for the Boggeri Studio founded by Antonio Boggeri in 1933; it was here that Lora started with small commissions, before being assigned the packaging for Motta products.

In that historic era, some large companies and Italian businesses (including Olivetti) encouraged the development of the advertising industry in Italy, offering opportunities to the best graphic designers and illustrators to create images and iconic campaigns. Like Olivetti, Pirelli and la Rinascente also set up their own departments for advertising and internal communication. It was a schoolmate and colleague, Max Huber, who presented Lora Lamm to la Rinascente in 1954. Huber was already an established designer, who had created the department store’s logo and also oversaw the coordinated branding. Lora became chief of advertising graphics, creating over time (up to the early Sixties) a sizeable series of high-impact catalogues, posters and leaflets. Her fresh new style, direct and iconic, raised her immediately among the elite in Milan designers of the 50’s and 60’s. In 1956, she designed the advertising material for the sales fair “La Rinascente, Grand events: Japan”. Lamm then revived part of the exhibition’s visual material and reinterpreted it in a geometric pattern, with the traditional colours of Japan. This playful and experimental approach became her trademark style.

Starting from 1958, she also worked for Pirelli, Elizabeth Arden, Olivetti and other companies. In 1963, the designer returned to Zurich as a partner at Frank C. Thiessing where she focused on packaging and design for exhibitions.

Lamm established a precise style through her colourful illustrations, her stylized and unexpected creations which induce a sense of wonder and engagement from the audience, communicating enthusiasm and carelessness. With time, Lamm would experiment also with interesting overlaps of designs, her trademark technique, and photography. But her style, personal and easily recognizable, which put illustration first and foremost, produced results that still appear fresh and effective today.

Ornella Noorda graduated in Sculpture from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts with artist and sculptor Marino Marini and Alik Cavaliere. Her works include the sculptures created for the exhibition held at Villa Olmo in Como, and for the “Il Milione” gallery in Milan: it was thanks to these pieces that she was honoured with an award at Quirinale Palace by the President of the Italian Republic Antonio Segni.

In 1959, she began to collaborate with la Rinascente as external consultant of the design office, working closely with Augusto Morello and Amneris Latis. She designed exclusive items for a number of events including ‘Natale Idea’, ‘Casa Idea’, ‘l’Ufficio’ and ‘La Caccia’.

With her expertise in textiles, she created table sets, such as tablecloths, as well as bedroom sets: cushions, bed sheets, covers, quilts, rugs and upholstery fabrics.

“In 1960, I was pregnant with my first child, and so I drew a lot of inspiration from the motif of children. I particularly remember a window display, the first one on the left, under the portico of the Rinascente store in Piazza Duomo: bed sheets, tablecloths and bibs were displayed, hanging from taut threads almost as if in reference to washing lines, that I had exclusively made for Rinascente. Their common theme was cut and whole apples, a peculiar motif that I had used a lot”.

The creations that are most remembered by Ornella Noorda are: Autunno Le Mele (a series of bed sheets for children, tablecloths and placemat sets sold in gift packaging), Numeri (a collection of cushions, decorative fabric panels and tapestries, as well as foulards and tablecloths in a variety of colours) and Amori (gift ideas, merchandising items, foulards and textile items, all linked to one of Noorda’s key graphic designs, based on the theme of love and related to a specific object: a heart).

In 1966, the first edition of the book Amori was published, a collection of graphic works revolving around the theme of the heart, with captions in three languages. The original designs were on display at the MoMA in New York. Still in the field of textiles, Noorda designed a collection of square rugs (2x2m in size) with geometric patterns exclusively for la Rinascente, drawing inspiration from tile mosaics. The rugs, which were produced by a Viennese company, could be used alone or combined with others to create remarkable designs. “Vogue” dedicated a reportage to this project, which was carried out in the Unimark studio, with shots taken by photographer Ugo Mulas.

Noorda not only created design objects and textile items, but also furniture, such as a Plexiglas table designed for ‘Natale Idea’ event that was remarkably successful thanks to its modern, clean-cut lines.

“I had designed a coordinated collection for ‘Natale Idea’ that comprised a large table, formed of a series of closely positioned individual tables, laid with a transparent set of placemats, dinner and soup plates, a series of plexiglass glasses and a centre piece candle holder. A few days before Christmas, I headed to the floor where the installation had been created, but the space was empty because everything had been taken away to decorate the Christmas evenings at Casa Borletti”

Ornella Noorda studied various types of materials, specialising in the by-products of plastic materials that were introduced in the 1960s. She created simple, charming , fun items for everyday use with a strong design, experimenting and creating coloured plastic materials. For ‘l’Ufficio’ event, she designed a line of coordinated items: pen holders, rulers, document holders, paperweights and a special notepad formed of a base and a support made of Plexiglas where a paper roll for issuing receipts is attached.

She continued her close collaboration with Guzzini, leader in the manufacturing of plastic materials, creating design items for the home, table and kitchen. Notably, she designed a collection of trays and stacking containers, and in 1968 she won first prize in Macef.
Fancy, imagination and technique are the defining traits of the character, passion and love that Ornella Noorda feels for her work.

Her collaboration with la Rinascente ended in 1970.