Massimo Vignelli

Being able to hear Massimo Vignelli speak last week was quite an opportunity. Vignelli is such an accomplished designer, having worked all around the world from his home country of Italy to the United States to Chile. Vignelli, who was introduced as the man who "has designed everything from silver teaspoons to skyscrapers" has dabbled in all types of design. Lamps, chairs, tables, dishes, flat-wear, magazine spreads, calendars, showrooms, signs, wine labels, piggy banks, menorahs, even packaging for Polish pasta; you name it, Vignelli has designed it. The specific things that Vignelli has designed that were most notable to me were things so well known and widespread that most people have come across his designs in their everyday life and not even known. Vignelli is responsible for the New York City Subway graphics, the American Airlines logo, the Bloomingdale's logo, the US National Park Service graphics and he and his wife, Lella, even designed something as permanent as St. Peter's church in New York City. Vignelli's outlook on design is something for every designer to think about. That is that "great design should be invisible; it should just exist." Massimo explained that this means that design should work so well and be so precise that when looking at it you don't see a strategical design, but something standing on it's own as is. Along this same line he went on to say that "design is like a language," telling a story and sending a message to it's viewer. Every designer can stand to learn a few things from Massimo Vignelli's wealth of design knowledge and experience, even us graphics students. As Massimo said, "there is no job too big or too small."