The Typographic City. Social Commitment and Graphic Design in the Urban Space in Two Late Modernist Italian projects

Between the late nineteen-sixties and the late nineteen-eighties, the field of Italian graphic design saw many practitioners attempt to test and apply ideas more immediately related to the social function of design. Their new approach to design tried to overtly oppose the rampant consumerist models with a very constructive, empirical approach that to some extent represented a novelty in the contemporary history of Italian design that favoured the balance of forces rather than direct opposition. A central event in this context is the development of what for lack of better terms can be called “urban typography,” a form of graphic design that intervened on the whole surface of the urban space. This paper looks at two examples of such interventions and at the historical and theoretical framework in which they were developed. These limited, practical interventions were structurally aimed at functioning as a mediation between institutions and community, with a focus on inclusion and on the local dimension. They were articulated as single projects rather than general theorisations and programmatic manifestos. This paper subsequently argues that the experience of “urban typography” has to be framed in the contemporary European cultural milieu which saw, on the one hand, a modernism appropriated by ideologies and corporations and, on the other, the logic of the grand, radical intervention revealing its utopian character. Urban typography, in other words, was an alternative to the polarisation between ideology and professionalisation. It offered graphic designers who embraced this concept an alternative to ideological commitment and professional mannerism.