To design the visual identity of the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2022, for the first time totally online, we contacted Mexican illustrator Sólin Sekkur.
Physically distant due to the constraints of the pandemic but in constant dialogue, the result was a parade of colorful characters ready to celebrate with hope the return of the physical exhibition.
Here is a short story about how things went.
November 28, 2024, 1:00 pm. At Handimatica 2024 we will present Tiresia, an accessible education app dedicated to blind and visually impaired students. Tiresia allows you to build and explore digital tactile figures by taking advantage of vibrations, sounds and speech synthesis, on smartphones and tablets. Geometric figures, function curves, maps of buildings, and conceptual maps can also be used visually, thus creating interaction in studying between sighted and blind people.
Tiresia is a project developed by Nicolò Carpignoli (Chialab) as part of a PhD carried out in collaboration with the IUAV of Venice.
November 28, 2024, 1:00 p.m.
Nicolò Carpignoli / TIRESIA
Handimatica edition 2024 / Innovators of Accessibility: the projects selected by the Call4Projects
Aldini Valeriani Institute
Via Bassanelli, 9/11, Bologna
Using the plural is mandatory for the multitude of symbols, icons, brands, illustrations, colors, letters which we design to accompany Bologna’s passion for publishing: Bologna Children's Book Fair, BBPlus, Bologna Licensing Trade Fair/Kids, Bologna Frankfurt, Bologna Shanghai, Bologna Guadalajara, Bologna Angoulême, Bologna Bangkok, Bologna Grand Tour, Illustrators Exhibition, Comics Corner, Self publishing, Awards, Illustrators Survival Corner, BCBF Galleries…
Read more
For the Egyptian Museum in Turin and with the Paideia Foundation, we faced the challenge of telling people with special communication needs about the life of the ancient Egyptians. Design obstructions: both individual and group use, print and digital dissemination, self-consistent and cross-reference-free utilization. In page layout, we kept the linearity of the story firm: no menus, no links; only two compositional schemes in the text-image relationship, a minimized number of visual codes for illustrations and typographic styles.
Here the thematic paths “Reading is a common Good”
Deir el-Medina, Il Viaggio dei morti, Il dono del Nilo
Museo Egizio di Torino, Fondazione Paideia.
We have released the first studies of the “version_00” of Titillium Serif PRO that follow the sans version in design, vertical proportions and overall dimensions.
The intention is to develop in parallel also a second version in discontinuity with the sans and with features closer to the historical serif canons. We thus trace a double design path with the aim of meeting different editorial needs, without ever losing the identity of the Titillium family and its vertical metrics.
At the moment settle for the sans continuity version. Download it, explore it, and do not demand perfection: still a long way to go and that is precisely why your every observation will be valuable. Thank you!
Download: “Titillium Serif PRO_00” from Chialab GitHub
For reports please write to: titillium@chialab.it
The Tititillium Serif PRO project is part of our Titillium curation efforts and is based on Lorenzo Volpe's thesis, “TITILLIUM SERIF. Research and Typographic Practice,” discussed at ISIA Faenza and supervised by Antonio D'Elisiis.
A ottobre 2023 è uscito L’Albertazzi, dizionario illustrato di slang urbano bolognese. È stato incubato e progettato da noi, scritto da Francesco Perlini, illustrato da Valeria Cavallone e Lufo.
Il successo di questo piccolo dizionario ha incuriosito Alberto Ghia, un ricercatore di Linguistica dell’Università di Torino che ci ha regalato una lunga recensione sulla rivista accademica di Lingue e Letterature Moderne “Ricognizioni”.
Tra le righe dell’articolo si può assaporare l’analisi dell’opera più completa e puntuale che fino ad ora abbiamo avuto il piacere di leggere. Se foste curiosi, si trova qui!
We have two obsessions: making team design of visual artifacts efficient and designing accessible interfaces. These are issues that we deal with in our daily practice and that we have deepened with two industrial Phd papers with the IUAV of Venice. They feature Manuel Zanettin and Nicolò Carpignoli. Manuel analyzed different project management methods to create a new application of the method for communication design while Nicolò designed and prototyped a system to make blind people perceive lines and curves by touch.
Read the research papers:
Managing design projects with Agile methods
Getting blind people to perceive lines of function and geometric shapes by touch and hearing
Industrial Phd Thesis Discussions.
Manuel Zanettin, Application of Scrum in communication design.
Nicolò Carpignoli, Curved line recognition with speech synthesis for vibrotactile graphics on general-purpose touchscreen devices.
Speaker: Prof. Luciano Perondi.
Chialab, Iuav University of Venice, Course in Architecture, City and Design.
Design Science.
May 13, 2024, IUAV Venice, Badoer,
Classroom G, 10:30 a.m.
We released under the Open Font License (OFL) an expanded version of Titillium. We did this after years of frequent use collecting desires and critical issues. We did it with the consent of the Urbino Academy of Arts, Marcello Signorile and Luciano Perondi who designed and developed it with students in their courses. We called it Titillium PRO and soon we expect to release, again under OFL license, the serif version!
Download Titillium PRO sans from Chialab GitHub.
Here some more details about the process and features of Titillium PRO.
For reports please write to titillium@chialab.it
L’Albertazzi. Dizionario, grammatica, storie di slang bolognese in una variante di balotta è un progetto editoriale che abbiamo intercettato, apprezzato, incubato e trasformato nella sua veste grafica. Lo abbiamo fatto con Francesco Perlini, autore del libro nonché membro della balotta degli Albertazzi, che hanno distorto lo slang bolognese in una versione tutta loro.
A più riprese ci siamo incammellati su caratteri tipografici, formati, colori e illustrazioni (Valeria Cavallone e Lufo) ma dopo 3 anni di lavoro in Chialab siamo riusciti a droppare L’Albertazzi! La sfida è stata quella di costruire un paesaggio culturale, un affresco, un’atmosfera sociale attraverso una lettura non lineare, rimbalzante, di parole in ordine alfabetico che si rimandano a vicenda.
Ci saremo riusciti? Chissà. L’autore e l’editore Pendragon pensano di sì e sono pinzati da king.
Ci vediamo alla presentazione, venerdì 6 ottobre alla Coop Ambasciatori di Bologna.
Buona lettura!
When Explora, Museum for Children in Rome, entrusted us with the redesign of its visual identity, we looked for a way to narrate the great biodiversity of experiences offered by the museum. We found it in 49 intermingling letters, shapes that mutate, iridescent colors. Instead of a monolithic logo, we built a writing system that allows for change, while always remaining recognizable within a family of strong signs that say: all this is Explora – an ever-changing experience, an adaptive identity.
Inaugura venerdì 23 aprile alle 17:00 la mostra «Squarci di copertina ~20 anni di immagini per Wu Ming», con copertine, locandine e in generale l’arte grafica di Chialab applicata al lavoro dei Wu Ming.
Sono esposti bozzetti e versioni alternative delle cover di romanzi come L’Armata dei Sonnambuli, Ufo 78, l’edizione speciale di Q per il ventennale ecc.
Can a single image be created by 20 different people, each with their own characteristic style? Is there such a thing as a collective image or the collective imagination? And if so, can they convey the scenes and characters that BCBF has welcomed and hosted over 60 years in a single unified vision?
This was the completely new challenge the – now consolidated – BCBF visual identity workshop faced when preparing for the 60th edition of Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
This is how it all turned out.
We designed and implemented the new website of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna.
We started from the contents of the old site, accumulated over more than fifteen years. We identified the new needs and with ABABO staff, organized them into four macro activities: living, studying, opportunities, academy. Each activity helps a user: visitor, student, professor, institution.
Designed for mostly mobile use, the site starts from the Academy's visual identity guidelines, introduces a color code for each area, and uses segments of the logo as an identity watermark.
All editorial content is served by BEdita, our content management system, which regularly synchronizes with the school-administration system APIs developed by Spaggiari Group.
The site can be found HERE.
For two months now, the volumes of the new Feltrinelli publishing proposal for schools, have been in schoolbags, on desks and before the eyes of many students.
Briefing us for the graphic design, the publisher gave us complete confidence and only two requests: ‘...they must be seen and they must be Feltrinelli...’. As usual we started with obstructions: no photos, no illustrations, no fixed grid, no vignettes, no grotesque. What remained were shapes, colours, a 45° grid based on Bob's red ‘F’, and a typeface, Meran, with its oblique terminals.
Seriality in educational publishing is no joke: the grid has become a real generator of covers. It is not artificial intelligence, but it has allowed us to give character as a single family to some forty volumes of history, literature, grammar, civics.
We curated the visual identity of the exhibition Giochi di verità, Truth Games. Over 80 photographs on display in Soliera and a catalog consisting of 160 pages with a poster as an overcover: 17x24cm, composed with GT Sectra, printed on Fedrigoni X-Per paper by Notiziedue.
It was the title that suggested that we divide a photograph into two parts, each revealing its truth. It is the viewer who, by rejoining the parts, can reconstruct a hypothetical, fragile and delicate “photographic” truth. A multiple monogram of “V” as in Verità is the extreme typographic synthesis of this game.
The exhibition curated by Marcella Manni draws on the Donata Pizzi Collection and investigates the relationship between private and collective memory, rituals of family life, role clichés, and experimentation. It is promoted by Comune di Soliera and Fondazione Campori, with contributions from Regione Emilia-Romagna and Fondazione Cassa di risparmio di Carpi.
More info on Giochi di verità. Representation, Portrait, Document.
See the catalog on Metronom shop.
WuMing's latest novel, whose cover we designed, is in the bookstores. We proposed several concepts; R4 N57686 flying in the sky above Mount Quarzerone won. Actually the one we preferred was the first of our submissions, which you can find in the image gallery below. An abduction, squared. But the favorite never wins, it's unavoidable.
On December 13, 2001 the Salaborsa Library of Bologna was born: in twenty years its cosmos has expanded to collect and coordinate much of Bologna's cultural heritage through the web. For the library's birthday we have completely revamped the website: scattered among the various sections you will find the Strisce lunghe un anno initiative, which involves monthly artists Luogo Comune, Alberto Lot, Irene Penazzi and Lorenzo Ghetti, featured on our Illustratorium.
How to design a children's book that addresses the fundamental questions of life, the most useful but also the most challenging issues? Publishers are paying more and more attention to scientific dissemination dedicated to youngsters: these readings should be accompanied and encouraged with a solid and meticulous graphic design that never loses its rhythm between text, image and, if necessary, comic strips.
For Editrice il Castoro, we have designed on this basis the graphic design and layout of the encyclopedia The 15 Questions. 15 questions and 15 answers, 15 volumes, 15 colors, 15 illustrators.
This is the title of a seminar on Augmented Reality to be held in Legnago by our Web AR Developer Nicolò Carpignoli, on November 4 at 2:30 p.m., as part of the Space 13 Innovation Lab project.
The free Zoom event is aimed at students, artists, artisans and small and medium-sized businesses who want to learn more about Augmented Reality as a tool to express ideas, promote business or create new cultural experiences. Features and limitations of this technology in Web and Mobile will be shown, plus a series of real-life use cases, starting with projects implemented in Chialab.
People, Prosperity, Peace, Partnership, Planet: these are the subjects of the UN 2030 Agenda that we will connect to with three of our projects by tracing their genesis, design, development and maintenance. All within the Circonferenze 2030 review on Friday, October 29, 2021 from 4 to 6 p.m. in ABABO (Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna).
The review is promoted by ABABO and AIAP, curated by Danilo Danisi and Fabiana Ielacqua.
Info and program of Circonferenze 2030 here.
Image by Sara Carfora, first year of Ababo's three-year Graphic Design program.
