Lella & Massimo Vignelli

Lella (1934-2016) and Massimo (1931-2014), founders of the Vignelli Associates studio, were a couple of Italian designers who have spent most of their life and career in the United States and who have left an indelible mark on the history of the graphic designer. Massimo was in fact, together with Bob Noorda, one of the founders of Unimark International, a large international studio with offices in all major American and European cities that has contributed to shaping some of the most iconic visual identities of the entire twentieth century. It is Massimo and Lella who have signed epochal projects for Unimark such as those for the map and signage of the New York subway and the corporate identities of American industry giants such as American Airlines and Ford. In 1971 they decided to set up their own business and found the Vignelli Associates studio in New York, through which they managed to best express their elegant style of great structural purity, also intensifying relations with Italy and Europe with projects such as those for the graphic identity of brands such as Lancia or Ducati or of a very popular transmission such as the TG2. Michael Bierut, their young employee who would become one of the big names in graphic design in America in the future, once said that "it seemed that the entire city of New York was a permanent exhibition of Vignelli's works". In the field of furniture, their main client was the Knoll brand, for which they took care of the visual identity for many years and for which they designed some products, but they also had the opportunity to work with Italian brands such as Poltrona Frau, Acerbis and Poltronova.