The Arts
January 2026
Italian graphic design
Culture and practice in Milan, 1930s-60s
by Chiara Barbieri
Italian graphic design offers a new perspective on the subject by exploring the emergence and articulation of graphic design practice, from the interwar period through to the appearance of an international graphic design discourse in the 1960s. The book asks how graphic designers learned their trade and investigates the ways in which they organised and made their practice visible while negotiating their collective identity with neighbouring practices such as typography, advertising and industrial design. Attention is drawn to everyday design practice, educational issues, mediating channels, networks, design exchange, organisational strategies and discourses on modernism. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources and placing an emphasis on visual analysis, this book provides a model for a contextualised graphic design history as an integral part of the history of design and visual culture.
