Fornasetti: Brand Book

For us, designing the new logo for Fornasetti was a unique opportunity to work with such a special archive, like the one Barnaba and Piero Fornasetti own.

At the same time, we worked on Fornasetti’s brand book through which we translated the philosophical and visual collection of the Milanese atelier into a synthetic and very representative publication. Fornasetti Index is the praise of each Fornasetti creation through a contemporary approach.

It was extremely inspiring finding out that Piero wasn’t simply a decorator but also a great printmaker and a forward thinking graphic and type designer. The result was a typeface exclusively designed for the brand, as a direct reference of Fornasetti’s identity. The quest for the perfect balance between spacing and kerning was key in integrating the typeface and the logotype: the uniqueness of the original design was preserved in the extreme shapes of some of the letters and in the long and generous serifs. The capital letters were designed in every style detail, recreated to be as faithful as possible to the original: starting from this set of letters, the rest of the alphabet was then built almost from scratch to be its perfect complement.

Regarding the book, it has a parallelepiped shape, the cover presents the drawing of a golden fish in a wooden like background. The book contains various objects of different materials and techniques, which resemble Fornasetti’s multifaceted work: a silkscreen printed poster, a small book that narrates Fornasetti’s story, tarot cards, a volume with product care tips, a collection of coloured butterflies, a ruler-bookmark, a catalogue of the classic adornments and a manual of typographic elements.