Testa e Croce, ADI Design Museum
ADI Design Museum was established to showcase the entire repertoire of projects in the historical collection of the Compasso d’Oro award, created in 1954 by Gio Ponti to promote the quality of design made in Italy. It is the highest honour in the field of industrial design in the country.
The museum spaces hosts temporary in-depth exhibitions, cross-cutting initiatives and meetings for the general public. Parco Studio worked on the communication of one of the latest production, titled Testa e Croce: le convergenze parallele del design / Heads and Tails: parallel convergences of design, an exhibition under the overall curatorship and creative direction of Italo Rota.
At the heart of the exhibition there is a reproduction of the Cervino, or Matterhorn, as this mountain divides geographically the territory but also allows Switzerland and Italy to communicate. It is chosen as the key image because it alludes to the different perception of design from the two points of view of the landscape, yet from a sustainable point of view the mountains beyond the border become common territory to be safeguarded and protected. The exhibition is completed by two thematic islands, Young Italian Designers, curated by Erica Petrillo, and Young Swiss Designers, curated by Laure Gremion, which illustrate the panorama of contemporary design in the two countries.
To communicate the exhibition Parco has chosen Forma DJR as it represents the Italian edition of the famous Swiss Helvetica – Forma is a 1960s Italian neo-grotesque. Somehow this warm, rich sans serif did not make it to the digital era – until recently.
The typography is split in two parts: one side/word is coloured to represent the Italian authorship while the other side/word is in neutral black for the timeless neutrality of Swiss everyday design.
Parco Studio has been working on all graphic materials of the exhibition to be used online and offline, including the poster layouts, the video at the exhibition entrance, and all captions of the exhibition setup. The studio was also invited to create and design the exhibition catalog.
This catalog is itself at the center of the exhibition, physically because it is shown under the symbolic Cervino in the exhibition setup, and also because it is meaningfully as the heart of Italo Rota’s philosophy.
