As Salone del Mobile approaches this April, the organization shares its new communications campaign for the year. Salone engaged Milanese design studio Leftloft and renowned illustrator/collagist Gio Pastori to create an inspiring concept representative of the show’s evolution.
Leftloft and Pastori have jointly been tasked with condensing the identity, themes and protagonists of the event into a distinctive and original visual narrative: no easy task in that it called for reflection and equilibrium at a number of different conceptual levels – contemporary and future, innovation and continuity.
The starting point was a journey back in time, geared to teasing out the artistic language of the Salone, which, with its visual and verbal synthesis has drawn in the public with its iconic aura over the years. “We felt the need to put the design taxonomies in order,” said David Pasquali, co-founder and creative director of Leftloft. “A gentle and ironic order that, through an almost didactic encyclopaedic approach, would shed new light on the fundamental phonemes of design, leveraging their sound, their meaning, their form and sequence to define, clarify, express and narrate.”
In order to build a contemporary and an immediate and universal lexicon, they went back to the beginnings. This spawned the idea of a new ABC or design, with archetypes and icons describing the protagonists of the Salone, around whom the Milanese design system revolves.
The 2023 Salone del Mobile.Milano communication campaign features 26 brightly-coloured posters, one for each letter of the alphabet, each accompanied by an object or furnishing piece, the headline Do you speak design? directly interrogating the observer. As the visuals and lettering roll on − A is for armchair, B is for bookcase, C is for chair … − the answer comes out loud and clear.
Once the concept had been resolved, it was a matter of “animating” the message and imparting colour to this design alphabet. It was at precisely this stage that Gio Pastori’s insight, sensitivity and talent came in. “Illustrating an ABC of objects is a method that invites people living in Milan and all around the world to re-learn how to read them, to dig down into their souls unhindered by trends or brands” said Pastori, “My take on it was to come up with a vivid colour combination, disconcerting at times, to delay the immediate focus on the subjects. Essential lines and discreet volumes appear in a dreamlike, shifting atmosphere, dictated by erroneous perspectives and unlikely axonometries.”
“Design as a common language in all the cultures of the world, and thus universal, is the concept underpinning the new Salone del Mobile campaign, designed on one hand to draw attention back to the archetypes of design and, on the other, to allude to the importance of dialogue and possible cultural cohesion founded on the universal language of design, which is spoken by the thousands of people who descend on Milan during that particular week. Like an alphabet, the Salone is a system of connections and opportunities and an emotion – it transmits energy, positivity, enthusiasm and enterprise – all feelings that Gio Pastori’s Pop and contemporary collages, an undoubtedly new take for the Salone, manage to transmit immediately and powerfully,” said Maria Porro, President of the Salone del Mobile.
