Even if you haven’t heard of the Vignellis, you surely have seen their body of work, including the New York Subway system, American Airlines, and Bloomingdale’s. Not to mention all of their glassware, silverware, furniture, and fashion. Lella and Massimo Vignelli have left no stone unturned, which is the point of their career retrospective Design Is One.
The book is small, but the work is big.
The husband and wife creative team are against specialization and think nothing should be out of bounds to a designer. The reason is simple: “We think that it brings entropy and entropy brings creative death…a total view is necessary.”
They go on to list in detail that all design should be semantically correct, syntactically consistent, pragmatically understandable, visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and timeless. Any designer looking to emulate a career should look no further than the Vignellis. web archive They are second to none.
To purchase the book, click here.
