Massimo

Wow, what can I say? I found myself looking at these images of his lamps and mugs and tables and stackable plates and wanting each and every one of them. Their simplicity is what made them amazing. Despite their simple shapes, everything had a unique look and did something that made it amazingly functional. Things like the American Airlines logo and the various packaging showed how just one or two solid colors with a strong, simple font can be the strongest design. It's as much about what is there as what isn't. His explanation of design as a language rather than an art is very fitting I think, design shouldn't be there for the sake of being there, it should serve a purpose in communicating the message you want it to.

One thing that especially got my attention (being a newspaper addict) was the newspaper layout he showed from the '60s or '70s. The grid layout he used was very interesting because of the fact that it did look different from the usual common layout that we've all grown accustomed to. However, I wasn't really a fan of the layout style. There was just so much text. Maybe it worked back in its day, but I can't imagine anyone reading that paper nowadays. It just seemed like more than half the page was a solid block of text, so I doubt today's culture would be able to put up with that. However, it may have been the way things worked back in the 60s, and people might not have been annoyed by large blocks of text.

Overall, the presentation was a feast for the eyes, I wish I'd thought of a table and chair set that tuck neatly into a little square...but that would mean I would be brilliant, which is a stretch :)