Han Kim

An Italian, Massimo was born in Milan in 1931. It was there that he first stud-ied art and architecture, until he came to America in 1957. In 1960, together with his wife Lella Vignelli, he established the Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan. in 1971 they formed Vignelli Associates, and in 1978, Vi-gnelli Designs. His work covers nearly every field of design including advertis-ing, identity, packaging, product, industrial, interior and architectural design. An avid fan of modernism, his work is always very clear and concise with no clutter or unnecessary material.

His first major foray into the field of identity and branding was through Uni-mark International, which quickly became one of the largest design studios in the world. He has designed identities for international corporations including American Airlines (which is the only airline to have not changed their identity in the past 50 years), Bloomingdales and Knoll. He favors a clarity in design and is a huge fan of using Helvetica, which can be seen in much of his work.

He has had work published all over the world and has several items in the per-manent collections of various museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Together with his wife he has established a legacy of design that lives on through their work and their continued practice at their office in New York.

Massimo Vignelli has worked in a wide variety of areas, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. His clients at Vignelli Associates have included high-profile companies such as IBM, Knoll, Blooming-dale's and American Airlines.

Vignelli participated in the Stock Ex-change of Visions project in 2007, as well as publishing the book, Vignelli: From A to Z, which contains a series of essays describing the principles and concepts behind "all good design". It is alphabetically organized by topic, roughly approximating a similar course he has taught at Harvard's School of Design and Architecture.

In January 2009, Vignelli released The Vignelli Canon as a free e-book; an ex-panded version was printed in September 2010, but the original remains available for download on the Vignelli Associates website. In the introduction Vignelli writes, "I thought that it might be useful to pass some of my professional knowl-edge around, with the hope of improving [young designers'] design skills. Creativ-ity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best."

Vignelli worked with the National Park Service and the design staff at the Harp-ers Ferry Center in creation of the "Uni-grid System." The system has been used since 1977 in creation of park brochures in all national parks locations.

1964 - Gran Premio Triennale di Milano 1964 - 1998 Compasso d’Oro, from (ADI), Ital-ian Association for Industrial Design 1973 - Industrial Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) 1982 - New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame1985 - first Presidential Design Award1991 - National Arts Club Gold Medal for Design 1992 - Interior Product Designers Fellowship of Excellence 1993 - New York State Gover-nor’s Award for Excellence 1995 - Brooklyn Museum Design Award for Lifetime Achievement 2003 - National Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Museum of Design at Cooper-Hewitt, New York2004 - Visionary Award from the Museum of Art and Design, New York2005 - Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY

Works Awards

“The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.”

“If you can design one thing, you can design everything.”

“I don’t think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word ‘dog’ with any typefacen and it doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write ‘dog’ it should bark.”

“There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.”

“The correct shape is the shape of the object’s meaning.”

The Vignelli commitment to the correctness of a design has taken their work beyond the mechanical exercise of devising a form best suited to a given function. They’ve always understoodthat design itself, in the abstract, could and should be an integral part of function. More than a process and a result, design—good design—is an imperative. “Everything has its own order,” they’ve said.

“You can’t take a piece of music and scramble the notes. You can’t take a piece of writing and scramble the words. You can’t take a space and scramble the chairs around.”