Alfieri & Lacroix was a major Milanese print house specializing in fine art printing, founded in 1896 by Edoardo Lacroix and Emilio Alfieri.[1] The company is remembered in design history not for a single static trademark, but for a sustained advertising and corporate identity program created by Italian designer Franco Grignani, who worked with the firm from 1952 through the 1970s.[2]
Design and History
In the postwar period, under the direction of Dario Morani, Alfieri & Lacroix sought to restore its position as a technologically advanced, high-quality commercial printer. Morani commissioned Franco Grignani, a collaborator of Studio Boggeri, to develop the company’s promotion.[3] Grignani later recounted that in 1952 he was asked by the firm to devise an advertising program, and he proposed an experimental graphic language rather than conventional product promotion.[3]
Grignani’s work for Alfieri & Lacroix is described by the Centro Culturale Chiasso, which holds his archive, as an innovative form of corporate image built through numerous institutional announcements.[4] The campaign, carried out in black and often using no more than three colors, appeared in Italian advertising trade magazines and earned international recognition.[3] In 1967, the work received the recognition of the International Center for the Typographic Arts in New York for Typomundus 20.[3]
A trademark for Alfieri & Lacroix designed by Grignani was published in the Swiss design journal Graphis in 1957.[5] More than 170 advertisements designed by Grignani for the company, spanning 1952 through the 1970s, have been collected and documented.[2]
Meaning and Symbolism
Grignani’s approach for Alfieri & Lacroix was unusual: rather than promoting the product or the name directly, his task was to demonstrate the range of possibilities offered by the client’s modern printing facilities.[3] Art critic Gillo Dorfles wrote in Graphis in 1966 that the series had little or no direct reference to the product but made continual allusion to the graphic medium itself, describing the work as an authentic lesson in the use and manipulation of graphic media.[3]
Grignani’s experimental graphics drew on his broader research into visual perception, which was influenced by Gestalt psychology and his studies in mathematics and architecture.[6] His work for the printer was characterized by optical effects, photographic manipulation, and creative typography that evoked the technical processes of printing itself.[7]
Typography and Design
Grignani described his brief for Alfieri & Lacroix as an investigation into what a new typography could be, asking questions about reading speed, letter form, and the boundaries between signs and space.[3] He also wrote the advertising copy himself, establishing a contrapuntal relationship between words and visual images.[3] The campaign’s typographic experiments were noted by the Alliance Graphique Internationale, which observed that the Milan printers allowed Grignani a free hand with his typographic experiments.[8]
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