Edizioni Il Polifilo is an Italian publishing house founded in Milan in 1959 by writer and antiquarian bookseller Alberto Vigevani (1918-1999). The publisher takes its name from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the celebrated 1499 Venetian edition printed by Aldo Manuzio, a title that also inspired the name of Vigevani’s earlier antiquarian bookshop, opened in 1941. The company specializes in fine editions of architecture treatises, theatre books, iconography and critical facsimiles of rare texts. [1] [2]
Design and History
The Edizioni Il Polifilo symbol was designed by Dutch-born graphic designer Bob Noorda in 1969, during his tenure at Unimark International, the corporate design firm he co-founded with Massimo Vignelli in 1965. [3] Noorda, who settled in Milan in 1952, was among the leading figures in the modernization of Italian graphic design and produced more than 170 marks over his career. [4]
Unimark International was founded on 4 January 1965 by Ralph Eckerstrom, Jim Fogleman, Wally Gutches, Larry Klein, Noorda and Vignelli. Noorda served as vice president and design director, overseeing the Milan office, which operated well beyond the closure of other Unimark branches around 1972. In 1969 the Italian branch converted into an autonomous company, with participation from Salvatore Gregorietti, Franco Mirenzi and Mauro Boeri, and continued under the Unimark name until 2000. [4]
Noorda’s editorial work in the late 1960s included the 1969 Mondadori mark, a letter A with an M inscribed within it, which he retained in 1996 when he developed the group’s extended identification manual. [4] The Il Polifilo symbol, created in the same year, belongs to this period of concentrated publishing-house identity work.
Meaning and Symbolism
The publisher’s name derives from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the Renaissance allegorical work printed by Aldo Manuzio in Venice in 1499, often described as one of the most beautiful books ever printed in Italy. Vigevani first gave the name to his antiquarian bookshop, then to the publishing house founded as its ideal continuation. [1] The visual mark, however, is documented only as a symbol designed by Noorda; no official source details specific symbolic elements within the mark itself. [3]
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