Name: Massimo Vignelli
Date of Birth: 10th January 1931
Date of Death: 27th May 2014
Place of Birth: Milan, Italy.
Alma Mater: Brera Academy, Polytechnic University of Milan then University of Venice
Massimo Vignelli was an Italian graphic and industrial designer. He worked in numerous areas including package design, furniture design, showroom design and public signage. He strictly adopted the Modernists tradition of design in his work and based his artwork on the idea of simplicity which manifested through his use of rudimentary geometric designs.
Vignelli was born in Milan to a pharmaceutical salesman and a seamstress. He studied briefly at the Brera Academy of Art in Milan. But he began training in architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan after working as a draughtsman in the office of furniture designer Achille Castiglioni. After his studies in Milan, he studied at the University of Venice.
In 1957, he married Lella Valle, whom he met at an architecture convention. They spent two years in the US before going back to Milan to establish their small design studio (the Lella and Massimo Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture.) The studio mainly designed domestic products, office accessories, graphics and furniture. However, they linked up with a Dutch designer, Bob Noorda, to work on the graphics for the Milan metro system, a project that very much worked in their favour when they returned to the US permanently in 1965.
Image by Architectural Digest
After returning to the US in 1965, Vignelli became a founder-member of Unimark International, which quickly became one of the largest design firms in the world. The office was opened in the newly completed Seagram Building on Park Avenue, and Vignelli insisted that all the creative staff wore white lab coats.
In 1971, Vignelli resigned from Unimark. One reason was because he was unhappy with the changes in the company’s direction. Soon after, Massimo and Lella Vignelli founded Vignelli Associates. His clients at Vignelli Associates included high-profile companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale’s and American Airlines. His former employee Michael Bierut wrote that,
“…it seemed to me that the whole city of New York was a permanent Vignelli exhibition. To get to the office, I rode in a subway with Vignelli-designed signage, shared the sidewalk with people holding Vignelli-designed Bloomingdale’s shopping bags, walked by St. Peter’s Church with its Vignelli-designed pipe organ visible through the window. At Vignelli Associates, at 23 years old, I felt I was at the centre of the universe.”
Vignelli’s designs were famous for following a minimal aesthetic and a narrow range of typefaces that Vignelli considered to be perfect in their genre, including Akzidenz-Grotesk, Bodoni and Helvetica. He wrote that, “In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.”
In August 1972, Vignelli’s design for the New York City Subway map appeared on the walls of subway stations and became a landmark in Modernist information design. Vignelli regarded the map as one of his finest creations.
The origins of the map lie in the problems of the previous decade. By the mid-1960s, the New York City Transit Authority was facing unprecedented difficulties in delivering information to its passengers. The 60+ year old network displayed inconsistent and out-of-date signage, referring to the old operating companies long after they had been subsumed under a single public authority. An influx of 52 million visitors for the 1964 New York World’s Fair between April 1964 and October 1965 highlighted shortcomings in wayfinding information for public transportation in New York City.
To relieve bottlenecks in the subway system, a series of major reconstructions had begun in 1957, which included the Chrystie Street Connection in Chinatown. However, this new connection unified two of the three major subway networks, rendering the current map which had colour coded each network obsolete. The TA released a differently colour coded map in 1967 but it was not well received. This may have been due to a clash between the new map and the old signage.
The following year, the parent body Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was formed over the TA. Chairman Dr William J. Ronan wanted to create a modern brand image for this new body, so he approached Vignelli’s team at Unimark for a solution. After conducting extensive research into how the network was used by passengers, Unimark produced The New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual in 1970. This manual became the rulebook for all subway related designs, including the new map.
The map was put together in the Unimark Office by Joan Charysyn under Vignelli’s design direction. By the time Vignelli left Unimark to set up Vignelli Associates in April 1971 the map was almost complete but was subject to corrections and modifications requested by the client. These changes were carried out by Charysyn, who also oversaw the printing of the map. Vignelli had no further control over the map once it was handed over in 1972. Six further editions were produced from 1973 to 1978, with extensive changes. In June 1979, the Vignelli map was replaced by a newer design which is still used.
“If you can design one thing, you can design everything.”
Massimo Vignelli
The last map which involved Vignelli was a special transit map for Super Bowl XLVIII. The game was played on the 2nd February 2014, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It was designed by Yoshiki Waterhouse at Vignelli Associates.
Private cars were not allowed to park at the stadium, so the use of public transportation was correspondingly increased. With 400,000 visitors expected to the area and 80,000 attendees expected at the game itself, the MTA decided to work with New Jersey Transit (NJT), Amtrak, and NY Waterway to produce a special-purpose Regional Transit Map. The map brought in several innovations:
The transit map showed both New York and New Jersey. It was the first time that an MTA-produced subway map had done so. Besides showing the New York City Subway, the map also included the MTA’s Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit lines, and Amtrak lines, all in the consistent visual language of the Vignelli map.
In 2008, Massimo and Lella Vignelli agreed to donate the entire archive of their design work to Rochester Institute of Technology. The archive is housed in a new building designed by Lella and Massimo Vignelli, The Vignelli Center for Design Studies. The building, which opened in September 2010, includes many exhibition spaces, classrooms, and offices.
Vignelli died on 27th May, 2014 of an undisclosed illness at the age of 83. Earlier that month his son Luca issued a public invitation to anyone who had been inspired by Vignelli and his work to write him a letter. He is survived by his son Luca, daughter Valentina and three grandchildren. His wife Lilla died on the 22nd December 2016.