Artissima 2016: our graphics blossom
What does it mean to be an innovative fair while maintaining a specific identity?Since 2012 Artissima has developed a consistent, coordinated image that has evolved year on year. This eclectic visual path is an ideal exploration of the potential offered by the fair’s logo: not one but five logos against a pink ground that, with time, have led to different but conceptually connected versions.
Artissima’s visual identity, designed by Leonardo Sonnoli with Irene Bacchi from the studio Tassinari/Vetta, narrates the great diversity of artistic practices animating the contemporary art world. Following this conceptual process, the logotypes have, for the different editions of the fair, either formed kaleidoscopic images, have been explored three-dimensionally or have become magnetic fields – metaphorical centres of attraction for artistic expressions.
The graphic image has further evolved in 2016: different flora transform the image of the fair into a hypothetical herbarium of contemporary art. The five versions of Artissima’s logo become molecules composing the rasterised figures of ever-changing flowers: a constellation of just-blossomed plants reflecting the fair’s new, diverse and multifaceted vision.Artissima’s coherent graphic project does not lie in the predefined and rigid interpretation of the logo, but is expressed through a generative design process that has created a unique identity system. The logo is the starting point to create ever-different images that are all easily recognisable and ideally connected.
‘Rules and randomness’, to use the words of the Italian master of graphics Bruno Munari, are combined to tell the unique story of Artissima, with its rigorous essence yet fast-paced character. The fair’s abiding ability to be authoritative and fresh, institutional and experimental, forward-looking and courageous is reflected clearly in the visual narration of its identity.
