Throughout, I was caught by the respect of craft, a dynamism of expression, bold freedom and timeless intuitive style. And of course how Carolina is both her own woman and clearly a Bucci!

This is the story of a precious and important family business and its archive reflects the history of typography in Italy. The story of Italian typography is really the story of two great moments, the Roman empire and modernism. Today we tend to appreciate and understand modernism through great abstract art, montage cinema, modern architecture and socially progressive freedom of thought and expression.

Below: Roma Città Aperta (1945) by Roberto Rossellini; Ladri di biciclette (1948) by Vittorio De Sica; Roman Holiday (1953) by William Wyler.

The history is more complex and nuanced, the context was global upheaval and the acceleration of change that followed. Where the French expressed these profound shifts in social and cultural context through fine art and the Americans through commercial dynamism, Italy took a different path. When I think of Italian Modernism I immediately think of typographic expression. This was a prolific and seminal moment in Italian design unlike anything happening in this field anywhere else in the world. In fact the rest of us are still trying to catch up and find the poetry, fluency and character of this bold approach to typography.

With an ancient Roman typographic history so embedded in the Italian visual landscape it was perhaps easier for young Italian designers in the 1930s and onwards to feel so comfortable in the established rules they were able to break them with confidence. Italian graphic designers of this period blended these visual references with a bold modernism inspired by the machine age.

In 1933 a group of typographers and printers founded a magazine called Campo Grafico, a publication designed to inspire other designers to push the boundaries of the current possibilities of graphic art. They called themselves the “Campisti” and their influence was profound. These designers were working at a time of unparalleled creativity in Italy, the 1930s to the 1970s were the great decades of Italian style from Gio Ponti to Ferrari, from film sets to coffee shops, from loafers to lighting, Italian designers were creating the most desirable expressions of craft for a modern audience.

Below: Campo Grafico, Rivista di Estetica e di Tecnica Grafica, Year I, Nr. 6, June 1933; Campo Grafico, Rivista di Estetica e di Tecnica Grafica, Year VII, Nr. 3-4-5, March-April-May 1939; Campo Grafico, Rivista di Estetica e di Tecnica Grafica,Year VII, Nr. 1, January 1939.

The simplicity belies an innate sense of style and aesthetic confidence. Look closely and you will be able to see an unexpected combination of sans serif, script, heavy serif and condensed typography. This is extraordinary and reflects the bravura of the time. Putting it simply, these examples break every rule in the book, these typefaces shouldn’t co-exist, they should look terrible together! The trick is the combination of control and freedom, the knowledge of craft, the elevation of practicality and of course a flare, a flourish, the unexpected humanist detail. This modest but expressive, timeless yet vibrant approach to design beautifully reflects what Carolina calls sprezzatura. This spirit lived in the archive and it’s alive in the brand today.