Design and Craft in the definition of the graphic designer. The Debate in Italian Graphic Arts Magazines

Design and craft in the definition of the graphic designer. The debate in Italian graphic arts magazines The emergence of graphic design as a profession in Italy is often presented as the result of pioneer work by artists and designers without any relationship with the printing trade and the related manufacturing processes. This paper focuses on the early efforts in defining the figure of the “progettista grafico” (graphic/typographic designer), showing how they originally came from inside a trade culturally rooted in semi-artisanal traditions. During the 1930s, the interest in the formation of a new figure, able to design and direct graphic work, was shared by traditionalists and modernists. Exponents of typographic tradition insisted in proposing the “Art of printing” as an autonomous activity, in which artists and designer were to be involved exclusively as decorators or illustrators. On the opposite side, the magazine Campo Grafico - edited, designed and manufactured by print workers - proposed a new typography conceived as “applied art”, influenced but preferably not practiced by artists and other outsiders. Both believed that the graphic designer should be an educated and multi skilled craftsman, incorporated into the printing office organization. In those years, graphic arts magazines became the forum for an intense debate on the subject, which gathered many different voices and opinions. “Graphic artist”, “book architect” or “printing director” were only some of the suggested definitions. Practices such as lettering, illustration and poster art were also called into the dispute, along with typographic expertise and skills. At the core of most proposals was the distinction between craft-based and artistic roles, but ideas ranged from the “ideal merging of painter and typographer” to the necessity of entrusting typography to “non-typographers”. By drawing back attention on these discussions this paper intends to question current historical accounts and underline the neglected continuities between the tradition of Arte della stampa and modern graphic design. It also aims to reintegrate the printing trades and crafts, as a complex factor, into the history of Italian graphic design.