Everything new is old

It was easy to become depressed after the lecture by Professor Leonardo Sonnoli at a conference marking the centenary of Futurism at Bezalel.

The first reason was what Sonnoli had to say about the need to be familiar with the history of your field, in order to become a better designer - an issue that frequently seems no interest at all to the local design audience.

The second reason was the examples Sonnoli presented when he spoke about the influence of Futurism on current typography and graphics. Nearly every aspect of today's typography, which seems so original and contemporary, has its source in a 100-year-old movement: double spreads in newspapers; typography that stretches the limits of readability and mixes top, bottom, left and right; the use of white space in order to break up text; different sizes, colors and types of letters on a single page, and so on.

This was done not only for aesthetic reasons, but rather in the name of the ideological message of Futurism and its founder, the poet Fillipo Marinetti. Marinetti wished to exalt aggression, violence and danger; considered speed fundamental to modernity; and was opposed to the past, its institutions and its art. Traditional typography did not suit his vision.

The interesting thing about Marinetti's manifestos is that they are about typography. In this respect, the Futurists were the first to understand the importance of typography in transmitting a message, something that is now studied by first-year design students.

They addressed how a page's size, color and weight contributes to the experience of reading, as well as book formats. As an example, Sonnoli brought books too large to fit onto a standard bookshelf, with folded pages of different sizes and shapes that related to space and limits in an innovative way for their time.

Sonnoli, 47 and a graduate of the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts, is a graphic designer who specializes in work for cultural institutions, exhibitions and publishing houses. He has won many prizes, and has exhibited in shows around the world. He lives in Rimini, northeastern Italy, and teaches typography and experimental book design in Venice and Urbino.

He says his interest in Futurism stems from a desire to seek out his roots.

"I always teach my students that our future is found in the past; maybe we don't know what will happen in the future, but we know what happened in the past. There are new topics to deal with and new technologies that make new things possible. The trick is to give your own interpretation.

"I know many designers who have read the same books and use the same sources, but their products are different, because we are different. I want to understand the history of where I live and to know what happened before me.

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Everything new is old