Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli

Italy, 1931 - 2014

"I like design to be semantically correct, syntactically consistent, and pragmatically understandable. I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elecgant, and above all, timeless." - Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli was an Italian designer who worked in a number of areas ranging from package design through houseware design and furniture design to public signage and showroom design. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his wife, Lella Vignelli. His ethos was, "If you can design one thing, you can design everything," and this was reflected in the broad range of his work.

Vignelli worked firmly within the Modernist tradition, and focused on simplicity through the use of basic geometric forms in all his work. Vignelli worked in a wide variety of areas, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. Hi clients at Vignelli Associates included high-profile companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale's andAmerican Airlines. His former employee Michael Bierut wrote that "it seemed to me that the whole city of New York was a permanent Vignelli exhibition [around 1981]. 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 center of the universe."

Vignelli equipped his own home with tables, chairs, lamps, and other items that he designed himself.