Franco Grignani was a hugely influential graphic designer and artistic director who also experimented with photography and painting. Born in Pieve Porto Morone in Italy in 1908, he studied architecture in Torino but dedicated himself to graphic design and visual communication throughout his whole life. During his career, he repeatedly underlined the influence that architecture studies had on his production.
Grignani became very soon conscious of the power of images and their increasing role in the construction of imagination and their influence in the ever-expanding media landscape. Subsequently, he focused on the studies of gestalt psychology theories in order to produce designs which would stand out of the cluttered visual panorama through a powerful structural clarity. While related to geometrical abstraction and optical art, Grignani constructed a very independent visual vocabulary which aimed at becoming a language able to connect scientific rigor with artistic production.
In 1963 he produced his most famous work, winning the competition for the “pure wool” logo, launched by the International Wool Society, under the name Francesco Saroglia.
Further reading (in french):
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