Giorgio Camuffo, a visiting lecturer for SVA’s Masters Workshop in Venice and Rome, is readying his new exhibition, Graphic Design Worlds, from 10 Jan – 10 Mar 2011 at Milan’s Triennale Design Museum. The exhibition is dedicated to top contemporary designers. Focusing on how the arts, fashion, cinema, music and other disciplines intertwine,

Graphic Design Worlds will provide the general public with a look at this phenomenon: not so much an exhibition of “graphics”, but rather “on graphic design”, focusing on the multifarious interpretations of this discipline and practice, on the various routes to graphic design and the paths that branch off from it, into the world. This exhibition is particularly significant in a country like Italy, where the culture of design has expressed, and still does, valuable stories, and where interesting voices, able to dialogue with the international scene, are now developing.

The notion of worlds is meant by the curator as a key to investigate and to shed light on
the plurality and diversity of approaches and readings that animate contemporary graphic design – that is, the worlds of graphic designers. Furthermore, this notion refers to the relationships that graphic design and graphic designers have with the world, with the contexts in which they operate, with the society they address, with the visual and material culture to which they refer and which they contribute to shape.

The aim of Graphic Design Worlds is not to offer a comprehensive and definitive survey, but to present the richness of graphic design through a selection of significant experiences, which may stimulate reflections and interest, beyond the exhibition itself.

Over thirty graphic designers will show their worlds and present their approaches to the world, exemplifying a variety of possible routes, languages, attitudes. Beyond their differences, what these designers share is a critical awareness of graphic design and of their position as graphic designers. Besides international names, there will be Italian designers and teams that have entered the profession in the new millennium – designers coming from different contexts and paths, having references and critical dimensions closer and closer to the issues which animate the international debate.

(Photos of Camuffo and his studio band in Venice by Lita Talarico)