Spalvieri & Del Ciotto

“Verbalizing design is another act of design” — Kenya Hara.

In May 2016, we were contacted by Simone and Valentina to design their studio’s new identity. Spalvieri & Del Ciotto is a design studio, characterised by formal, functional simplicity coupled with an intense emotional component. Their approach refers on the simplicity from the relationship between the needed function and the form resulting, based on the idea that every design object should reflect our experience.

For us, work on this graphic identity was a super honour. As clients, but as friends at first, we constantly discuss about design, and graphic design, and product design, and interaction design (and, to be honest, about food… ) so we were excited about this other, new collaboration. The aim of the new identity — they said — had to communicate to clients a new phase of the studio, which embody a more professional approach with leading design companies and new design projects.

We design book as they design products: many times we compare and follow each other’s work. Even before their request we had noticed this change in projects and life. We discussed a lot and one of the first thing we decided to do was to add the ampersand between their surnames in the studio signature. This new element representes both the merging point of Simone and Valentina — either important figures of the studio — and give soundness for this corporate phase of the studio. The new identity is based on an extracleaning graphic design language by the only use of a grotesque font beside a serif one. We reduced the signs and we eliminated any form of icon in all parts of the identity and especially in the website.

We worked on linguistic approach to contents, without the use of pins or buttons but words as “Verbalizing design is another act of design”. In contrast with the main typography’s style of our days — which provide a large spacing between the letters —we decided to use for the logotype a strong / bold typography with a very narrow kerning, a sort of tribute to Massimo Vignelli, one of the master of Italian design, which they also get inspired. The consistency of the project is a sort of principle of “whiteness” that we obtained by bringing together various kind of white, avory and light grey on the print and digital identity.