Graphics in Process. Fortunato Depero’s Experience in Commercial Advertising

Abstract

The history of graphic design is marked by significant milestones that, on several occasions, confirmed the importance of the cultural value underlying graphic thought. In the specific disciplinary of the design and in the field of the graphic design, will be evaluated as object of study the compositional criteria for the figurative management of some ‘visual images’ (posters for advertising purposes) by the futurist artist Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) - offered to graphics by the Italian season of Futurism - which from the beginning of the twentieth century will constitute an ideological basis for graphic design as a communicative medium of great creative commitment to convey messages for advertising purposes.

The analysis of Depero’s graphic production was methodologically carried out through the identification of the main guidelines contained in the numerous Futurist posters signed by him (from 1915 to 1937) and represented mainly using essential forced lines in the graphic composition. Furthermore, the conception of the new ‘advertising architecture’ has been evaluated, that is the design of buildings and pavilions designed with a style that was in tune with the ‘contents’. Both the different graphic configurations and the ‘graphic codes’ will be identified with the use of linear signs or backgrounds, color, symmetry-asymmetry, motion indicators, integrated solutions with the representation of architectures to build solutions capable to capture the observer’s visual attention.