handicrafts

food carpet with roberto petza

8 September 201529 September 2015 Asili DesignLeave a comment

A few months ago, during a meeting with the great starred chef Roberto Petza, I had the idea of a food tapestry. A carpet made of Sardinian food from appetizers to desserts, prepared as a large and colored finger-food table. Roberto (I had already designed for him a typographic tapestry, a “typestry”), welcomed the project with enthusiasm. From this meeting came a performance that took place at the MAN in Nuoro, Sardinia’s most important museum for contemporary art, on June 26th. Roberto Petza cooked for ninety guests an extraordinary sequence of incredible flavors, then placing them with a remarkable graphic awareness. Framing Roberto’s work, four of my typographical tapestries were exhibited on the walls. For the occasion, I also designed the table with a trapezoidal section, a strong and white solid wood. The result was fantastic, both for the eyes and the palate. We will repeat this experience for the opening week of Sardinia all’Expo2015, in Milan, on September 11th.

barigadu visual identity

28 June 201528 June 2015 Asili DesignLeave a comment

The Barigadu is an extraordinary territory, a heart of water in the middle of Sardinia. The landscape is dominated by nature and by the rivers that surround it like a treasure chest. As a brand, I chose a brace, unifying and simple to use: it is the recurring architectural frieze of Aragonese Gothic, wich can be seen on windows and doors of many local historical heritage. The same shape of the eagle wing and of the deer horn. It keeps jealously what it contains, as the rivers protect the land. A sign of separation, but that juts out as a double human profile to establish a communication with the outside. I combined it with a modern and essential typeface, Maven, in a newly designed stencil version developed together with Claudio Rossi. Among the first realizations, I designed the railing of the elementary school in Neoneli, where the letters of the alphabet and other diacritics become iron tapestries that shot lighting laces on the steps. The corten steel artwork has been made by BAM, Nuoro.

sardinian handicrafts design

24 November 201224 November 2012 Asili DesignLeave a comment

During the recent workshop “Tessere il racconto dei luoghi – Grafica e Tessitura” (Weaving the tales of the places – Graphic design and textures), organized by Associazione Culturale Malik www.associazionemalik.it/ and held in Armungia together with Tommaso Lussu and Barbara Cardia (two modern weavers who rediscovered the ancient art of handloom) we taught a class of ten students to understand the weaving basics and the graphic design methods, trying to wrap the two themes together. We developed some ideas as “the talking carpets”, applying some local identity concepts and figures to find new ways to design without any betrayal of the tradition. For example, we started a new carpet (1) which shows an abstract decoration that is in fact an histogram of Armungia’s population historic series since the Italy’s unification in 1861. Some months ago I saw some videos which transformed music into graphic plots. I went the opposite way, transposing into music one of the traditional subjects of Armungia’s carpets, (2) “su priali” (almost each sardinian village has his own). I put the dots on a Garage Band scheme (3) and presented to the students the sound of a piece of the “identity matrix” of Armungia. Also, I designed some new projects for the traditional Sardinian carpets. Here I show (4) “Nuraghi e frecce” (Nuraghe and obsidian tips, built fitting full and empty spaces on the whole surface), “Emilio Lussu” (Inspired by the figure of the legendary commander and politician from Armungia, Tommaso’s grandfather). A lot of fun.