sardinian handicrafts design

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.

 

carbonia landscape machine

 

Carbonia was founded in 1938 near Italy’s largest coal mine. After a decline lasting more than 40 years, the city is now a monument to civil and industrial modernist architecture. The identity design goes from the logo (seven white dots that glow in the dark like miners’ lanterns) to museum exhibition design, paper products, videos, jingles, street furniture, merchandising. In the following pages: 1. logo, 2. poster, 3. 2x2x4 m Corten steel totem and 4. folding brochure for the open air modern architecture museum. The font used for the titles was specially designed by Stefano Asili. The Carbonia project won the Council of Europe 2010-11 Landscape Award.

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