Massimo Vignelli, born in milan, he studied architecture in Milan

and Venice. He travelled to the United States from 1957 to 1960 on fellowships from Towle Silversmiths in Massachusetts and The Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. in 1960, with Lella Vignelli, he established the Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan. in 1965,

Massimo Vignelli became co-founder and design director of Unimark International Corporation. With Lella Vignelli, he estalished the offices of Vignelli Associates in 1971, and Vignelli Designs in 1978.

His work includes graphic and corporate identity programs, publication designs, architectural graph-ics, and exhibition, interior, furniture, and consumer product designs for many leading american and european compa-nies and institutions. Vignelli has had his work exhibited and

entered in the permanent collections of several muse-ums; notably, the museum of modern art, the metropolitan museum of art, the brooklyn museum, and the cooper-hewitt -museum in new york.

He has taught and lectured on design in the united states and abroad. he is a past president of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGl) and the

American Institute of Graphic arts (AlGA), a vice president of the architectural league, and a member of the Indus-trial Designers Society of America (IDSA). The head office of vignelli associates is located in new york. Uni-versally considered one of the great design practitioners of our time, Massimo is also kind. He is a true gentleman. Not content with anything less than elegant, Massimo is erudite, exceedingly well man-nered, charming, cute even. Yes, I said it: Massimo Vignelli is cute. He is also remark-ably forgiving. When he left a message alerting me of our missed meeting, he also reas-sured me it was quite all right, and requested we reschedule.

Despite my nerves, our sub-sequent meeting was delight-ful and we spent many hours talking about love, his wife and partner Leila Vignelli, the staying power of the American Airlines logo, vulgarity, his penchant for the color black and the typeface Bodoni, his protégé Michael Bierut, the friendship he had with Alan Fletcher, the perfect sofa and over fifty years in the business of design.

Debbie Millman: How impor-tant, if at all, is writing to your work?

Massimo Vignelli: Well, I write all the time. Of course, my Eng-lish is limited and my writing fol-lows my English. But somehow the writing is better; at least there is less of an accent! I am a ma-niac about being semantically correct. I find that when I write, I automatically look for the perfect word more often than I do when I speak. I want to have the ex-act word that says exactly what I mean as precisely as possible.

DM: Why did you choose to live in New York?

MV: It’s a long story. The quick answer is that we started the company with some friends here in the U.S., and we opened an office in New York. The person who was supposed to run the of-fice got sick. I was in Milan at the time and I was commuting back and forth. I got tired of flying over twice a month, and so we [Vignel-li and his wife, Leila] decided to come over and run the office for a while and then go back. We’re still here after 40 years. [Laughs.] We’re still here. New York is a fabulous city. It’s like a magnet. I can’t leave anymore. There is nothing that can compare to New

York. And it is not even beautiful. There are hundreds, thousands of other cities that are much more beautiful. But there is only one New York.

DM: What do you think contrib-utes to making it so special?

MV: It’s the energy. It’s the way people walk, it’s the way people talk. It’s the way people live. You know: In New York, people dress in black all the time.

DM: Why do you think so many people wear black in New York?

MV: Because of the image.

DM: How would you describe it?

MV: To begin with, black has class. It’s the best color. There is no other color that is better than black. There are many others that are appropriate and happy, but those colors belong on flow-ers. Black is a color that is man-made. It is really a projection of the brain. It is a mind color. It is intangible. It is practical. It works 24 hours a day. In the morning or afternoon, you can dress in tweed, but in the evening, you look like a professor who es-caped from college. Everything else has connotations that are different, but black is good for everything. My house is covered

in black. This sofa’s black. The chair is black.

DM: Are all your clothes black? Do you wear all black?

MV: Yes. Always. Always.

DM: So when did you make the decision in your life that you wanted to be a designer?

MV: When I was 14 years old, ex-tremely early in my life.

DM: What happened?

MV: I went to a house of a friend of mine, and his mother had just finished redecorating. And all of sudden, I discovered that some-body was responsible for doing these kinds of things. Nothing happened by itself. That fasci-nated me. I went home and start-ed to design. I read books and magazines about these things so I became more educated. And I got more and more involved, so that by the time I was 18, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

DM: Have you always been so driven?

MV: Yes. It’s amazing, I have tre-mendous passion. Tremendous. Curiosity and passion. My pas-sion is bigger, but my curiosity is equally as strong.

DM: You never had any aspira-tions to do anything else? It was always to be a designer?

MV: Exactly. I never thought of doing anything else. Not once in my life. Every book that I was reading, every preference was devoted to architecture and design. No technology or phi-losophy books. Very few novels. I don’t have a literal mind.

DM: How would you describe your mind?

MV: It is visual.

DM: You have a visual mind?

MV: Absolutely.

DM: What do you think is the dif-

ference between a literary mind and a visual mind?

MV: A visual mind is interested in anything that you see, and a literary mind is interested in any-thing you think. A literary mind is interested in people. A visual mind is interested in things, ob-jects, nature. This doesn’t mean that you look and don’t think. Of course, you do that, too. But a literary mind is more prone to thinking than looking visually. They like to read. They like to analyze things from a psycholog-ical point of view. Writers like this write about isolation, and some write about being together. Each one investigates one action of the mind. And the mind, being as complex as it is, is an endless

source of investigation.

DM: Do you feel your work is immediately identifiable as your work? Do you feel you have a style?

MV: Yes and no. After many years of exposure, in some ways it is. My work has a certain dis-cipline, a rigor, and a minimalist expression. I use a very lim-ited choice of colors. [Laughs.] Primarily black and red. To me, black is black and red is color. That’s it.

DM: And what about your prefer-ence for Bodoni?

MV: Bodoni is one of the most elegant typefaces ever designed. When I talk about

elegance, I mean intellectual elegance. Elegance of the mind.

DM: How would you define el-egance of the mind?

MV: I would define intellectual elegance as a mind that is con-tinually refining itself with edu-cation and knowledge. Intellec-tual elegance is the opposite of intellectual vulgarity. We all know vulgarity very well. Elegance is the opposite.

DM: I have to ask: What would you consider to be vulgar?

MV: Vulgarity is something underneath culture and educa-tion. Anything that is not re-fined. There are manifestations of primitive cultures or ethnic cultures that could be extremely refined and elegant, but don’t belong to our kind of refinery or culture. Culture is the accumula-tion of at least 10,000. You can really say that intellectual ele-gance is the by-product of refine-ment. One of the greatest things about vulgarity is that it tends to continuously disappear.

My friend Umberto Eco wrote a book about beauty, and now he’s writing a book about ugli-ness. He told me the last time I saw him that it was much more difficult to write a book about ugliness than to write one about

beauty. It’s the same with vulgar-ity, in a sense.

DM: What do you think design is really about?

MV: Number one, design is a profession that takes care of everything around us. Politicians take care of the nation and fix things — at least they are sup-posed to. Architects take care of buildings. Designers take care of

everything around us. Everything that is around us, this table, this chair, this lamp, this pen has been designed. All of these things, everything has been de-signed by somebody. I think that it is my responsibility to make the work better than it is. That is my number one priority. The

second priority is to decrease the amount of vulgarity around by replacing the vulgarity with things that are more refined.

When we work with clients, we make it quite clear from the beginning that we don’t intend to create vulgar things. Most of the time we don’t even have to say this; when a client comes in, they know what we are doing, and they want us to do things

for them in this way. So we don’t have too much to fight over! But even in the client discussions, they can see that this is what we want to do.

So what is design all about? It is to decrease the amount of vulgarity in the world. It is to

make the world a better place to be. But everything is rela-tive. There is a certain amount of latitude between what is good, what is elegant, and what is refined that can take many, many manifestations. It doesn’t have to be one style. We’re not talking about style, we’re talking about quality. Style is tangible, quality is intangible. I am talking about giving to everything that sur-rounds us a level of quality.

DM: What’s your best quality?

MV: I don’t even know if I have any. Nothing. Which one of them I have?

DM: What about your worst? What is your worst one?

MV: My worst one? Ego.

DM: You have a big ego?

MV: Yes, I have a big ego. (laughs)

DM: Have you ever been in analysis or therapy?

MV: No. No. I am happy. I don’t have psychological traumas to overcome. One of the great advantages of being so concentrated on your work is that it is all there is. Every-thing I do comes into this and enriches me. Everything, even every book I read enriches me.

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DM: Who do you feel is doing good work right now?

MV: A good designer that I re-spect is Milton [Glaser]. I re-ally like his way of thinking. He’s extremely talented. Brilliant mind, terrific mind. And of course, my Michael. Michael Bierut. My favor-ite designer right now is in Ger-many. His name is Pierre Mendell. Look for his work. He is a great one. He has such a great ability to synthesize. You were asking what I admire: I’m interested in “essence” — my major aim is really to get to the essence of the problem. And just throw away everything that’s not pertinent to it. At the end of a project, my work should be the projection of that experience, the essence of effect. It’s a habit that you get into.

DM: Is there anything that you haven’t done that you want to do?

MV: Oversee the redesign of the Vatican. Such a joke! Can you imagine? The Pope as a client! That’d be lovely, turning to the Pope and saying, “Well, the sym-bol is okay. We can live with that, but everything else has to go.”

Then, the design is exciting”

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