Welcome to Litsy!

This collection of short essays by influential Italian designer and graphic artist Bruno Munari is considered a classic. It‘s translated by Patrick Creagh. A soft pick, because the good—humorous, informative, thought-provoking—outweighs the bad: dated attitude, language and ideas.

I will not say that all Japanese craftsmen are good, but most of them are. They have tradition behind them. Of course there are also those who ape Western styles, using bamboo for abstract decorations that might just as well have been made out of plastic tubing. Such workmen simply show their lack of intelligence.
[Munari certainly had strong opinions about design.]

One of the effects of the total lack of punctuation in the last chapter of Joyce‘s Ulysses is that it changes our reading speed.

“If there is an object known to everyone, even to savages, and one that can be used to indicate direction, that object is the arrow.”

Several times I was reminded that this book was originally published in 1966. I hope to never see “savages” used this way in a contemporary book about design.

It is certainly wrong to read a poem in a hurry, as if it were a telegram. […] A poem only communicates if read slowly: only then does it have time to create a state of mind in which the images can form and be transformed.

What most interests a stylist is line, sculptural form, a bizarre idea. A little science fiction does no harm and a sense of elegance is basic.

There are things on sale that demand a tremendous effort to guess at their proper use. With the confusion of form that persists today a brush can look like a cat, a lamp like a weighing machine, a home like an office and an office like a drawing-room, a bank like an electrician‘s workshop and a church like a stand at the Earl‘s Court Exhibition.

Excellent book. Five stars.

Reading. So far I've enjoyed.

Absolutely enjoyed this penguin - classic art & design! Recommend if you‘re interested in designing. #design #art #brunomunari #penguinclassic

symbolism as seen by it !

An engineer must never be caught writing poetry.

I'm halfway through this book and couldn't stop myself from boasting about how amazing it is! Bruno Munari is very inspiring and puts things into simple yet deep perspective ♥️