First ever edition in Naples of a new international visual communication festival. Four days dedicated to exhibitions, lectures and workshops at the Academy of Fine Arts, FOQUS, Riot Studio and Made in Cloister. The program
To become a meeting place for creativity, to promote the good culture of visual design in all its forms and to become a source of inspiration for those who are also entering the world of design and visual communication for the first time. Those are the goals of DESINA The new festival for graphics and visual cultures which will take place in different historical places in the ancient center of Naples (from April 27th to 30th). Four days dedicated to exhibitions, lectures and workshops where agencies, designers, creators and protagonists from Italian and international creative studios will discuss visual identity, publishing, print, illustration, digital, packaging, motion design, videomapping and street art.
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THE THEME OF THE FIRST ISSUE OF DESINA IS THE IMPACT OF VISUAL DESIGN ON EVERYDAY LIFE
The theme chosen for the first edition, which will be the leitmotif of the various events, is: “What is the impact of your design?”. This question is aimed at all participants and guests in order to reflect on how visual design is part of everyday life and how much it can influence it. “Everything around us is graphics. It permeates our daily lives more than we can imagine. It can be found in shop signs, advertising posters and street signs, on websites, social networks and apps on our smartphones, on supermarket shelves, in children’s clothing and toys, in the communication of small and large events“, explain the makers of DESINA, funded by the cultural association of the same name, which was founded in 2022 Stephen Pellone, Domenico Armatore And Nicholas Feo Review curators, academic advisor Daniel Piscitelli. “The use of images is never neutral. And visual design is a project area in which it is necessary to move responsibly and consciously, because even the smallest sign, such as a comma or a period, which then becomes a dash, creates a reaction and an effect“.
THE EXHIBITIONS OF THE DESINA FESTIVAL IN NAPLES
The festival will open on Thursday April 27th at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples with the exhibition 25 Manifestos for Naples, 1984-1986 one of the first projects of the Napoli Novantanove Foundation, curated in the ’80s by the great designer Alan Fletcher, which sees the Neapolitan city interpreted by some of the greatest graphic designers of 40 years ago. At FOQUS – Fondazione Quartieri Spagnoli, three exhibitions will be open to visitors: Introspectabiliaa temporary exhibition of digital and physical works created by the design studio illo in Turin that examines ten as-yet-unnamed emotions we experience online that affect the quality of life, and seeks to create new terms to support the recognition of positive and negative emotions network . Made in Italy brands and identities is an exhibition curated and coordinated by the AIAP Graphic Project Documentation Center Francesco E. Leader. And again the poster exhibition on the topic of impact with the title Tricolor effectorganized by the 12 Campanian Agencies, where will also be exhibited the selected works of the competition, aimed at young creative people, graphics students and the like, conceived for the first edition of the festival, making the design of a poster precisely on the theme of impact.
DESINA FESTIVAL TALKS AND WORKSHOPS
DESINA 2023 Designers and protagonists from creative studios alternate at his microphones. All lectures will be moderated by the Neapolitan designer Marialuisa Firpo and takes place in the central courtyard of the FOQUS – Fondazione Quartieri Spagnoli, which is also the seat of the artistic planning department for companies of the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, coordinated by Enrica D’Aguanno, and the seat of the Communication Design Course, which is coordinated by Ivana Gaeta. Workshops will be held at FOQUS and Riot Studio. And with the workshops scheduled for Saturday morning (April 29) at Made in Cloister, there will be moments dedicated to children. Among the workshops dedicated to Naples, which will take place over the three days for the entire duration of the festival (April 27th, 28th and 29th), it is worth mentioning Generation YZ curated by the Milano Graphic Festival, with which DESINA has collaborated together with the Graphic Days of Turin, directed by Fabio Guida And Ilaria Reposowith the idea of creating a national network of festivals dedicated to visual cultures: it is a performative laboratory for the creation of urban restyling projects involving young designers coordinated by Francesco DondinaDesigners and creators of the Milano Graphic Days, Luca BorrielloDirector of the INWARD National Observatory on Urban Creativity, ed Enzo CrefDesigner and visual artist.
Claudia Giraud