Modern Modernism is a lecture that was given in 2021 to the students of the School of Visual Arts (SVA) of New York on invitation of Professor Greg D’Onofrio, a respected design scholar from New York, who is internationally known also as a collector of modern graphic design.

As always when a lecture is requested to be prepared, great care is put also on the design of the lecture itself and then on the layout of the slides.

A three-layered variable grid system made of a maximum of 96 modules—each layer has four times the modules of the previous layer—has been purposely designed in order to structure the layout.

Since this lecture focuses on sharing the understanding of Italian modern graphic design and its evolution into Modernism, graphic elements that are somehow evocative of that design attitude have been intentionally chosen to arrange the composition.

Also, the lecture offered to the students an example of a very contemporary approach to graphic design that is rooted into Modernism but looks very new, because not nostalgic at all of any aesthetics from the past.

The lecture unfolds from 1930’s early examples of modern graphic design on to 1960’s Modernism, illustrating the work of the pioneers of Italian modern graphic design and the golden era of industrial design.

The lecture was greatly appreciated by the students and stimulated a lively and very interesting debate.

—Nicola-Matteo Munari