The Vignelli Canon: Massimo fires shot across bow of vulgar design (#2)

section215, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Massimo Vignelli saw the world in black and white — and I’m not talking about one of his favorite color combinations. In his manifesto, The Vignelli Canon, he paints of scene of stark contrast: appropriateness vs arbitrariness, elegance vs vulgarity, discipline vs chaos. About quality, he said there are no hierarchies. “Quality is there or is not there, and if it is not there, we have wasted our time.” A Modern moralist, he traced the birth of his ideology to the publication of the French Encyclopédie in the mid-18th century, the embodiment of Enlightenment thinking at the time. While he does acknowledge this a “personal canon” and “my interpretations of reality,” his simple and powerful words cast him in a superhero persona, a crusading creative living a life of “fight against the ugliness.”

In addition to covering his core philosophy, we’ll use this episode to explore themes of timelessness, context, and commercialism and consider the enduring relevance of the Canon.

Outline

• History (1:11)

• Core philosophy

  • Semantics (2:26)

  • Syntactics (7:26)

  • Pragmatics (9:30)

• Timelessness (16:40)

  • American Airlines

• Context (32:30)

  • Dribbblisation of design

• Commercialism (41:46)

• Bonus: how elegant paper sizes relate to evil-sounding music (47:26)

References

• Hard copy of the book (Lars Müller Publishers)

• PDF of the book (rit.edu)

• Objectified documentary by Gary Hustwit (hustwit.com)

• American Airlines Rebrands Itself, And America Along With It (Fast Company)

• American Airlines rebrand upsets Massimo Vignelli (Phaidon)

• The dribbblisation of design (Intercom)

• Vignelli tribute poster series (Anthony Neil Dart)