Eugenio Carmi was responsible for the firm’s corporate image, intervening in a series of initiatives undertaken by Osti’s office that were intended to improve the way workers experienced the factory. The industrial style that he created firstly for the Cornigliano steelworks and then for Italsider was based on the repeated use of geometric elements that, like a sort of trademark, characterized the factory’s external signage, all the material used by the staff (folders, box files and so on), press releases, brochures, gift wrapping paper and even the internal balance sheets. By adding the language of abstract art to all the factory’s products and, as his friend and colleague Carlo Fedeli pointed out, causing the incursion of colour into all the working environments, he redefined the spaces and modalities of the industrial system, drawing on his belief in the dignity of work and the liberating value of art as an active element in social life. In 1965 he designed eight signs focusing on quality that, printed on tin plate in the factories, bore a series of slogans with simple geometric elements, letters of the alphabet and colours on a white ground. For Carmi, the world of work was an important driving force behind his creativity. He was convinced that those working in factories needed not only aesthetic stimuli but also inspiring thought that was neither mechanical nor predictable. This was why, when asked to create a series of accident-prevention signs, rather than making use of the customary stereotypes, he turned things on their head: instead of symbolizing the danger itself, he drew attention to the part of the body needing protection, thus revolutionizing ways of communicating and establishing a more human relationship with those looking at the sign. In this case, too, the simple geometric forms, created in the six primary colours, represent the head, the eyes and the hands, stressed, with the visual energy typical of Carmi, by the word written in Helvetica. (Read Bruno Munari’s text on Carmi’s safety posters, Allarme a colori contro il pericolo (in Italian))
Corporate Communication
