There are pioneers and innovators all over history and in different disciplines, but it's not that often that the two figures coincide in the same person. That is the case, though, with graphic artist extraordinaire Lora Lamm. The m.a.x. Museo in Chiasso, Switzerland, is currently celebrating a specific decade in her life with the exhibition "Lora Lamm: Graphic Design in Milan, 1953-1963".
"All the posters and materials I developed during my Milanese years are on show at the m.a.x., on a loan from the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, without them this event wouldn't exist,” Lamm recounts in an interview conducted via Skype from the m.a.x. Museo offices. Lamm is turning 85 this year, but her cheerfulness and the way she relates to a new medium such as video calls, prove that she has a contagious enthusiasm and passion not just for graphic design but for life in general.
Born in Arosa, in the canton of Grisons, Lamm studied at the prestigious Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Zurich under the guidance of Johannes Itten, the Bauhaus master, and of lecturers Ernst Keller and Ernst Gubler.
After working for an advertising agency in Zurich, in 1953 she moved to Milan, a city that seemed to appreciate the simplicity and clarity of Swiss graphic design. Lamm worked for a while at the office of Antonio Boggeri, who led a team of international graphic artists mainly working on store displays, brochures, catalogues and posters. While at Boggeri she designed the paper for the historical shoe shop Calzoleria San Babila. More experience followed when she took a job as graphic designer for the Motta confectionery company, creating sweet wrappers and boxes with iconic Italian landscapes and Commedia dell'Arte characters that were often used by children as collector's items.
In those years Milan was opening up to innovation and style, also thanks to the artists, architects and designers who worked there. "I remember going to a Picasso exhibition at the Museo del Novecento the year I arrived in Milan," Lamm says. "Seeing the Guernica in one of the rooms was a powerful moment that stayed with me forever."
Hoping to get more creative in her job, Lamm applied at the famous department stores la Rinascente and in 1954 she began working in their advertising office in Piazza Duomo. "I was very lucky as I was able to work there during a key period of time," Lamm recounts. "Everybody was eager to get back to work after the war - suppliers, employees and colleagues. La Rinascente was part of this positive mood and rebirth process that was also aimed at inspiring people to buy modern products and enter a new historical phase."
Between the '50s and the '60s la Rinascente became a symbol of modern living: quality, creativity and innovation were the key words at the department store that often organised fashion shows, home wares and garden events, or put together special displays dedicated to important celebrations such as Christmas and Easter. Exhibitions to promote the culture and style of other countries also became popular showing that the retailer actually had the vocation of a museum. All the events were accompanied by dedicated brochures, catalogues, posters and wrapping paper.
Apart from highly qualified internal staff, the department stores also counted on professional collaborators, among them photographers Aldo Ballo, Ugo Mulas and Serge Libiszewski. "There was a great sense of freedom at la Rinascente," Lamm continues. "At the advertising office there was Max Huber who had a neat and clean style and had created the corporate image of the department store with the 'lR' logo that is still used today. You could say that Huber put order in the store style."
The department store management perfectly understood at the time the importance of building a solid identity and winning customer loyalty via ideas that could put a smile on people's faces while targeting the female audience: a Christmas advert designed by Lamm that appeared on the pages of Italian daily il Corriere della Sera featured for example a joint paper pupper of Santa Claus. Mothers bought so many copies of the daily to allow their children to get la Rinascente's paper puppet that the newspaper went sold out.
"Trends were changing and women who had traditionally made their clothes by themselves or with the help of a dressmaker were being introduced to ready-to-wear fashion, and la Rinascente had to find a way through their adverts to introduce them to an entirely new lifestyle," Lamm explains.
Influenced by designers such as Piero Fornasetti, Bruno Munari, Giovanni Pintori and Ilio Negri, Lamm developed her own unique style, characterised by pleasant colours, care for details, a muted elegance, and a lightness in the modern figures portrayed. Her clear lettering, including geometric sans serif and grotesque, Bodoni, Futura and Swiss linear fonts, revealed a training informed by modernist principles and proved vital to successfully communicate the department store messages.
Lamm's graphic identity revolved around immediacy, information, elegance with a pinch of optimism and positivity. "I never thought about my style," Lamm states. "I thought about the product and then adapted my idea to it, and the way I interpreted the product then became my style."
In some cases Lamm opted for photocollages that combined photographs and illustrations with letterings, in others she focused on drawings, but she always put emphasis on harmony.
Her female figures were often stylised, characterised by just a few lines and by a dynamic verticality: one poster advertising Marimekko designs featured an illustration by Brunetta of a woman dressed in a skirt suit with a vertical stripe pattern, her face hiding behind horizontal blinds to create a fun contrast.
Another poster has an interesting genesis: Lamm was always quite quick at coming up with ideas, but one day she found herself stuck. She made a drawing of a woman in a bathing suit swimming in the sea for a summer campaign, but wasn't convinced and threw it away. Yet the forlorn figure she had designed looked at her from the waste paper basket and inspired her a different approach: she prompty rescued the drawing and juxtaposed to the woman in the bathing suit another one, elegantly dressed and standing next to her.
Inspiration at times came from other countries and from foreign publications. "I never did the layout for any magazines, even though I think that would have been interesting, but we used to be inspired by American magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Fortune or The New Yorker," she states. "We loved them and found them and the graphic artists working outside Europe very inspiring, but we never copied them. I also admired Bruno Munari, Roberto Sambonet and other designers who worked as freelancers for la Rinascente as well. They expressed their ideas and vision in a different way, but they were great. Munari was simply fantastic, he was an inexhaustible source of ideas and had a great sense of humour.”
La Rinascente was an experimental laboratory for visual culture and soon Lamm passed from designing the wrapping paper to posters and packaging for the main exhibitions organised by the department store. For an event dedicated to Japan she came up with minimalist posters and invitation cards revolving around a photograph of a kokeshi doll. "They used to organise a lot of exhibitions about foreign countries at la Rinascente, the one about Japan was great," Lamm recalls. "It was 1956 and the advertising material we did was simple and modern; I would suggest visitors to pay special attention to that."
After four years at la Rinascente, Lamm became partner consultant for the department store, a role that also allowed her to take freelance work for other companies including Elizabeth Arden, Pirelli and Niggi. Her elegant graphic style was applied to other products, including car and bicycle tyres and hot water bottles.
In 1963 Lamm returned to Switzerland and continued to work there, "I drastically decided that it was time to change scene as I realised times had changed. So I left behind the 'paper women' of la Rinascente and moved onto advertising campaigns. It was a dramatic decision, but it came from my fascination with products. When you create advertising campaigns you have to speak to the company owners and the suppliers, and you can follow the manufacturing process as well to understand the product better. Even though you had to deal with radically different things, it was extremely interesting and utterly fascinating."
Though Lamm's work was already appreciated in countries such as Italy, Japan and Switzerland, her name started being officially recognised in books in the late '80s and '90s, while the materials she created for la Rinascente appeared in more recent years in exhibitions in Zurich and Milan.
Lamm doesn't seem to have any regrets career-wise, and, even though she thinks that television made us lazy and contributed to kill our collective creativity, she doesn't disapprove of new means of communication. "The world is constantly changing, and nowadays people can easily make posters, videos or films, but it's only when they are made with passion and with a bit of humour - a key component - that you can say they are well made. For example, I quite often find that modern adverts are not inspired at all as they advertise watches, perfumes, and luxury items by big brands that ordinary people can't afford and that's why these ads end up being quite abstract and meaningless."
Would she ever teach young people graphic design? "It's important to have a solid foundation in your career, since, if that's missing, it will show in your work, but I think that the most important principle that young people should learn is that they must have passion for their job if they want to do it well, and I wouldn't be able to teach that," Lamm promptly answers with a smile.
Even from behind the computer screen that separates us it's clear that Lora Lamm has still got all the enthusiasm and positivity that she used to have when she first arrived in Milan: in a way, even at 85, she's exactly like that woman in a bathing suit she designed for a 1956 Summer poster for la Rinascente, forever looking in front of her at the distant horizon and at the future.
“Lora Lamm: Graphic Design in Milan, 1953-1963” is at the m.a.x. Museo, Chiasso, Switzerland until 21st July 2013. The exhibition catalogue, edited by Lora Lamm and Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini, m.a.x. Museo Director, is published by Silvana Editoriale.
Image Credits
All images by Lora Lamm, courtesy of m.a.x. Museo, Chiasso, Switzerland. The numbers refer to the images in this post:
1. Estate e mare - La Rinascente / Summer and Sea – la Rinascente, 1957.
2. La moda si diffonde con - la Rinascente / Fashion spreads with la Rinascente, ca. 1960. From the collection of the Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
3. Portrait of Lora Lamm by Serge Libiszewski for the article published on the journal "Graphis", 1960.
4. Apertura di stagione – lR / Start of the Season – lR, 1957. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
5. Il giardino - La casa di campagna - Il terrazzo di città - La Rinascente / The garden, the country house, the town terrace, la Rinascente, 1957. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
6. Grande fiera del bianco - colore dall’America – lR / Linen Fair, la Rinascente, Colour from America, 1961. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
7. Volentieri a scuola - La Rinascente / Willingly Back to School, la Rinascente, 1956. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
8. Arredate la vostra casa d’estate - La Rinascente / Furnish Your
Home for Summer - la Rinascente, 1956. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
9. I Grandi Mercati Estivi - la Rinascente / Big Summer Markets - la Rinascente, 1960.
10. Estate e mare - la Rinascente / Summer and Sea - la Rinascente, 1958. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
11. Pirelli per lo scooter / Pirelli for the scooter, 1960. Archivio Storico Pirelli.
12. La Rinascente - Grandi Manifestazioni - Il Giappone / la Rinascente - Major Events - Japan, Milan, October 1956. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
13. Pneumatici Pirelli per biciclette / Pirelli tyres for bicycles, 1960. Archivio Storico Pirelli.
14. Rolle - Pirelli / Tyres - Pirelli, 1961.Photography by Serge Libiszewski. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.15. Pirelli scooter trasporto - per i furgoncini / Pirelli scooter
transport for vans, ca. 1960. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
16. Pirelli borse per acqua calda / Pirelli hot water bottles, a. 1959-1963. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
17. La nuova modernissima Rinascente Piazza Fiume si affianca alla tradizionale simpatica Rinascente Piazza Colonna - Apertura 18 settembre / The new modern Rinascente in Piazza Fiume joins the charming traditional Rinascente in Piazza Colonna, opening September 18 1960. Collection: Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
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