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Title
Forza Italia

Designer
Cesare Priori

Year
1993

Client
Movimento Politico Forza Italia

Medium
Mark

Notes
Most often, a political symbol is something controversial not because of graphics but precisely because of politics. That means there are people who love or hate the symbol because of ideological reasons that actually have nothing to do with reason nor with graphics.

This is particularly true for the symbol of Forza Italia, which besides representing a major political party or more precisely Silvio Berlusconi himself, it also happens to be a good symbol because of its graphic design, specially considering the audience to which it is addressed, that is the Italians.

And in this case, before a good symbol there is a striking communication intuition which came from Berlusconi himself – indeed a great communicator – that was to use the name Forza Italia, which was at the same time completely different from traditional party names, something that all Italians already screamed during football matches, and something embodying the most positive feeling in the most universal way for any of the Italians. (And this was particularly true in 1994, when the symbol was introduced during the FIFA World Cup.)

From a graphics point of view, the symbol features a few characteristics that still make it effective today: the tricolore flag which joins all the Italians under its colours, the waving of the flag which adds a sense of liveliness and dynamism, and the typeface – Helvetica Extra Compressed, a derivative of Schmalfette Grotesk – which provides great visual impact. That’s it. And it’s precisely because of this synthesis of simple elements, that the symbol communicates with boldness and clarity.

In 1996 the symbol was substituted for a short time with a version cropped within a circle – already designed in 1993 – and after Berlusconi’s PDL parenthesis (2009-13), it was recovered in 2013 and still used with minor changes today. The symbol greatly withstood time for almost 25 years, thus becoming one of the best-known symbols in the recent history of Italian graphic design.

Tags
Politics

Title
Forza Italia

Designer
Cesare Priori

Year
1993

Client
Movimento Politico Forza Italia

Medium
Mark

Notes
Most often, a political symbol is something controversial not because of graphics but precisely because of politics. That means there are people who love or hate the symbol because of ideological reasons that actually have nothing to do with reason nor with graphics.

This is particularly true for the symbol of Forza Italia, which besides representing a major political party or more precisely Silvio Berlusconi himself, it also happens to be a good symbol because of its graphic design, specially considering the audience to which it is addressed, that is the Italians.

And in this case, before a good symbol there is a striking communication intuition which came from Berlusconi himself – indeed a great communicator – that was to use the name Forza Italia, which was at the same time completely different from traditional party names, something that all Italians already screamed during football matches, and something embodying the most positive feeling in the most universal way for any of the Italians. (And this was particularly true in 1994, when the symbol was introduced during the FIFA World Cup.)

From a graphics point of view, the symbol features a few characteristics that still make it effective today: the tricolore flag which joins all the Italians under its colours, the waving of the flag which adds a sense of liveliness and dynamism, and the typeface – Helvetica Extra Compressed, a derivative of Schmalfette Grotesk – which provides great visual impact. That’s it. And it’s precisely because of this synthesis of simple elements, that the symbol communicates with boldness and clarity.

In 1996 the symbol was substituted for a short time with a version cropped within a circle – already designed in 1993 – and after Berlusconi’s PDL parenthesis (2009-13), it was recovered in 2013 and still used with minor changes today. The symbol greatly withstood time for almost 25 years, thus becoming one of the best-known symbols in the recent history of Italian graphic design.

Tags
Politics