PSFK Talks to Italian Design Firm Leftloft

As so much content migrates to the web, we can’t help but think that something must get lost in translation. Without being overly nostalgic for what some may claim is a dying medium, we still have love for the typefaces, a nice paper stock, the way images and copy are laid out on the page. But can this be replicated online? Will it ever?

Recently, PSFK sat down with Francesco Cavalli of Leftloft, a noted Italian design firm known for having a foot solidly planted in both camps – physical and digital. The talk ranged from the importance of infographics to the future of print, as well as touching upon their involvement with a distinctively 1.0 brand and arguably one of the most iconic pieces of print: The Moleskine notebook.

Is print dead?

Print is alive! We feel that five and a half centuries of printing history has made the medium more useful.

In fact, it’s even easier and cheaper to print — professionally or not — than it was 10 years ago. These diminishing costs will open up a lot of doors in how we think of printed content, and the creative ways it can be applied.

However, on the news side, being as time is the most important value, it would seem that printed issues are quickly becoming a waste of time.

Describe Leftloft’s work in information design. Why is it important?

Information design is a very challenging way to conceive of design. Information is a story that needs to be discovered, understood and told. Making it visual is not a way to be more stylish but often is the only way to make the story clear for everybody, regardless of culture, education or social context.

For Italy’s national newspaper Corriere della Sera, we work 365 days a year. The key to this success of this job is the connection between the journalist and the designer, because usually we only have about 4 hours to deliver the final infographics piece on deadline. Knowing how to translate complicated ideas from the news desk into a visual format is challenging, but we think it makes for a much more compelling read.

When we designed the newspaper Dieci from scratch, we decided that information design would be what would set it apart from other newspapers. It’s been very interesting to re-interpret and analyze sport stories by adding a time dimension to a flat and non-moving platform such as paper. We used flow charts showing trails of Formula One cars, America’s Cup boats or players in a soccer stadium.

How do you bring a print sensibility to the Web?

Actually, we grew up as web designers. Back in 1997 when we started the company, the design scene in Milan was the property of old masters of graphic design such as Iliprandi, Noorda, and Vignelli. The new technologies were the only fields where they couldn’t compete with the new generations, so we started from there.

We never liked to be labeled as web designers; we don’t believe in single-skill design. Rather, we believe in design as a service, as a tool to solve problems, catch attention and spread knowledge through all sorts of different media.

Highlight some of your recent work with Moleskine.

Moleskine is a book to be written in, a cult object that everybody knows and recognizes but which not many people know by brand name.

When they asked us to work on this re-branding project we created a design value out of the brand’s “invisibility”, not forcing its appearance and by putting more effort into the problems related to the sales point.

We spent months in libraries, watching how people reacted to colors and shapes. In the end we came out with a few ideas. For example we decided to remove the plastic wrap, we enlarged the color strip, we chose a brighter color scheme and we designed a new icon system to coordinate the product line and to help customers understand what’s inside the book without opening it and possibly breaking the strip.

We also designed other communication material for Moleskine such as catalogs, stands, exhibition environments and a website. The icon system and the colors have became the Moleskine signature in over 50 countries, which we are very pleased about.

What trends from a design standpoint will we see in 2009?

The world is asking for change. Barack Obama knows something about that.

In communication design we have seen how the whole web 2.0 movement has influenced our perception of web design.

We believe that this movement and the recent economic disaster will make the public ask for more transparency and clarity not only on the product/service side but also in the way their communication is presented.

This will lead us in a less “designed” era, where everything will need to appear for exactly what it is meant to represent, whether on paper or on screen.

No more fancy shadows, reflection or time wasting animations: just the content.

Also with less money around for the designers, we will be working on solutions to make their clients save… and out of these financial constraints may come interesting new ideas and techniques that flourish in 2009.

Thanks, Francesco!

Leftloft