Emiliano Ponzi entrusted with illustrating 60 years of the Salone del Mobile.Milano

Emiliano Ponzi follows an illustrious band of predecessors – such as Massimo Vignelli, Pierluigi Cerri, Guido Scarabottolo, Lorenzo Marini. He is the artist who has been entrusted with creating the communication campaign image for the sixtieth edition of the Salone del Mobile.Milano. He is one of the most esteemed and award-winning Italian illustrators at international level and famous for his spare, precise style and for his quasi-metaphysical atmospheres, and has been commissioned to create six posters – one for each decade in the history of the trade fair - celebrating its heritage and illustrating its deep ties to the city and with the evolution of design, lifestyles and the demands of the social agenda. He has come up with a narration in episodes that unpicks the reasons why the Salone has always been so much more than just a trade fair, becoming a mouthpiece for the values and skills that have made Milan the undisputed global capital of design.

His style is unique and unmistakable. He decided to steer clear of the information and didactic aspect from the outset, focusing on the concept of celebrating and transmitting a reflection on the Salone through an emotive approach. He achieved this by delving into the rituals and customs that have shaped the identities of Italy and Milan from 1961 to the present day, condensing the emotion and suspense generated by the unexpected into each illustration.

The first poster depicts a Sixties Milan interior, the second portrays the working-class city of the Seventies; the third focuses on Eighties swinging Milan (Milano da bere), the city of fashion and design; he took his inspiration for the Nineties from La Scala Theatre and its relationship with the Salone, while for the first decade of 2000, he focused on the new Fiera Milan spaces in Rho, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and inaugurated in 2005. The final poster reflects on the past and ushers in the future, focusing on the concept of sustainability, now one of the trade fair priorities.  

Emiliano’s work has therefore involved great synthesis, identifying the most representative elements of the city and its relationship with the Salone, while maintaining a crosscutting approach and vision, best suited also to expressing the cross-pollinations bound up in this relationship.

“We have entrusted the creative side of the communication for the 60th edition of the Salone del Mobile.Milano to the masterly touch of Emiliano Ponzi, an internationally renowned illustrator, because we believe that his design-like style and the evocative power of his works, in which a feeling of both elegy and memory can be discerned, were those most suited to celebrating the anniversary of the trade fair,” said Salone del Mobile President, Maria Porro. “With Emiliano’s interpretation of the 60 years of the Salone, we wanted to rise above our traditional canons and our institutional language to narrate the story of the fair and its successes as well as the evolving tastes, lifestyles and even the city of Milan that have served not just as a backdrop to but also as a driver of design in its own right and of the fair itself. The result is a collection of  powerfully meaningful illustrations, emotions triggered by memories and feelings and confidence in the future that lies ahead.”