History
The Independent Publishing House
Lazy Dog Press was born in Milan, Italy, on a lazy June day in 2012. In addition to Luca Barcellona and Riccardo Bello, the founders are Debbie Bibo, a Californian transplanted to Italy, and designer Massimo Pitis. The latter, author of the logotype and art director of the first three published titles, was succeeded by Francesco Ceccarelli and Frederic Argazzi of the Modena studio Bunker in 2014. They were later joined by Andrea Savoia (2015), who unfortunately passed away suddenly in early 2021, and Sandra Gobbato (2016), owner of the Mutty cultural center in Castiglione delle Stiviere. The business, therefore, is located between Milan, where the registered office is located; Verona, with the administrative, coordination and warehouse offices; and Modena, where the graphic design studio works.
The publisher’s name is derived from the final part of the famous pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”, a catch phrase that contains the entire alphabet. In its vaguely surreal narrative, among the protagonists the figure of the lazy dog is the most sympathetic and versatile, the one with whom the group identifies best. The reference to the typographic world is blatant. It is meant to express the first vocation of the publishing house and the predilection for this language.
Books on Visual Culture
The publishing house debuts with the monograph dedication to Luca Barcellona, in which written text often becomes image. It is clear from the outset, however, that the subjects and topics of future publications would not be limited to writing, typography, and letterform. Lazy Dog speaks of visual culture tout-court, of text and image in their inevitable mutual contamination. There is ample room, therefore, for illustration, photography, design and visual arts as well.
The books are conceived, designed and produced with sartorial care and special attention to the choice of materials, manufacture and, above all, style. After all, it would make no sense to publish books on paper unless they are artfully crafted and open-minded. Each book is its own project, with no format constraints; there are no series, no rigidly defined categories.
In Books We Trust!
The goal is to pursue an overall quality of the book, as much in content as in form. Lazy Dog books must be able to convey the same passion with which they are created, to offer the reader vibrant reading experiences and generate authentic emotions, to stimulate curiosity and capture interest, to be inspirational. Books can make all this possible, as long as they remain themselves, printed on paper, fixed in time.
Riccardo Bello
Publisher, administrator, production management and coordination
Bunker
Art direction, editor and book design
Luca Barcellona
Editor, editorial and art consulting
Sandra Gobbato
Editor, editorial consulting
Novità
€ 27,50“Antologia di cultura grafica” is the new series dedicated to the history of visual communication. Edited by Alessandro Colizzi and Silvia Sfligiotti, assisted from time to time by one or more guest editors, the series offers a series of volumes, organized around a theme or era, and includes a rich anthology of texts (articles, essays, chapters, excerpts, posters) translated into Italian and introduced by an essay by the editors.
“La questione moderna in Europa”, first volume of the series, addresses the graphic debate within the modern movement of the interwar years, with an expanded look at the European continent to include authors from cultures and national histories hitherto neglected by historiography.
Far from being a unified phenomenon, the modern movement was characterized by a plurality of manifestations and the presence of very different theoretical positions. In particular, modernist graphics was the result of a process of negotiation between actors belonging to different national contexts. Moreover, actors from multiple disciplinary fields participated in its formation: advertising, publishing, architecture, photography, journalism, and the printing industry.
This anthology reflects the variety of orientations and opinions expressed both within individual national events and by the different personalities involved, who interpreted the ideology of the modern in ways and forms as heterogeneous as ever. The panorama that emerges is decidedly more nuanced and hybrid than has appeared in existing publications to date, and allows us to grasp the phenomenon in its theoretical, aesthetic, technological and social complexity.
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Antologia di cultura grafica 1
Edite by Alessandro Colizzi, Silvia Sfligiotti & Carlo Vinti
Book design Bunker and Alessandro Colizzi
13,5 × 21,5 cm
280 pages
Paperback with flaps
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-56-9
First edition February 2023
€ 18,00Alfazoo is not a conventional zoo. It houses the world’s most unusual animals: wild vowels and consonants nearing extinction.
This ABC turns letters into animals simply by adding a pair of eyes and a mouth to each shape, in a graphic game that invites young readers to play with the letters to invent their own beastly alphabet.
With its freshness and modern design, it is hard to believe that this book by Italian designer Alfredo De Santis was first published in 1968 by Emme Edizioni, the visionary publishing house that brought to the Italian market avant-garde children’s titles by authors such as Leo Lionni, Iela and Enzo Mari, Tomi Ungerer, Yutaka Sugita, Bruno Munari, Luigi Veronesi, Maurice Sendak, Emanuele Luzzati, and Bob Gill.
A timeless design lesson to read forms and symbols through a different visual lens.
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Illustrations by Alfredo de Santis
Text by Marta Sironi
Book design Bunker
(from original design by Emme Edizioni)21 × 21 cm
48 pages
Hardcover
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-57-6
First edition February 2023
€ 19,00Why Pino Tovaglia kept this unpublished work, or what its true genesis is, we will never know. The fact is that his daughter Irene, getting her hands on her father’s materials, found these 24 plates, held together with tape, with an intriguing cover where the Pirelli logo stands out, front and back. The mystery deepens because the managers of the famous brand claim that there is no trace of such a project in their archives; even during the years of the collaboration between the designer and the multinational company nothing leads back to this pamphlet, which appears to be a real prototype.
Whatever its origin, it is in any case an interesting and singular study of the elongated form, which Tovaglia evidently enjoys doing of his own free will. The association with the brand, as far as we can surmise, probably arises by analogy with the content, or vice versa.
The 56 pages of A story as long as are thus a valuable exercise in style, reproposed in its formal integrity, but adapted for a contemporary publication, accompanied by a short text by Marta Sironi, which allows us to investigate and enhance the more human side of one of the most significant figures of Italian graphic design in the second half of the twentieth century.
Dedicated to fans of graphic design, illustration and simple admirers of a great protagonist who spontaneously addresses children, with a hint of mystery…
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Illustrations by Pino Tovaglia
Text by Marta Sironi
Cover by Flavia Ruotolo
Book design Bunker and Flavia Ruotolo21 × 12 cm
56 pages
Paperback with dust jacket
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-54-5
First edition November 2022
€ 58,00Photography is an act of self-awareness towards oneself and one’s cultural background. In his sixty-year career Franco Fontana has photographed what cannot be seen, succeeding in fixing through framing an ‘other’ image that is abstracted from reality, free from the portrayed subject. Geometry, proportions and composition have allowed him to reach, by progressive degrees, a conceptual synthesis that has been translated into linguistic unity and its formal manifestation, images.
Today, the crisis of the liquid society opens to the author the opportunity to explore new territories of the invisible ‘naked eye’, expanding the visual horizon and the iconographic structure while maintaining stylistic coherence and identity. If unity originates from the hybridization of differences, from the affirmation of unity itself originate the differences, in a system in constant balance between conceptual and formal, invisible and visible.
Invisible, a 168-page book with more than 100 photographs, is the restitution of meticulous archival research from which many previously unpublished shots have emerged: from the most experimental research to more intimate evidence of expressive freedom, which constitute the fertile ground from which grew the unmistakable style that has made Franco Fontana internationally famous.
Dedicated to those who know or approach the expressive path of the author, to those who want to explore that inner space, beyond reality, which belongs to the subjective interpretation, where you go in search of the image that is not yet there and that only the sensitivity of the photographer’s eye can capture and translate into a unique and unrepeatable shot. Thus, suddenly, the invisible becomes visible.
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Photographs by Franco Fontana
Editing by Lorenzo Respi
Book design Bunker22 × 27 cm
168 pages
Hardcover
English
Isbn 978-88-98030-58-3
First published November 2022
Our Authors
- Alessandro Colizzi
- Alfredo de Santis
- Andrea Cavani, Giulio Orsini
- Aoi Huber Kono
- Associazione Calligrafica Italiana
- Ayumi Kudo
- Beppe Giacobbe
- Bob Noorda
- Carlo Vinti
- CAST
- Cesare Leonardi, Franca Stagi
- Charles H. Traub
- Claudio Rocha, Tony De Marco
- Elisa Talentino
- Emi Ligabue
- Francesco Dondina
- Franco Fontana
- Franco Matticchio
- Gerrit Noordzij
- Gianluigi Toccafondo
- Guido Scarabottolo
- Gus Powell
- Gusmano Cesaretti
- Hou Hanru, Anne Palopoli
- James Clough
- Jinta Hirayama
- Jörg Müller
- Jost Hochuli
- Katsumi Komagata
- Letterpress Workers
- Lorenzo Mattotti
- Luca Barcellona
- Luca Speranzoni
- Luca Zamoc
- Matthew Albanese
- Maurizio Baroni
- Michele Patanè
- Olimpia Zagnoli
- Onde Nostre
- Paolo Cremonesi
- Pino Tovaglia
- Riccardo Olocco
- Silvia Sfligiotti
- Simone Azzoni
- Stefano Lemon