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
€ 35,00In 1978, Franco Fontana’s book Skyline helped pave the way for the new Italian photography with its radicalism and typically photographic approach. This book, made in a very simple way, without excessive graphic pretensions, presenting one photograph per page, was the culmination of a work in full maturity, freed from all the tics in vogue in photographic circles, advertising or conventional photojournalism.
Skyline praised no city, no local production, it was a work closed in on itself. Starting from tangible reality, in this case the landscape, and from horizon lines, he excluded all superfluous elements to preserve the essential, the exaltation of forms and colors. Fontana codified his familiar landscapes and unknown expanses in such a way that signs, space, form, and color became the only elements of the image.
With Skyline, before Luigi Ghirri’s famous book Kodachrome and six years before Viaggio in Italia, Franco Fontana was one of the first to question the linguistic possibilities of the chromatic process and the aesthetic characteristics of photography, personally reinterpreting the world around him while initiating a new reading of the Italian landscape.
This book is based on the original Italian edition and soft cover, both in format and presentation and in the number of photographs as set by Paola and Luigi Ghirri. To improve quality, the photogravure has been redone from the slides.
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Photographs by Franco Fontana
Text by Helmut Gernsheim
Book design Paola Bergonzoni and Luigi Ghirri21 × 27 cm
80 pages
Paperback
Italian/English
Isbn 978-88-98030-63-7
First published September 2023
€ 29,00One hundred encounters, fortuitous and unexpected, wanted and desired, through which the biography of Armando Milani, the internationally renowned designer, is outlined through anecdotes and images. A sui generis memoir, which the author gives us to capture through flashes, fragments and interweavings the fundamental encounters that most influenced his work and inspired his creative choices. Alongside the story of each encounter we find a photo or work related to the character, in perfect harmony with Milani’s expressive style: to communicate an immediate message, which seduces the eye to reach the heart.
Vico Magistretti’s clothes pegs, Jack Nicholson’s cherries, Paul McCartney’s Happy New Year on the beach, Pele’s goals, Muhammad Ali’s handshake, Alberto Sordi’s markets and Umberto Eco’s drunken sailors. Milani dancing with Mariangela Melato and his wife waltzing with Saul Steinberg.
What emerges is a mosaic littered with stories, which allows us to go in depth not only into Armando Milani’s biography, but also into the message he wants to give us, which characterises the founding features of his expressive research: ethics, friendship, the desire and the need to communicate are at the basis of his encounters. This is also why his graphic sign is so special, because it goes to the essence of things, becoming indelible and timeless.
With texts by Mario Piazza, Francesco Dondina and Anty Pansera, and testimonies by Sergio Noberini, Andrea Depretis, Federico di Wardal, Stefano Asili, Federica Marangoni and R. Roger Remington.
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Texts by Armando Milani
Book design by Armando Milani and Bunker13,5 × 21,5 cm
256 pages
Paperback with flaps
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-60-6
First published September 2023
€ 18,00A story within a story is that of Paolo Paolini, artisan by necessity and master by genuine vocation. He did not graduate from high school until he was 36 years old, making great sacrifices and working the most diverse jobs before crowning his youthful dream: to become a master. It all happens in post-World War I Italy, according to the testimony of Paolini’s daughter Sara – who was also his pupil for three years – and the stories of his grandson, Francesco Bombardi, editor with Giorgio Camuffo of this book.
A beautiful story, narrated and illustrated by Veronica Martini, as are many others, whose protagonists are teachers and teachers – some very famous, such as Giuseppina Pizzigoni, Alberto Manzi, Mario Lodi, Ettore Guattelli – others unknown or less celebrated, such as precisely Paolini.
Paolini unfortunately does not leave many written testimonies, only a few lines and a few letters with other teachers and pedagogists in Italy and abroad; too little to trace a theoretical path. However, to try to understand more deeply the purposes that guided his work, one must learn to read his machines, the notebooks he designed with his pupils and the games he invented. Those published in this 128-page volume, documented by numerous photographs, are not only objects constructed by a skilled hand but are also texts that reflect the way Paolini understood school and the figure of the teacher. Around this topic revolve the interventions and reflections of Franca Zuccoli, Dario Scodeller, Barbara Caprara and Gerda Videsott, feeding the interdisciplinary debate between education and design in its inevitable and continuous evolution.
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Edited by Giorgio Camuffo and Francesco Bombardi
Photographs by Giulia Pezzin, Luca Weste and Isabel Righi
Book design Giulia Pezzin12 × 18 cm
128 pages
Paperback
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-66-8
First published July 2023
€ 18,00The history of design is rich with figures who have experimented with collaborations with the world of education. The dialogue between the two disciplines has been for design an opportunity to research visual forms and languages, and for education an opportunity to introduce innovative, more creative educational models with a more playful attitude. Today, however, the situation is very different. The two worlds, stimulated by increasingly accessible technology, are experiencing a moment of transition to new centralities. The designer is an increasingly articulate figure, capable of attracting other figures to tackle complex tasks and activate learning practices.
The Design for Children master’s degree, from the Faculty of Design and Arts of the Free University of Bolzano, was born and found its place starting from the idea that this ‘soft and spacious’ form of understanding design can be fertile ground for experimenting and implementing new tools and a different way of understanding an educational community. The medium chosen by the curators to respond to such aspirations is dialogue.
Those published here – between Lorenzo Bravi and Alessandra Falconi, Pietro Corraini and Monica Guerra, Claude Marzotto and Noemi Satta, Eugenio Cosentino / Parasite 2.0 and Adelita Husni-Bey, Ilaria Rodella and Chiara Guidi, Carlo Tamanini and Marco Peri – involved professionals from various backgrounds: theater, art, cultural mediation, strategic design in the social sphere, museum education and so on; all, however, with the relationship with children at the center of their activities. The value of this book lies in the diversity of approaches, the plurality of cues, suggestions, and openings that the dialogues generated.
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Edited by Giorgio Camuffo and Gerda Videsott
Illustrations by Chiara Zilioli
Book design Giulia Pezzin12 × 18 cm
128 pages
Paperback
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-64-4
First published July 2023
Our Authors
- Alessandro Colizzi
- Alfredo de Santis
- Andrea Cavani, Giulio Orsini
- Aoi Huber Kono
- Armando Milani
- 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 Bombardi
- Francesco Dondina
- Franco Fontana
- Franco Matticchio
- Gerda Videsott
- Gerrit Noordzij
- Gianluigi Toccafondo
- Giorgio Camuffo
- 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
- Nebiolo History Project
- Olimpia Zagnoli
- Onde Nostre
- Paolo Cremonesi
- Pino Tovaglia
- Riccardo Olocco
- Silvia Sfligiotti
- Simone Azzoni
- Stefano Lemon