New Releases by Bruno Munari

A long-overdue English translation of Munari''s seminal tract on the everyday value of architecture and design education The first ever English translation of Bruno Munari''s Design and Visual Communication(1968) fills a gap in Munari''s output for the English-speaking world and provides a highly relevant guide to bridging architecture and design education and everyday life. Published in 1968 after Munari was invited to the Carpenter Center at Harvard as a successor to György Kepes, the book transforms over 50 lessons, class materials and letters addressed to the city of Milan, into a book on the future of art, architecture and design. Conceived as a living volume, the book is written to inspire current and future designers to push beyond past events, however recent, and develop new tools to see and understand tomorrow''s world. Accompanying the facsimile reproduction of the original volume are in-depth contextual annotations by Jeffrey Schnapp. As a Munari scholar and design historian, Schnapp has spent years unearthing the radical potential of critical historical material. His annotations and micro-interventions throughout the facsimile reprint seek to fulfill Munari''s call for an evolution of the book in form and content and highlight how this work is as relevant today as when originally published. Bruno Munari(1907-98) was an Italian artist, designer and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in modernism, futurism, and concrete art and in nonvisual arts (literature, poetry) with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning and creativity.

Design como arte, do italiano Bruno Munari (1907-1998), um dos designers mais inovadores e proeminentes do século XX, é um clássico que trata das possibilidades artísticas do design moderno, da relação entre arte e design, entre o belo e o funcional, entre artistas e sociedade, e porque tantos deles foram se tornando designers. Com uma linguagem simples e bem-humorada, o livro, publicado originalmente em 1971, expõe as ideias de Munari de que o design precisa ser belo, funcional e acessível. Para o autor, viveríamos em uma época em que não há mais distinção entre arte pura e arte aplicada. Nesse contexto, o designer restabelece, com seu método de trabalho e conhecimento técnico, o contato que havia sido perdido entre a arte e o público, e se dedica a pensar soluções para as necessidades da sociedade sem desprezar a estética ou a funcionalidade no processo de criação. Para tanto, Munari mostra como cor, forma, material e outros elementos se relacionam com o significado e a funcionalidade de objetos ou peças de comunicação visual. "A inteligência lúdica, questionadora e socialmente consciente de Munari o caracteriza como o que hoje chamaríamos de ''designer crítico''. O grande charme e a delicadeza de sua escrita tornam a humanidade e o bom senso de seus argumentos ainda mais irresistíveis." – Icon "Munari é novo Leonardo." – Picasso

Escrito en 1966, El arte como oficio se ha convertido en el gran ensayo clásico de entre todos los que escribió Bruno Munari. Este libro es un valioso y singular intento por situar la importancia de los "nuevos productores de formas" del mundo contemporáneo en relación con el arte y con la experiencia personal de nuestra vida cotidiana. Con ello, Munari logra hacernos observar de una manera activa y tomar conciencia del mundo formal que nos rodea al tiempo que pone en valor la labor de los diseñadores, personajes que no solo se erigen como responsables de la creación de objetos funcionales y estéticos, sino que ejercen de auténticos moldeadores "democráticos" del gusto. Repleto de ejemplos y referencias a nuestra vida diaria, esta obra nos invita constantemente a detenernos y a repensar las formas que nos rodean. Desde la visualidad de las letras escritas o dibujadas hasta la versatilidad de un material como el bambú, pasando por el valor de una cuchara o unos peldaños desgastados por el uso, o el brutal contraste entre las ostentosas cuberterías europeas y la modestia de los palillos japoneses, Munari nos introduce con la facilidad y la sencillez de los grandes maestros a las grandes cuestiones teóricas de las disciplinas del diseño y la creatividad.

El lenguaje visual ha creado dos universos -el del arte y el del diseño- que a menudo confluyen y se entrelazan, pero que en otras ocasiones se distancian y se ignoran. El mundo del arte es el del estilo personal, la crítica, la fantasía, la belleza. El del diseño, en cambio, es el del profesional, la industria, la creatividad, la funcionalidad. Son mundos paralelos que Bruno Munari disecciona magistralmente en estas páginas, permitiéndonos intuir la naturaleza profunda de dos de las actividades humanas más estrechamente vinculadas a nuestra facultad creativa. Un iluminador ensayo que sacudirá la mente de cualquier persona vinculada al ámbito de la creatividad.

La fantasía, la invención y la creatividad no son patrimonio de unos pocos iniciados -los artistas-, sino facultades esenciales del ser humano que todos deberíamos comprender. Con la generosidad y la vocación pedagógica que siempre lo caracterizó, Bruno Munari desvela en este ensayo pionero, traducido por primera vez al castellano, algunos de los secretos de estas tres capacidades básicas que hoy englobaríamos bajo la palabra creatividad. La fantasía, nos cuenta Munari, nace de la libertad. La invención y la creatividad nacen, en cambio, de la función y la necesidad. Pero a la hora de generar nuevos mundos, en todas ellas la inteligencia, la memoria y la imaginación juegan un papel crucial. ¿Qué mecanismos se activan para alumbrar una idea o construir una obra de arte? ¿Cómo podemos potenciar -en lugar de coartar- la creatividad infantil? ¿Cómo fomentar la elasticidad del pensamiento para que este no se quede estancado en fórmulas prefijadas? Munari responde a estas y otras preguntas con un estudio delicioso, a caballo entre la erudición y el divertimento, que no solo pretende potenciar nuestra capacidad creativa, sino contribuir a nuestro desarrollo integral como personas.

Dans cet ouvrage, Bruno Munari, mondialement connu pour la vivacité et la légèreté de ses créations, détruit le mythe de l''artiste vedette et lui substitue le personnage du designer. Ce recueil de textes brefs, accompagnés de croquis et d''illustrations, présente les diverses spécialisations du design : design visuel, design industriel, design graphique et design de recherche. Avec sa plume caustique, l''auteur se livre à des critiques impitoyables de la création de son époque : trop statique et trop complexe. Il appelle de ses voeux des formes en mouvement, en transformation et prône la simplicité et l''équilibre, se réclamant ainsi de l''esthétique asiatique. Véritable précurseur dans son domaine, Bruno Munari annonce, dans ces textes regroupés dans les années 1960, les évolutions auxquelles on peut assister aujourd''hui. Celles qui conduisent à des passerelles entre art et design, et qui mettent en avant une création mouvante, générative et en évolution permanente.

How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever. Bruno Munari was among the most inspirational designers of all time, described by Picasso as ‘the new Leonardo’. Munari insisted that design be beautiful, functional and accessible, and this enlightening and highly entertaining book sets out his ideas about visual, graphic and industrial design and the role it plays in the objects we use everyday. Lamps, road signs, typography, posters, children’s books, advertising, cars and chairs – these are just some of the subjects to which he turns his illuminating gaze.

In this imaginative ABC, acclaimed artist, designer and children''s author, Bruno Munari shows how fun letters can be. From an Ant on an Apple to a Blue Butterfly to a Cat in a Cage, Munari pairs words in whimsical ways until Fly frees itself from its page, lands on the Hat, buzzes near the Ice Cream and provides the final sound for Zzzzz.

In this small but extraordinary encyclopedia, Bruno Munari selects and describes the many uses of the circle in art, design and architecture. A fascinating and mysterious form, the circle stands for perfection, cyclicity and the divine, but also instability and movement.

Bruno Munari investigates the design elements of the square and its use in designs as diverse as churches, monuments, games and fonts. He investigates the meaning of the square as the idea of enclosure, home and settlement as well as the interesting permutations that can be achieved from the monotonous repetition of four sides.

This quirky handbook of Italian gestures, first published in 1958 by renowned Milanese artist and graphic designer Bruno Munari, will help the phalange-phobic decipher the unspoken language of gestures--a language not found in any dictionary. Photos.

A playful and vibrant guide to drawing the sun In Drawing the Sun, Bruno Munari suggests: "When drawing the sun, try to have on hand colored paper, chalk, felt-tip markers, crayons, pencils, ballpoint pens--you can draw a sun with any one of them. Also remember that sunset and dawn are the back and front of the same phenomenon: when we are looking at the sunset, the people over there are looking at the dawn."

For Drawing a Tree, Bruno Munari proposes: "When drawing a tree, always remember that every branch is more slender than the one that came before. Also note that the trunk splits into two branches, then those branches split in two, then those in two, and so on, and so on, until you have a full tree, be it straight, squiggly, curved up, curved down, or bent sideways by the wind."

Artwork by Bruno Munari.

The journey of a birthday gift and the different means of transport it must use to reach its destination. But what''s inside? Again, a tale that winds through pages of different sizes.

In 1942, the artist, writer, product designer, architect, graphic designer, illustrator, educator and philosopher Bruno Munari created an enormously successful and utterly charming book called Le Macchine di Munari. Faithfully reprinted here, it contains instructions for building the most fantastical of mechanical structures, including a machine for taming alarm clocks, a lizard-driven engine for tired tortoises, a mechanism for sniffing artificial flowers, a humiliator for mosquitoes, a machine for playing the pipe even when you are not home, a machine for seeing the dawn before anyone else and a tail wagger for dogs.