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A small and precious book

60 YEARS OF WONDER. 1966–2025, 843 BOOKS. The legacy of the Bolognaragazzi award.

We designed the logo and a compact, content-rich catalogue, 125×170 mm. It contains the 843 covers of the children’s books awarded the Bolognaragazzi Award by the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, collected through meticulous archival research curated by Isabella Del Monte (BCBF). The result is a precious visual repertoire that documents 60 years of publishing, which highlights how the design of children’s books is a field of remarkable graphic and visual experimentation.

Tatzebao /

Vivere Kainua at the National Etruscan Museum

KAINUA 1. INTERIORS. We were asked to provide ideas and tools to guide visitors through the new exhibition at the National Etruscan Museum, with the aim of bringing the experience of Etruscan life to contemporary culture. We did this by retaining the museum’s institutional logo and creating the motto vivere kainua. The motto, typography, color palette, and icons —inspired by the illustrations of Giovanni Gozzadini (1865–70)— transpose the pictograms and distinctive scratched script found on Etruscan ritual pottery into the contemporary context.

Next steps.
KAINUA 2. EXTERIORS and TIRESIA, the app designed for blind and visually impaired visitors.

Kainua was an ancient Etruscan city on the banks of the Reno River, in Marzabotto, near Bologna, Italy.

The National Etruscan Museum logo was designed by Matteo Carboni. The exhibition design was created by architect Fabio Fornasari.

For more information: wikipedia.org/Kainua
ABC International Excellence Award

Zanichelli Editore è tra i vincitori dell’ABC International Excellence Award, il più importante riconoscimento internazionale dedicato all’accessibilità in ambito editoriale, promosso dall’Accessible Books Consortium e dalla World Intellectual Property Organization.

Abbiamo contribuito a questo risultato progettando soluzioni in cui accessibilità, design e tecnologia sono integrati fin dall’origine in un lavoro condiviso che conferma l’accessibilità come leva di qualità e innovazione, oltre che requisito.

Il nostro apporto ha riguardato in particolare i progetti:
10 VISIONS. 2017-2016. The open visual identity of BCBF

Since 2017, we have been designing, developing and curating the visual identity of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Every year for the past 10 years, we have selected and hosted a young illustrator in an intensive workshop. We tackle the challenges of creating an image that captures the many facets of children’s publishing. This year, we worked with Bumi Cha, who joined us from South Korea.

10 visions | 2017-2026 is a project curated by Chialab for Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

We’ll be talking about it here:

Tuesday, April 14 2026 at 1:30 p.m. at the Illustrators Survival Corner – Workshop Area

Thursday, April 16 2026 at 11:00 a.m. at Bologna Book Plus – Designer Studio

Bologna Children’s Book Fair. The visual identity of the world’s largest children’s book fair.

The ten years and ten visual identities have been documented and compiled in an exhibition and a book. If you’re interested, get in touch: info@chialab.it

Here you can take a look behind the scenes.
Art in transition

We managed the website for the Art.in.transition project, an online collection of experiences gathered over the course of a year by 24 students during three artist residencies across Europe.

The Art in Transition project “The arts between environmental sustainability and digital innovation”, was conceived and run by the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania, the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna, as well as the University of Bologna and the University of Macerata.

The visual identity was coordinated by the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania.

You can find the colophon here.
Shanghai Illustration & Pop Show

Original characters, multiple meetings, a universal language. For their 2025 opening, Shanghai Illustration and Pop Show asked us to create a flexible visual identity which allows all communication needs to be independently resolved in-house. We built a versatile system based on a custom display type face: it enables the fair’s team to both write any message and create clearly recognizable, colourful typo-illustrations by mixing colour, texture, composition, dimension, layers. All signed consistently by the written, non-monolithical Sips logo.

谢谢!
Fresh paint

Jars of tempera, brushes in various sizes, masking tape, cut-out stencils, smocks, a ladder, a scaffold. On a cold January day in Sassuolo, we redesigned the Cionini Library. On the wall. With six bright colors. Real, frugal, handcrafted design. More solid elements for orientation, and identity, will follow later on.
BCBF25 VIWS with Bumi Cha

The tenth edition of our Visual Identity Workshop to lay the foundations for the image (or rather the images) that will accompany the 2026 Bologna Children's Book Fair. Special guest, the very young Bumi Cha, who joined us in Bologna from Korea. Four days of workshops to put ideas and suggestions on the table and try to transform them into images. It is no coincidence that the VIWS starts from Imagine (J. Lennon, Y. Ono. 1971).

"[...] imagine [...] it isn't hard to do [...].

You, you may say I'm a dreamer,

but I'm not the only one [...]".

6 visual exercises: small practical workshops with ‘visual gymnastics' to show Bumi what the fair is all about and help her draw the BCBF 2026 image...

See the results in Bologna from 13 to 16 April 2026 with BCBF's 63rd edition.

Take a look HERE at the history of the BCBF visual identity since 2006!

See also
Bologna Children’s Book Fair
A small and precious book

60 YEARS OF WONDER. 1966–2025, 843 BOOKS. The legacy of the Bolognaragazzi award.

We designed the logo and a compact, content-rich catalogue, 125×170 mm. It contains the 843 covers of the children’s books awarded the Bolognaragazzi Award by the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, collected through meticulous archival research curated by Isabella Del Monte (BCBF). The result is a precious visual repertoire that documents 60 years of publishing, which highlights how the design of children’s books is a field of remarkable graphic and visual experimentation.
From Illustration to Comics. Pencils in Talented Young Hands / Frankfurter Buchmesse / 2024

A magazine in the form of an exhibition catalog, or an exhibition catalog in the form of a magazine? We like hybrids, middle grounds, and diagonals. So we put 30 authors and one master on the pages (and walls) of the Frankfurt Book Fair. An aniconic (or hypericonic) cover with four symbols for the four areas in which the 30 talented young hands were selected and grouped by Ivan Canu, Grazia Gotti, and Silvana Sola.

Bologna Children's Book Fair, Bologna Book Plus, Bologna Fiere, AIE.
Roots in the Future – Italy Guest of Honour 2024 Frankfurter Buchmesse.
Leggere è un bene di tutti

Per il Museo Egizio di Torino e con la Fondazione Paideia abbiamo affrontato la sfida di raccontare, a persone con bisogni comunicativi speciali, la vita degli antichi egizi. Ostruzione di progetto: utilizzo individuale e in gruppo, diffusione cartacea e digitale, fruizione autoconsistente e senza rimandi. Nella messa in pagina abbiamo mantenuto salda la linearità del racconto: no menù, no link; adottato due soli schemi compositivi nel rapporto testo immagine, ridotto al minimo i codici visivi delle illustrazioni e gli stili tipografici del testo.

Qui i percorsi tematici “Leggere è un bene di tutti”
Deir el-Medina, Il Viaggio dei morti, Il dono del Nilo

Museo Egizio di Torino, Fondazione Paideia.
Jella Lepman

Let us begin with children. Books as bridges
Fateci cominciare dai bambini. Libri come ponti

La mostra racconta la vita di Jella Lepman attraverso la sua voce e il segno di 20 illustratori di diversi paesi e realtà culturali. La mostra trae ispirazione dalla stessa Jella Lepman che realizza nel 1946 una mostra internazionale di libri per bambini e ragazzi. A questi libri hanno guardato gli illustratori per realizzare gli ex libris presenti in mostra.

L'abbiamo progettata per facilitarne la circolazione: 67 pannelli che che si trasportano e si allestiscono facilmente.

La mostra è a cura di Silvana Sola, David Tolin, Paola Vassalli per IBBY Italia.
Metodi e accessibilità

Abbiamo due chiodi fissi: rendere efficiente la progettazione in team di artefatti visivi e progettare interfacce accessibili. Sono temi su cui ci confrontiamo nella pratica quotidiana e che abbiamo approfondito con due tesi di dottorato industriale con lo IUAV di Venezia. Ne sono protagonisti Manuel Zanettin e Nicolò Carpignoli. Manuel ha analizzato diversi metodi di gestione progetto per creare una nuova applicazione del metodo per il design della comunicazione mentre Nicolò ha disegnato e prototipato un sistema per far percepire con il tatto linee e curve a non vedenti.

Leggi le ricerche:

Discussioni tesi Dottorato Industriale
Manuel Zanettin, Applicazione di Scrum nel design della comunicazione.
Nicolò Carpignoli, Riconoscimento di linee curve con sintesi vocale per grafiche vibrotattili su dispositivi touchscreen general-purpose.
Relatore: Prof. Luciano Perondi.
Chialab, Università Iuav di Venezia, Corso di Architettura, Città e Design.
Scienza del design
​13 maggio 2024, Badoer,
Aula G, ore 10,30.