Torinodesign.info
address book

Torinodesign.info lists experts in design, communication, and image operating in Piedmont, organized by field and services offered. The website is designed as a tool for clients, students, and professionals. It lists democratically by alphabetical order and does not give more or less visibility to websites optimized for search engine algorithms. The project has been selected for the exhibition “ITALY: A New Collective Landscape” on show at ADI Design Museum in Milan (April–September 2023). For the special occasion, we printed out the content of the website in the form of an address book, listing all the profiles registered between 2020 and 2022.

Torinodesign.info ↗
Exhibition website ↗

How does it work?
Designers can register themselves as Freelance (F), Studio (S), or Agency (A). The label Junior (J) is assigned to recent graduates or those who work on their own without having a fiscal profile: interesting for people who want to work as freelancers but are still at the beginning of their career. The registration is performed through a contact form, where applicants can choose between services and categories that best reflect their business practice. The directory is not a detailed list of individual skills but encompasses a broad range of terms understandable to non-professionals. The website visitors can filter profiles based on the requested service, geographic position, or typology of the designer. Torinodesign.info is available for free both for registered users and visitors.

History
Torinodesign.info was published in December 2020, with an initial selection of about 200 designers. The goal was to increase the visibility of emerging designers, and to improve the relations between local professionals (especially during the first lockdown). In the beginning, the website was limited to designers active in Turin and its province; since February 2022, we also welcome those who work in the provinces of Alessandria, Asti, Biella, Cuneo, Novara, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Vercelli.

Brand and Layout
The layout is based on old Italian address books, an essential medium to find experts before the Internet. Instead of the phone number, the profiles are registered with a link to their portfolio. Email contacts are not shared on the website to prevent spam.
As TorinoDesign.info lists links to everyone’s portfolio, each name is flanked by an arrow pointing to the top right, signalling an outward movement. The arrow has thus become the very symbol of the list. Furthermore, to pay homage to the typographic tradition of the Piedmont region, the choice of two typefaces designed by Aldo Novarese for the historical Turin foundry Nebiolo seemed appropriate: Forma (digitized by David Jonathan Ross) and Recta (digitized by Canada Type).

Sustainability
The brand is composed of only typography: not using images avoids the problem of keeping the profiles updated and makes the whole website much lighter. Against the constant increment of website weight caused by multimedia content and scarcely efficient coding techniques, the webpages of Torinodesign.info weigh around 350Kb each and load in a fraction of a second. This approach fully respects the W3C standards without using polluting server applications to keep the website online.

Impact on the public
Torinodesign.info is a virtual square that facilitates exchange and knowledge. The directory is ongoing: designers can share updates on their profession, to their current skill set. Moreover, we accurately evaluate new services or category requests to match the market trends (Architecture and Retouching were added thanks to our users suggestion). However, the list is not exhaustive, it just wants to give a glimpse of the regional design landscape. So far, we have received positive comments: the website is useful for freelancers and students looking for a place to get their internship.
As of December 31st, 2022, the website has 451 designers. At the time of designing this volume (February 2023), the figures have already increased. It is important to note that people registered as Junior in 2020 or 2021 today work as company employees or that a Freelancer might have changed his/her profession. Doing a census is not our task: we cannot demand constant updates nor share detailed information of our registered users.

Art Direction
Cinzia Bongino, Studio Norma

Editorial Design and Data Visualization
Cinzia Bongino

Print and binding
Progetto Immagine (Torino)

Paper
Fedrigoni Woodstock

Font
Forma Micro Bold, Recta Light Compressed

Year
2023

About the exhibition
"ITALY: a New Collective Landscape" is an exhibition/programme consisting of projects, products and new virtuous design and production practices, taking into account the challenges that the current global situation is presenting, as well as looking at post-exhaustion as a field of creativity in which the notion of good also includes its collective potential as a common benefit, around which much of the contemporary debate revolves. April-September 2023, ADI Design Museum, Milan.
Curators: Angela Rui with Elisabetta Donati de Conti and Matilde Losi
Graphic design: Alice Zani and Paola Bombelli
Set-up: Parasite 2.0 studio