Louise Fili

Louise Fili

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“ As deeply as her work is inspired by history, it reveals itself as new and contemporary.”

–Liz Danzio 2

Right: Montecatini is atypeface designed by Louise Fili. It takes after the elegant Stile Liberty travel posters of Italy in the early 1900s. It is great for logos, book design, monograms and packaging. Both images are examples of the typeface in use.

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How Louise Fili Changed the State of Graphic Design

Louise Fili

is an Italian-American female graphic designer. She was born on April 12th, 1951 and is famous for her designs of book covers, packaging and logos. Additionally she has a niche for beautiful typography and has designed several typefaces.

She started off her design career very early and at a young age she was drawing letters before she even knew full words. When she was 16 years old she bought an Osmiroid pen and a book of sample calligraphy, which she still references to this day, and taught herself calligraphy. Though she didn’t know exactly what graphic design when she was so young, she did know she had an affinity for books and type. Her Italian heritage is very important to her practice and most of her designs are inspired

by Italian elements or local companies. She takes elements from historical Italian inspiration and puts her own contemporary twist on it.

Beginning in 1976, when she was 25 she worked for Herb Lubalin, another American graphic designer who helped jump-start her career. She says that working with him was in “an environment where type was given the utmost respect…”

In 1978 she joined Random House as an art director for the Pantheon List. She had a commercial and critical success for the design of the cover of Marguerite Duras’s The Lover.

She was then able to create more than 2000 book jackets for the publisher and this opportunity helped her develop her voice in design.

She wanted to change the idea of what book covers were supposed to look like and she didn’t want to conform to the standard idea. She created covers with her Italian heritage and her love of typography in mind.

She moved on from Random House to create her own studio to focus on things she cared deeply about; food, type, and Italy. Many of her book covers moved from illustrating novels, to books that are about type style, and then Italian cook books. Her book covers push started her to create more things that had a deep impact on graphic design.

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1. The Lover was a runaway bestseller -Pantheon’s first since Dr Zhivago in 1958.

2. Part of a Gallery Space set up at SVA that was a collage of all the book covers Fili has done.

3. Graphique de la Rue cover celebrates the beautiful signage of Paris, featuring the best examples of gold leaf, neon, and mosaics from the City of Light.

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“I wanted to focus on the three things I’m passionate about; food, type, and all things Italian.”

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A photograph of a collection of prints that Fili has used for restaurants , logos, books, and other products for her clients. She has a broad range of different typography and colors.

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Growing

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up in New Jersey didn’t give her the outlet for her Italian heritage that she longed for, so she traveled to Italy many times and her inspiration for, not only her own typeface began, but also almost all her logos and packaging design.

She says that because she wasn’t able to live over there she needed to create a “typographic oasis” to make up for it. Much of her work, especially her packaging design, focused solely on typographic elements while incorporating Italian inspiration.

She said on her first trip to Italy, with her parents, mother from Calabria and father from Sicily, she was able to make a connection between food and Italy. This became her muse in a way, and provided a lot of inspiration for her work to come in the future.

Each bit of design she does for different packaging is unique and individual to the product. She focuses on what the product is, what design would inspire people to pick that product up and then the identity of the product would be born.

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“My story always starts here in Italy, which is my greatest source of inspiration both typographic and gastronomic.”

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1. Italienne (the French word for Italian) is a restaurant in NoMad which focuses on the cuisine, wine, and spirits of Northern Italy and Southern France, an ode to Louise Fili’s personal nationalities.

2. The logo for Le Monde was designed as a classic French enamel sign from the thirties.

3. Another example of her typeface in use, Montecantini.

4. West Village gastroteca, is named after a street in the Tuscan town of Bagno a Ripol. The typography is inspired by Itlaian posters.

5. Another example of Fili’s typeface, Montecantini.

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years after leaving Pantheon, she opened her own studio in New York City, where she focused on logos and packaging that were food related and created identities for restaurants. Those restaurants included ones like La Vara, Mermaid Inn, Artisanal, and Pearl Oyster Bar.

She liked to go with clients of small businesses, and stick to only subjects that interested her. She mixes “old world” graphics while incorporating her own modern stylistic design. However, when her business was coming to fruition, many people urged her not to name her business after herself because people were adversed to this idea was because of the fact that she was a woman.

Which then prompted her to state “If you have a problem with me being female then I have a problem with you being my client.” It didn’t matter to her if that cost her the clients or the jobs, her identity and self worth was more important. Having come from an Italian household, everything always was surrounded around food, and she knew it was inevitable that she would work for the food industry.

Everything Louise FIli does is personal to herself, and always connect back to her Italian heritage. Her craft is elegant and her content is Italian history combined with American modern design.

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1. Louise Fili Brand Logo Metro Grill’s logo was made into an actual stitched clothing label, which is used on the menus, servers’ shirts and chefs’ baseball caps. Located in New York.

The Mermaid Inn is a restau 3. The Mermaid Inn is a restaurant in the style of a seafood shack—except that it’s located in the East Village.

4. Pearl Oyster Bar, 2012, Greenwich Village.

5. Post 390 is a restaurant in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, that was built on the site of a former post office.

6. Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. Fili also designed the packaging design for their brand of pasta as well.

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The exhibition space of Louise Fili’s work when the School of Visual Arts honored her with the 28th annual Masters Series Award and Exhibition in October 2016.

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Designed and written by Taylor Mastrio Composed in Imprint MT Shadow and Palatino Printed from a Big Gray printer onto Hammermill 60# text.

Copyright Š 2018 Taylor Mastrio, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art All images provided by Louise Fili LTD

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