What are we going to do? It all boils down to one thought, one teaching: we will be led by spiritual values. These are eternal values, following these material goods will arise of their own accord without us seeking them.” 
Adriano Olivetti

At Orlando, we hold enlightened entrepreneurship and utopian socialism very close to our hearts, and today we return to them, with joy, to celebrate a new page in the history of Olivetti and its legacy, which is changing guise thanks to the skilful hands of the Cappelli Identity Design graphic studio.
Since 1998, the Archivio Storico Olivetti Association has been collecting, preserving and enhancing the documentary heritage concerning the history of the Olivetti Company. The archive, established in 1986 on the initiative of the then General Secretary Paolo Mancinelli, consists of documents, letters, books, newspapers, magazines, posters, drawings, photos, films, audiovisuals, products, models and plastic models and much more. The association promotes and participates in projects and initiatives with companies, institutions, schools, cultural institutes, and collaborates with researchers to disseminate the values of a century of industrial history for new ideas of the future.

How has Studio Cappelli Identity Design acted in the delicate mission of protecting so much heritage and, at the same time, ferrying it into the future?
When the studio was hired in 2014 to promote the Olivetti legacy, Emanuele Cappelli conceived and developed the Olivetti Design Contest. The symbol of the communication was the egg, an emblem of perfect creation and a metaphor for the designers of the future, made ironic by the presence of a feather that revealed its origin.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the creation of Lettera 22, Cappelli curated a heritage valorisation project for Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti that involved the creation of a new Olivetti typeface, OT L22 . Designers Emanuele Cappelli, Fabio Zanino, Antonio Pace and Lorenzo Properzi and Gaetano di Tondo, President of Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti participated in the project. Today, the new OT L22 font is able to revive Olivetti’s founding values and literally rewrite history.

Studio Cappelli designed the new Digital Identity of the Archivio Storico Olivetti Association using different stylistic languages, with the aim of achieving the right balance between historicity, contemporaneity and innovation. To improve the fruition of the contents, they dealt with User Experience, guiding the user through an interactive path, a virtual museum, where contents are not only displayed, but take shape in thematic paths. The user experiences an immersive navigation experience that loses the classic horizontal or vertical spatial references and becomes fluid.
The graphic design studio, in its relationship with the Archivio Storico Olivetti Association, employed the methodology of Dynamic brand design, the studio’s manifesto, which consists of a new way of designing that stems from the relationship with space and time and aims to build a dialogue with people through the narration of the brand’s identity and its mutability. On this basis, the creatives developed the identity around the concept of projection into the future. Archivi Olivetti not only preserves the past, but projects it towards a sense of democratic culture. This projection safeguards history and prepares it for new interpretations and applications. The term ‘Archives’ represents solidity and accessibility, while ‘Olivetti’ symbolises progress and renewal.

The dynamic identity system that the studio has developed is based on two levels of communication and layout that emphasise the balance between tradition and innovation: the first level consists of graphic elements, while in the second the images are positioned freely in space. The logo was designed based on the structure of OT L22, the aforementioned font; the renaming of the logotype from Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti to Archivi Olivetti marks the culmination of this rebranding and renewal process.

Founded in Rome in 2010 by designer Emanuele Cappelli, Cappelli Identity Design is a multidisciplinary design studio operating worldwide from offices in Rome, Milan and Turin. Thanks to its two departments of Design and Strategy, it realises projects ranging from brand identity to the development of marketing and integrated communication strategies.

“For a designer to design for Olivetti is a great honour because in addition to sharing the values of a community and a company, you get to work alongside those great names in design that have made history.”
Emanuele Cappelli