Signorini,
a Company’s language also consists of punctuation marks and each and every one of these symbolize its changing culture, management and operations. A punctuation mark underscores both the past and the new. In point of fact, the onset of a new way of conceiving the Company does not imply foregoing everything that existed before: it is, instead, an essential fragment of an industrial reality in existence since 1923 which, however, must analogously reflect a new ongoing industrial reality. Vittorio Gregotti well described this as an element of eternity that continues to renew itself. Compared to Rembrandt’s paintings, Hopper’s paintings do not really reflect progress – even if this is implied; rather, they merely provide the world with a new language as well as new visual and thematic meanings. Ultimately, a new critical paradigm emerges, entailing a different and updated judgement of those past aesthetical experiences which were disseminated by European painting since the XVI Century.

Thus, as in the figurative arts, even in the industrial reality of Pietro Signorini & Figli Spa, the past is inevitably the main player of the Company’s history. Nonetheless, the future, or even a somewhat arrogant desire to keep pace with the future, requires a critical review of the past and all that it was. A new paradigm of the future can provide an updated and current interpretation even of one’s own past. While the need remains to contemplate the past and take into account what came before, new strategies and growth trends must be implemented in order to make Pietro Signorini & Figli Spa a robust, growing and competitive Company within the global market.

In order to achieve this, the standard parameters of proper industrial management must be developed along side of other concepts; in particular, the determination to keep up with the future, inevitably requires that the Company’s industrial culture become an effective means to substantiate the process of cultural growth tout court.
In today’s world, technical objects acquire a formal impact. This is sanctioned not only by the rules of the market, but also by the cultural dynamics that mirror them. The mere functionality of everyday tools no longer suffices to guarantee economic efficacy as well as the sensorial satisfaction of all the subjects involved in the market economy.
A continuous tension underlies the concepts of art and industry, form and technology, and this is precisely what spurs ongoing research and the process of striking a balance between these two concepts. It gives rise to the ability to transform meaning into form. This is our industrial wealth and the excellence that Pietro Signorini & Figli Spa strives to achieve.

MOMA’s Department of Industrial Design, under the guidance of Edmund Kauffmann, tested these concepts (aesthetical requirements and product requirements) for the first time, between 1950 and 1955, during a series of exhibitions called Good Designs: the goal was to underscore the value of form while attempting to teach modernity. IBM – International Business Machine is another case in point. With Graphic Coordinators, Eliot Noyse and Paul Rand, this great American Company completely refurbished its corporate identity and singled out a new approach in model manufacturing; the end result was the 1961 Select typewriter. It was a new product based on aesthetic and technical tenets, a product aimed at expressing both industrial and technological excellence.
The above demonstrates that the concept of Beauty can come about from a project, and that functional Beauty can also be projected, thus creating a different industrial philosophy. The company’s managerial requirements, therefore, undergo a semantic shift: the growth of the manufacturing reality can no longer afford to be solely based on classical economic-financial parameters. There is a manifest determination to apply words and concepts to the industry’s operational vocabulary which are derived from a different cultural heritage - most typically, the humanities.

With the advent of the Industrial age, the issue of aesthetics, Beauty, was transformed into a project which reflected the dialectics between product functionality and art. The latter, at the beginning of the era of industrial reproducibility, was expected to take charge of the industrial project and to transform the aesthetic language into something operational. “The object, having become an industrial product for mass consumption, […] acquired new dignity […]; beauty was evoked […] through the acquisition of both function and usefulness, considered to be the main elements of commercial dissemination [M. Vitta].” The form of things became Beauty. Beauty, personified in mass products, also had to emerge as an aesthetical product and not only as the fruit of functional engineering. In his monograph, Maurizio Vitta reiterates that art entered the realm of industry: consumer tastes had to be educated without severing the ties to the rigid schemes of industrial production. Beauty thus became customary. In the industrial reality of the XIX and XX Centuries, Beauty continued to maintain its prerogative: that is, to bridge the gap between the ideal and the real. This aesthetic redemption came in answer to standardized mass production and went on to become social redemption and lastly became a way of cultural education. Shortly thereafter, it was acknowledged by the world of Design – meaning the planning of forms. Design and Beauty became every day experiences which spoke a new language: the aesthetical experience became pivotal in a new century dominated by machines.

Dott. Iacopo Piccinini, Chief Executive Officer