This identity project for the City of Milan, developed with my colleague Michael Gagliano as our thesis project, was born from an observation of Milan's current communicational context. With a traditional mark that is very hard to distinguish from the city's historical seal, the actual communication system lacks unity, memorability and visual power.

The first thing that we had to do was devising a new mark that could powerfully identify the city and its values, as well as being simple and memorable. The solution is purely typographical, which is an innovation for the modern city of Milan that, regardless of its evolution, has always been represented by a traditional mark. The choice of using the letters MI instead of "Milano" aims at stressing internationality: MI is read in the same way both in english and in italian.

Milan is an international city with a strong tradition. The new mark takes tradition into account as well: by virtue of its vertical positioning, the letters MI form a shape that is a nod to the symbol of the Milanese snake, the most iconic of Milan's many historical symbols.

The applications fall into two categories: institutional and promotional. Institutional communication is characterised by the more neutral color white, with red as secondary color. Promotional communication is instead completely covered in Milano's red, for maximum memorability.

Following a careful audit and analysis among many citizens and city users, we devised six macro-categories that could embody all the main aspects of the city: Culture, Design, Fashion, Music, Entertainment, Sport. We gave each category a color for identification purposes. We used this system to develop all the promotional communication, particularly the posters.

The posters are composed of two halves, one more institutional with the new mark and a short copy and one photographical, representing the face of a person who has given a strong contribute to the field he's called to represent. In between the two halves is a rip. The rip is an ambiguous device that captures the attention. Was the poster ripped? The poster could have been all red and later one half removed, to reveal what's under the institutional face of the city: its fields of excellence and its people.