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Before Advertising: Illustrated Catalogues as a Form of Visual Communication

Pirelli’s earliest visual communication came in the form of illustrated product catalogues, which it published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. They show how their decorative and illustrative functions were the focus of extreme care, alongside commercial considerations. The many rubber products made by Pirelli included consumer items that appeared in this type of communication, with clothing and haberdashery items, as well as tyres. These products targeted consumers and retailers, unlike the technical items and cables, which were capital goods mainly purchased by public administrations, or by industrial or transport companies.

The illustrations were entrusted to artists, some of whom were well-known, while others were less so: Giuseppe Barberis created lithographs for the 1886 list of elastic rubber carpets, Luca Fornari, a caricaturist and the founder of the weekly Il Mondo umoristico, created the clothing catalogues from 1896 to 1902; Giuseppe Galli and Osvaldo Ballerio created the illustrations for tyres, a product that requires immense advertising skills, for the market was already dominated by major competitors. In 1899 – the year that saw the first experimental production of “pneumatic garnitures for automobiles”, alongside those for bicycles and motorcycles – the painter Giuseppe Galli, a fairly successful watercolourist taken on by Pirelli in 1886 as a technical draughtsman and designer of ornamentation, illustrated the inside pages and the cover of the new price lists in a floral style with shades of gold.

In 1904 it was the turn of the painter Osvaldo Ballerio, who created the cover of the catalogue of “Tyres for Velocipedes, Motorcycles and Automobiles”. Born in Milan in 1870, and a graduate from the Accademia di Brera, he specialised in poster design and advertising graphics, with a particular focus on sports. In the 1910s he created several advertisements for Pirelli, which appeared on the covers of the Italian Touring Club magazine and in the magazines published by the Treves brothers (L’Illustrazione italiana, Il Secolo XX, and Lidel).

These were the years of the first real advertising campaigns in magazines and on posters, which were created by the great names in Italian and international poster design: Ballerio was soon joined by such artists as Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Alessandro Dudovich, and Plinio Codognato.

And this was the start of the long history of Pirelli advertising.

Pirelli’s earliest visual communication came in the form of illustrated product catalogues, which it published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. They show how their decorative and illustrative functions were the focus of extreme care, alongside commercial considerations. The many rubber products made by Pirelli included consumer items that appeared in this type of communication, with clothing and haberdashery items, as well as tyres. These products targeted consumers and retailers, unlike the technical items and cables, which were capital goods mainly purchased by public administrations, or by industrial or transport companies.

The illustrations were entrusted to artists, some of whom were well-known, while others were less so: Giuseppe Barberis created lithographs for the 1886 list of elastic rubber carpets, Luca Fornari, a caricaturist and the founder of the weekly Il Mondo umoristico, created the clothing catalogues from 1896 to 1902; Giuseppe Galli and Osvaldo Ballerio created the illustrations for tyres, a product that requires immense advertising skills, for the market was already dominated by major competitors. In 1899 – the year that saw the first experimental production of “pneumatic garnitures for automobiles”, alongside those for bicycles and motorcycles – the painter Giuseppe Galli, a fairly successful watercolourist taken on by Pirelli in 1886 as a technical draughtsman and designer of ornamentation, illustrated the inside pages and the cover of the new price lists in a floral style with shades of gold.

In 1904 it was the turn of the painter Osvaldo Ballerio, who created the cover of the catalogue of “Tyres for Velocipedes, Motorcycles and Automobiles”. Born in Milan in 1870, and a graduate from the Accademia di Brera, he specialised in poster design and advertising graphics, with a particular focus on sports. In the 1910s he created several advertisements for Pirelli, which appeared on the covers of the Italian Touring Club magazine and in the magazines published by the Treves brothers (L’Illustrazione italiana, Il Secolo XX, and Lidel).

These were the years of the first real advertising campaigns in magazines and on posters, which were created by the great names in Italian and international poster design: Ballerio was soon joined by such artists as Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Alessandro Dudovich, and Plinio Codognato.

And this was the start of the long history of Pirelli advertising.

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