FeedMeCoolShit.com » Claudio Gnessi

Claudio Gnessi

FMCS: Hi Claudio please tell us a little bit about yourself, your history and how you came to be who you are today!

Well, I was born in a little medieval village in the center of Italy. I moved in Rome for university after an experience as singer in a new wave band. I studied the history of cinema and, and self-taught, design and communication principles. After the degree I left the cinematographic studies and concentrated on design. And now I’m here!

FMCS: How old are you?

I’m 32 years old (on June 27th…)

FMCS: Where are you currently living? And where are you working from?

I’m Italian and I live & work in Rome.

FMCS: Can you tell us a little bit about the projects that you are currently working on? And how did you come up with the name for your site?

Now I’m working in several projects, but the main ones are the restyling of the Italian Chamber of Deputies TV channel and the whole communication design of the Rome Pan-African Film Festival ( www.panafricana.it).
The first one is very prestigious ’cause I’m working for one of the most important republican institution of my Country. But the one I’m in love with is the second. I think that it’s an amazing challenge. I am in charge of imaging the whole communication project of one event: from the logo to the site, from the catalog to the promotional postcard! Its simple exciting and, I think, it’s a really great opportunity to express my style completely!
The name of the site comes up from Alice in Wonderland. Humpty and Dumpty are the Siamese twins that Alice meets in the forest. They are always in contradiction but they can live separated. I found them a perfect symbol of my design thinking. For me a good design project must be animated by an internal fight between the elements that compose it. Humpty and Dumpty are a funny way to say this!

FMCS: What motivates you?

Well, simply doing my work at the best.

FMCS: What got you into design/illustration/print?

I think it was in my destiny. When I look in deep in my past, every choice was in this direction. I was interested to express an idea, a philosophy or a message independently from the support I used (web, paper, video etc.). And in this direction I’ve studied different media and I have produced communication objects in every media (I made short-films, book, TV shows etc.) with the purpose of discover the linguistic differences between certain media… I was wrong, It was bad research, because now I can say that there are no differences: paper, web, video, audio are simple instruments to say what I’ve to say; the strongest of my message in is the deep structure of the message, not in the specific quality of the media I’ve used.
I say more. I think that the real goal from designer is to create a style that can communicate independently from time, language and culture. In this global world I think it’s important to create a universal language and I think that designers have the competences to realize this great opportunity.

FMCS: We notice you have a rather individual style how did this materialize?

I tell you a name! Thievery Corporation… You know them? Well! As you know they have created a new type of music stolen from pieces of existing music, a bass riff, a drum base, a vocal melody… That’s the way I’ve created my style, look, steal, re-combination. If we read the biography of every great artist we discover that everyone of them can be defined as a thief. Every creation is a cover or is a false (depends of point of view). Every creation is a robbery. Every creation is a re-creation.

FMCS: What’s the design scene like where you are? Is it vibrant are people working with each other?

The Italian design scene is very strange. Some designer are not interested in research and simply drag’n'drop from other sites without any re-combination process. Other ones are simple a genius that can create gold from shit. It’s exciting for me to live in this "magma", because I have no fashion to follow or dogma-style to learn. Everything is fluid and everyone can find thier personal way!