Posters for the Festa dell’Unità in Bologna

Fabio Bolognini, the in-house graphic designer for the Bologna Federation of the PCI (Italian Communist Party) from 1981, was a central figure in designing posters and graphic communication for the Festa dell’Unità in Bologna and its province — an event that represented the largest political, cultural, and popular festival widely spread throughout Italy, a mass event that required a complex system of urban visual communication. The designer's account collects operational and material memories, highlighting the practices, tools, and relationships that defined the period’s visual production.

Bolognini reconstructs an operational and material picture of poster production for the Festa dell’Unità: a craft-based, collective practice closely linked to local printing and photolithography. Design work took place in Via Barberia, in the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region, in the “Stampa e Propaganda” (Press and Propaganda) office led by Elisio Fava; here, the Federation acted as the commissioning and project center, while the reference print shop they worked with — Graficoop — served as the productive and technological arm.

Work was predominantly manual. Without electronic tools, posters and flyers were hand-composed, physically mounted, and assembled into layouts that often required quick, less-than-perfect solutions in urgent situations. Headings were set with transfer lettering (such as the Letraset brand): composing letter by letter demanded extreme precision and shaped aesthetic choices and readability. The adoption of the Futura typeface for the 1987 festival was dictated, for instance, by the simple physical availability of transfer sheets containing Paul Renner’s alphabet; the typeface was tracked and applied by hand, allowing the designer to adjust spacing and create typographic compositions unattainable with the photocomposition techniques of the time. Color production — in line with the typical workflow of photocomposition — was managed through black-and-white mechanicals accompanied by manual indications of tonal values (e.g., 30% magenta, 10% yellow). This required the graphic designer to mentally preview the final result and place operational trust in Graficoop’s photolithography department, which was equipped with optical enlargers capable of working with formats larger than 70x100 cm. For long texts, pre-printed proofs provided by external companies were used and then physically pasted onto the layout. It was impossible to "send a file": the designer lived in the print shop, directly monitoring layout preparation and press proofs until the first satisfactory copies came off the press.

The collective and workshop-like dimension also emerges in external collaborations: among these was Doriana Mitri, a recurring figure as an external graphic designer and artist, who, along with a collective of painters, created giant panels and hand-painted displays. Before Bolognini’s arrival, the PCI had chosen Marco Caroli for the 1980 National Festival, whose photographic and “pop” work left a recognizable mark — including a coordinated identity using a butterfly as a defining element — as well as shared projects with Mitri. On an organizational level, despite the absence of a formal graphic standards manual, a reference structure existed: from the nationwide propaganda "skeleton" coming from Rome to a search for visual coherence applied locally (grids for magazines, standard templates for daily news). Bolognini describes different dynamics depending on the importance of the work: dealing daily with the head of the press office or the festival manager; for major assignments, directly with the Federation’s secretary; for minor tasks, with the managers of individual sectors.

A symbolic case is the Arte e Rivoluzione (Art and Revolution) poster (1987), for which Bolognini had the opportunity to work directly with a reproduction of El Lissitzky’s 1919 original, attempting not to distort the source work. This typically postmodern episode nevertheless demonstrates the attention paid to historical aspects and collective cultural heritage within the political graphic design practice of the era.

Archiving and the memory of the process ultimately appear as key elements in understanding this now-vanished practice: Bolognini donated his personal archive to the Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna Onlus (Bologna). He looks back with nostalgia on the extended timelines of that "workshop-style" way of working, when a poster could require up to ten days of development — a timeframe that fostered design care and experimentation difficult to replicate today. He did not preserve photographic documentation of the offices or the Graficoop print shop, meaning many of the procedures remain entrusted to the memory of the actors involved.

Ultimately, the history recounted by Bolognini shows a professional figure fully in line with the great Italian era of Grafica di Pubblica Utilità (Graphic Design for Public Utility). It is an experience that, in its communication, demonstrates a desire to overcome the rigid rules of the preceding Modernism — rejecting the dogmatic grids of the International Typographic Style and Swiss influence — through the expressive use of illustration combined with typefaces and more flexible layouts. Furthermore, this contribution firmly fits into the history of graphic design in the Italian provinces, focusing on the local context and shining a light on cultural and production realities other than the usual, highly celebrated industrial design capitals of Italy.

Bolognini’s account thus offers a concrete testimony to the materiality and collective modalities of political communication: a practice that intertwined technical skills, artisanal solutions, and institutional relationships, contributing—through technical limitations and material choices—to building the public image of the Federation and the Festa dell’Unità in Bologna.

Interviews:
Fabio Bolognini, interviewed by Susie Sarracino, Bologna, May 14, 2026.

Bibliography / Sources:
Gianni Borgognoni, Renata Disarò (Open Group), Inventory, Graficoop Archive 1873–1986, ER Archives—Participatory Information System of Historical Archives in Emilia-Romagna, Tuesday, June 11, 2024, archivi.ibc.regione.emilia-romagna.it – Last accessed June 1, 2026.