The city boasts important collaborations between companies and the world of visual design. The first floor of Eataly Torino displays the graphic artworks by Achille Luciano Mauzan, Marcello Dudovich and the Punt e Mes advertising campaigns developed by Armando Testa between 1954 and 1956 telling the story of Vermouth Carpano. Casa Martini, based in Pessione, a few kilometres from Torino, has a collection of over a hundred graphic artworks, including the international advertising campaign designed by Andy Warhol in 1958, which outline 150 years of visual communication to promote the most known Italian ‘aperitivo’ in the world.
The collection inside the Museo Lavazza, besides telling the story of the company and the coffee supply chain, illustrates the collaboration with Armando Testa starting from the TV commercials that made the history of Italian advertising, with characters like Caballero and Carmencita, in the years when television entered Italian homes. The charming entrance hall of the restaurant Al Gatto Nero, designed by Pietro Derossi in 1957, is adorned with a collection of black cats, one per year, designed by Armando Testa for the restaurant’s sophisticated atmosphere.
Nowadays, alongside the work of the several firms and professionals specialised in graphic design, illustration and visual design for the new media, research can be implemented in different places in the city, such as the Print Club Torino, a creative workshop of prints and graphic art; Laboratorio Zanzara, a craft shop as well as a graphic and communication agency born from a project promoting the social integration of people with mental illnesses; Caracol Art Gallery, an art and illustration gallery set up in the artistic and multi-ethnic melting pot of San Salvario neighbourhood; Paint it Black, a book shop specialised in independent publishing; and Pressato, a café offering top-quality coffee and a space for art and books in the area of Quadrilatero romano.