Graphic Design in the Middle of Communication, 1960s–80s: Gianni Sassi’s Dilettantism and the Public Utility Movement

This chapter examines Italian graphic design culture in the second half of the 20th century, when it underwent a phase of transformation and identity crisis shaped by consumer society and an increasingly competitive communication market. From the late 1960s, efforts at professional consolidation fostered a discourse defined by opposition to advertising and by an emphasis on design as civic and cultural practice. Between the late 1970s and mid-1980s, the notion of pubblica utilità (public utility) became a catalyst for this orientation, prompting debates and initiatives that soon exposed its contradictions. The discussion foregrounds the dissonant role of Gianni Sassi—graphic designer, art director and cultural entrepreneur—whose contribution remains overlooked in critical literature. Active since the 1960s across advertising, neo-avant-garde and countercultural networks, Sassi advanced a conception of communication rooted in a critique of the cultural industry and in a “dilettantist” stance that transgressed professional boundaries. His position underscores the difficulty of graphic design culture in confronting its entanglement with capitalism and mass communication—an issue still highly relevant today.