Overseas, the Eames Office was revolutionizing the idea of brand communication. Charles and Ray did it first with Herman Miller, for which they created ad campaigns to transfer the spirit of the contemporary style they were the first to embody. But it was their ability to communicate thought and the formation of ideas through multiple media that brought them commissions to create some of the most innovative projects in the history of visual communication. Such as the famous Powers of Ten, a voyage from man to the galaxy and back to subatomic particles, created for IBM, in which what the product can do is more important than how it is shaped.

Getting to the near present, Studio Formafantasma has opened up a visualization mode that sets the pace for an entire generation. It is not based on a single product, but on an overall vision that shifts from the finished product to the research process, prior to the product itself. If the form is a ‘phantasm’ then the attention concentrates on experimentation, on the process phases, the sequence of investigation that first of all addresses the matter of material. To grant visual narrative form to all this, the Enlightenment metaphor of the table of the elements of the Encyclopédie offers an interesting precedent. From Autarchy to Botanica all the way to De Natura Fossilium, the passages and tools of speculation on material are aligned on an operative plane with scientific elegance and the rigor of the laboratory, ranging from grain to organic plastics to lava.

In the latest projects, Ore Streams and Cambio, the investigation turns to electronic waste and timber, a contemporary material and a very old one. Here the modes of narration are enriched with sites that gather data (documents, interviews), films produced for the occasion, and the use of social networks, as seen on the studio’s Instagram account. The public channel is not just a filing cabinet filled with updates on recent works, but a channel used with a design approach, as a digital archive open to the web. The organization of data takes on greater importance than the presentation of the material itself.

In Cambio, as in Ore Streams, the emphasis is not on the final product that emerges from the process, be it a desk made with computer ‘fossils’ or furnishings made of wood. The focal point is analysis of the meaning, today, of the design of materials that cannot be recycled, damaging the ecological balance, or materials whose coercive cultivation betrays the laws of natural sustainability. Hence the communication of the immaterial part of the project takes on the meaning of the project as a whole, and the ‘brand,’ in this case, is the identity of the designers and their vision. The management of data visualization has a degree of creativity absolutely comparable to that of the design of the product.