Maria Cristina Didero

New Icon Design

Icon Design, the Mondadori Group’s upscale architecture and interior design magazine which, in just three years, has become a point of reference in the world of design trends, is evolving and re-launching on the occasion of the Milan design Week 2019 with a new formula.

The new Icon Design edited by Annalisa Rosso, with Maria Cristina Didero in the role of editor-at-large, will devote more attention to the people on the periphery of the design world, in particular the inhabitants of the homes featured in the magazine, conversations and exchanges between the different personalities that give life to a design project.

“It will be an inclusive, open and international magazine. The image we have selected fro the cover, taken in an apartment in Milan’s Torre Velasca, is a manifesto, a synthesis of freedom, energy and innovation. The same vibe one feels at the Furniture Fair during the Milan Design Week, the city where we are based, have deep roots and from where we want to speak to and interact with the world, enabling the emergence of a range of voices, inspirations and provenances  that characterise the pages of the new Icon Design,” declared Annalisa Rosso, editor-in-chief of Icon Design.

Entirely bilingual, in Italian and English, and redesigned by Frank Studio, the new Icon Design reflects the cosmopolitan community that surrounds contemporary design and language, providing an account of what’s happening in the world from a range of particular perspectives.

In the issue of 6 April, entitled The Aesthetic of Freedom – L’Estetica della Libertà, Humberto Campana, with photographer Stefano Ferroni, has produced the main story which is about the Foundation created together with his brother Fernando in Brazil, in order to make a significant contribution to the improvement of the villages surrounding Sao Paolo. Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, who is the curator of the first project by Yona Friedman, recently presented in a Miami, reports on a conversation with the great architect, born in 1923. While Beatrice Galilee interviews Shohei Shigematsu, in 2008 the youngest partner of the OMA studio, and now directing the headquarters in New York.

Each issue will focus on a different subject: in May America, in June contemporary art, and in July and August Japan.

Among new columns, The Design Marathon will each month examine in more detail at an international Design Week. After Italy, and Milan, to which a number of features are included in the new issue, we will move to the ICFF in New York. Don’t skip the adv, edited by Simona Angioni, will take a broader look at image with a discussion about advertising from the perspective of the creators. Meanwhile, Postcards will provide a brand new vision of places and cities through the pictures shot by well-known individuals from the international world of design.

Also the site has a new look, with a visual appearance in line with  the innovation of the brand, and conceived for users who are always on the move in the urban space. Social media in general and Instagram in particular, offer an additional opportunity to talk about companies in the sector, new products and the most exclusive events in a fresh and immediate language.

A cross-over, international and open approach to different issues, will enable Icon Design to address a much wider audience of readers and advertisers. The magazine’s new formula, becoming a point of reference in the segment with 10 issues per year, has ensured significant advertising sales, with a total of 120 ad pages out of a total foliation of 426 pages.

With a circulation of 90,000 copies, Icon Design will reinforce its distribution also in qualifying locations, such as design and interiors showrooms, the SEA lounges at Milan’s Linate and Malpensa airports, upscale hotels, Mondadori bookstores, and abroad on newsstands and in the airports of the leading capitals of design, including New York, Miami, Paris, Basel, Berlin and  Monaco, as well as at important sector trade fairs.

The launch will also be accompanied by an advertising campaign planned across the main daily newspapers and in iDD Magazine, the DOOH (Digital out of home) circuit, which combines advertising with the editorial content of Mondadori’s lifestyle titles.

Icon Design will also play a leading role in the upcoming Design Week with the third edition of Icon Design Talks,  from 8 to 13 April in Milan: with a cycle of conferences, master-classes  and debates, featuring architects, designers and professionals who, through their efforts, work to redefine the relationship between people and cities and to identify our future needs and necessities.

Icon Design: Annalisa Rosso to be the new editor. Maria Cristina Didero editor-at-large

From January Annalisa Rosso will be the new editor of Icon Design, the upscale magazine of design, architecture and interiors of the Mondadori Group; at the same time Maria Cristina Didero will take on the role of di editor-at-large.

With this new team, Icon Design will cover the world of design in all its varied facets through stories about cutting edge personalities, objects, homes and projects.
A multi-disciplinary and international approach open to the broadest range of issues and aimed at an expanding target of readers and advertisers, who have rewarded a formula that has become a point of reference with excellent results in terms of advertising revenues.

Design journalist and independent curator, Annalisa Rosso has written for and overseen production for numerous national and international titles, including Casa Vogue Brasil, Living, Alla Carta, Wallpaper, Ideat, 032c, Architektur und Wohnen. She led the launch of the new Domusweb designed by Mark Porter in 2017 and has worked as a consultant for numerous brands in the sector.
She has been a guest lecturer at the Design Canberra Festival 2018, the University of Genoa, TEDx Talks, the Salone del Mobile.Milano Shanghai and the Triennale in Milan.
She curated the seventh edition of Operae, the independent design fair in Turin, and the personal exhibition of Valentina Cameranesi in Milan’s 5VIE district, during Miart and the Milano Design Week in 2018.

Maria Cristina Didero is an independent curator, author and freelance journalist. She has worked with national and international institutions and a number of titles, including VogueDomus and Icon Design.
Her most recent projects include the exhibition SuperDesign in New York about radical Italian design; one-man show of Erez Nevi Pana entitled Vegan Design – Or The Art of Reduction for the Milan Design Week 2018; Fun House, an anthology dedicated to the Snarkitecture  collective, at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.. During the latest edition of the Design Week in Prague, OKOLO has dedicated and curated an exhibition of her texts, graphically visualised.