Design Beyond Design
If there’s one company that has made industrial vision—more than style—its winning trait, that company is Italdesign. In over 50 years, the firm founded by Giorgetto Giugiaro has carved out a key role alongside major manufacturers, while helping emerging players take their first steps—without ever giving in to the temptation of becoming a manufacturer itself.
This story, from its founding by Giugiaro and Aldo Mantovani to its acquisition by the Volkswagen Group, is of course told and illustrated with care in “italdesign – Engineers of ideas”, but not right away. First published in 2024 in Italian and now available in an English-language edition, this large volume opens much like a great film: it begins in the present, portraying what Italdesign is and does today, before diving into a long and substantial flashback covering the company’s origins and the remarkable trajectory of the Giugiaro family.
Great space is dedicated to the production phase, to prototyping, and to the technologies that transformed the legendary pencil strokes of the founders—and the many talented designers who worked alongside them—into solid form. It’s a legacy who the Moncalieri-based company (near Turin) still proudly carries today.
Aldo Colonetti and Valentina Croci, with Italdesign itself, have opted for a clean and elegant layout, never overwhelming: the pages are neither packed with text nor crowded with images. Instead, enlargements and close-up details take center stage. Across 288 pages, the photographs in color and black and white are arranged with care.
Naturally, the final section is dedicated to recent work: prototypes, special cars such as the Quintessenza and the limited-edition Nissan GT-R, as well as projects beyond the automotive world, from home appliances to furniture and micromobility concepts. Before the bibliography and references, the book closes with a concise timeline listing all Italdesign cars from 1967 to today.
Datasheet
Italdesign – Engineers of ideas
Publisher: Giorgio Nada – Giunti
Author: Aldo Colonetti e Valentina Croci
Size: bound volume measuring 26 x 28,5 x 3 cm with hard cover
Pages: 288
Text: English
Photographs: hundreds in color and b/w
Price: 60 euros
