You Want Good Design? Then Forget About Trends

Massimo Vignelli is a grandee of design who's on a mission to combat the vulgarity he sees all around him.

If only his fellow-practitioners felt the same way, he tells David Usborne.

Massimo Vignelli, dressed entirely in black save for a tiny grid-motif silver pin beneath his Adam's apple, lifts his eyes the full height of the leaded pains of the windows in his Manhattan apartment all the way to the ceiling, 21 feet above.

It is a gargantuan living space, even if he stands over six feet tall himself. "It's about the right size for my ego," he says. "Not to feel compressed."

As an Italian-born architect and designer whose determinedly modernist worldview has won him many awards as well as exhibits in museums such as the MoMA in New York as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vignelli can afford to show some good-humoured self-aggrandisement.

There is also the fact that in America, at least - which has been his home for 40 years - Vignelli designs and logos are everywhere.

"You could fly into New York on American Airlines, find your way on the New York City subway, shop at Bloomingdales, dine at Palio, and even worship at St Peter's Church and never be out of touch with a Vignelli-designed logo, signage system, shopping bag, table setting or pipe organ," noted the graphic designer Michael Bierut - and

more: news.independent.co.uk/media/article359742.ece (215)

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