In Focus: Interview with Dario Calonaci, Freelancer, Italy

I strive to provide every client with the best result for their requests, make it a logo, a tagline, a complete brand Identity, both for the print and web mediums. Or a custom-tailored Packaging Design to truly make their products stand out!Basically, I try to express who my clients or their companies are, or what their products can help them and their clients accomplish, in the most aesthetically pleasing way.

To me, it means a lot to be able to win my second Muse Awards, as it’s an important acknowledgement in one of the best and more important competitions out there, for my skills and work.I will definitely give this recognition a top place in my studio.

This project holds a special place in my heart. The producer is from my own region and the territoriality of it spread all around the world.Since the first moment I was tasked with it from one of the brand distributors, it was also clear I was up to a lovely challenge.In fact to be able to even imagine a coherent identity for the different company products was a quest, let alone design it.I really think, given the starting and the ending, redesigned point, with all the history and constraints in between, that this is the best design I’ve done until now.

I was about to redesign the different packaging of the various products: I worked three months to be able to imagine and finally define six responsive reading levels that tied the different lines and sub-brands, each to be described and made recognizable with a different font. In the end, I used seven typefaces, but still reached a coherent and balanced vision that is possible to use on different shaped and dimensioned containers, which is an achievement in itself.

The Awards definitely helped bring my name a little more out there, showing what I’m capable – and passionate about, which is something I am always happy and proud to see.Of course, if I knew more about marketing it would have been definitely better for me, but I’m studying on that.

I love the world that design can portray, how it can make the world more beautiful and colorful, which is something we need.I also love how design can help convey information in a meaningful way, which gives the opportunity to shape the future in useful ways.

Italy has always been one country regarded for her beauty and the inhabitant's good taste in it. Just think about the Renaissance.Sadly, this taste seemed lost in the majority of the modern, digital days and arts, with a lot of mediocrity or less being sold around, even in schools.Luckily the passion that this job requires, the search for knowledge of a lot of young people is making that situation change and lately, there have been more and more Italian talents on the digital design market.

I really see virtual and augmented reality as the next mediums and challenges for design.Defining a piece where the user has a world at its disposal, for him to interact within real-time, surrounded by it – and make it functional, coherent and balanced in its functions and meaning, sounds like a complete overhaul of how we’re used to thinking and work right now.It’s also the creative industry, so I know we will be blown away by the coming solutions and ideas.

Never stop reading and questioning yourself and what surrounds you.Learn why things were given a certain aspect, why they were designed that specific way and ask yourself: “Does it have any flaws? If not, did the world changed enough around it, that it needs to be made different? How can I make it better? Both in its original and future form?”But to do so you have to study. So study, read and never take anything for granted.

I would definitely recommend the whole “A Book Apart” catalog, small glimpses about great designs, designers and decisions that surely help to enter this beautiful world.

I wish that someone in my country would have really given me the opportunity to prove myself in the local field.

Every typographer and typemaker, like Monotype, Hoefler&Co, Erik Spiekermann and more (too much to cite, I apologize to everyone for not giving proper and enough credits), because they showed me and the world how much beauty can be reached with so little elements.

The society was built on the wrong foundations and they are trembling.