History of a firm: the Olivetti character

Abstract

This article, which focuses on Ballmer’s Project for the Olivetti logotype, has as its starting point two documents kept at the Archivio Storico Olivetti in Ivrea. The article is based on the texts by Fortini, whose approach links the logotype to the history of writing, the evolution of signs, as well as to advertising purposes. The work by Fortini and Ballmer does indeed connect the actual logotype to Olivetti’s memory and, therefore, to the topics of innovation in typographical characters and to their meaning as transmission of thought, considered as a necessary passage for the formulation of identity.