A superlative studio,
for things that are
relevant and beautiful
Bellissimo is a communication design studio active since 1998. Based in Turin, we work from a light-filled loft, collaborating with major brands and institutions, historic companies, and emerging ventures across a wide range of sectors. In every project, we combine disciplines and languages to create visuals, experiences, and content that clearly and effectively convey values and messages.
Today, Bellissimo brings together a team of 15 designers, copywriters, and project managers, along with one architect. We think of ourselves as a studio — both for the shared references that inspire us and for our horizontal, collaborative structure, where roles are less fixed-in-place than in a traditional agency.
IN A FEW WORDS
-
Enthusiastic
Doing a good job means doing it with love — it’s the principle at the heart of everything we do. First, we work hard: we know we need to prove our value every time and we know that this requires great effort. Second, we want to live life with depth. We stay positive, smile, and inspire confidence. We understand how important a clear mind is: being transparent, concise, and sincere. Growing means showing the ability to guide those who are confused —managers, organizations, or a team— and continuing to do so.
-
Leader
For over 28 years, we have been engaging people in forward-looking projects. We continuously create opportunities to connect and challenge the status quo: a style magazine, a creative studio, a design community, a monthly newspaper, an experimental city imaging lab, and a travel and networking format across multiple European cities. We often open our projects to others — collaborators, designers, makers, entrepreneurs, volunteers.
-
Open
We love it where we work: our Bellissimo Blue Loft. Here, we welcome people into a light-filled, inspiring open space designed for creativity. Whenever there’s a chance, we enjoy hosting a party — sharing the behind-the-scenes of our projects over a unique drink, with carefully selected music playing in the background. We often open the doors of our studio for workshops, book launches, talks, brainstorming sessions, experiments — as well as photoshoots and video productions.
-
Prolific
Size-wise, Bellissimo is a relatively small studio, but since 1998 we’ve produced an incredible volume of work. We are fast and neatly organized: every Monday morning, we review an average of fifty different projects. Yet we never stop focusing on our growth plans. We stay up to date through work trips and study sessions. Every year, we dedicate upwards of a month to a number of non-profit side projects. Over 28 years, we’ve done many different things, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.
-
Talented
Young and talented, yet grounded and reliable. Bellissimo was founded on the idea of working with words and images to create evocative, contemporary, and to-the-point communication. Today, our team of designers carries this same mission forward while keeping an open and expansive view of what design can help achieve. We work as a team, confident in blending roles without relying on job titles or account positions. Our projects are connected to current events, innovation, business, and urban life. Whenever a meaningful initiative arises, we are eager to be part of it.
Why Bellissimo? When we see or read something we like, “Bellissimo” is what we utter — a word that the world understands and beckons with self-irony to our objective of superlative ambitions.
Bellissimo is both a name and a mission. The best moment is when the circle is complete — when someone who has trusted us sees the final result and says: “Bellissimo!”
THE TEAM
-
LUCA BALLARINI
FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR
-
BARBARA VILLANOVA
PARTNER & ART DIRECTOR
-
EDOARDO BERGAMIN
EDITOR & COPYWRITER
-
CRISTINA ORTALI
ART DIRECTOR
-
ALESSIO D’ERRICO
ART DIRECTOR
-
ALESSANDRO BEVILACQUA
PROJECT MANAGER
-
CHIARA BERTETTI
ARCHITECT
-
MANUELA FERRI
PRODUCTION MANAGER
-
ALESSANDRO ZANE
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
-
MARTA DORIA
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
-
GIANCARLO M. TRAINA
COPYWRITER
-
ALBERTO NALDI
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
-
ANDREA VINCI
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
-
PIETRO LONGHI
COPYWRITER
They’ve worked with us: Henry Albert, Alessia Agostini, Daniele Bitetti, Angelo Bruno, Silvia Bruno, Beatrice Carmi, Veronica Cantono, Sofia Castrogiovanni, Martina Cerrato, Livia Chiriatti, Dario Consoli, Christian Corrent, Cristina Costamagna, Greta Costarelli, Alessandro Cuttica, Gemma De Bernardi, Valeria De Lauretis, Stefano De Rigo Piter, Simone Ellero, Carlotta Favretto, Ivan Felleca, Jacopo Ficulle, Flaminia Gallo, Samantha Garofalo, Simone Gatto, Anna Gerometta, Michele Guazzone, Matteo Guerra, Marta Guindani, Gloria Maggioli, Annalisa Morzone, Paola Nardini, Lucrezia Noro, Francesca Oddenino, Enrico Opezzo, Valentina Paracchi, Karin Pretto, Daniela Puddu, Dario Quatrini, Daniela Rodia, Francesca Sardigna, Leonardo Siciliano, Laura Sinagra Brisca, Gloria Somaini, Alberto Spadafora, Gabriele Stragliati, Alice Tirinzoni, Veronica Viotti.
-
WHAT SETS US APART
Being designer-editors
When we talk about our work, we often refer to our dual role as designer-editor. This is more than a way to describe a unified approach to projects — it reflects a careful attention to all dimensions of communication, visual, verbal, and strategic, that each of us brings, regardless of our specific role.
Designers: focus on content. Editors, think about form. This ever-applicable mindset is rooted in the editorial experience that gave birth to the studio. For nearly ten years, Bellissimo’s work ran alongside the publication of Label, a style magazine — an approach later repeated with the monthly ITALIC and other ventures.Conceiving and producing content, art direction, and layout as part of a single, unified process has shaped our work. Over time, our experience as publishers has fostered a culture of visual and verbal care that now carries through our most complex projects, where we manage content and graphics in their entirety — and more. It’s an impulse to expand personal reflection, transcending job titles and their boundaries they impose on paper.
-
Subtraction and division
The two math signs in our logo have an existential value for Bellissimo. Initially chosen as guiding principles for our graphic design approach, these two operations continue, years later, to inspire the creative thinking at the core of the studio’s work. A dual lesson —sharp and spontaneous— precisely because it was chosen by self-taught designers at the start of their careers. A choice made almost by chance. A trick. Yet one that reveals itself as the theme of a sonata, returning through countless variations.
Subtract and divide. Select, cut, reduce. Edit. Make the message clear and sharp, with words and images — not everyone likes it, but for us, it works best. What remains at the end of these progressive reductions has the power to strike, to evoke memories and emotions: it appears to the eye as something new, the kind of image that lingers in long-term memory and becomes timeless. Curiously, these two “existential” symbols stand in stark contrast to what happens in our lives, where everything accumulates and multiplies as we move forward.Bellissimo has always believed in education through vision. Instead of abstract ideas, we aim to create concise forms.
Vision is the result of synthesis — the same kind required to build an argument or form a judgment. Each of us continues to learn from what we see, day by day. The evolving nature of the design profession carries great responsibility, but it is also a strong motivation toward what we want to see, a drive to bring it to life. That is why the greatest results of our work come when these visions become shared. -
A cultural mission
Bellissimo is a communication studio, and our task is to respond to the goals of the companies and organizations that come to us. At the same time, we believe our work can contribute to a broader conversation about the quality of the content we create.
We are deeply interested in the cultural role we can play as communication designers, within the scope of our activities and the spaces we manage to open up. This comes through in our desire to create a contemporary visual language, our willingness to experiment, our use of words, and our eagerness to tell stories — even if it means adding a few extra lines. Within the limits of each project, we aim to push language a little further, whether for a niche publication or a mass-market packaging project.This professional attitude reveals itself in our daily interactions with clients and partners, but it also finds freedom in self-initiated projects and initiatives. The Summer School, meetings, and workshops we organize at the loft all stem from the same idea: the studio as an active, engaged place within the creative industry.
“We humble ourselves, we sharpen our wit, and we offer, at the very least, our moment of lucidity. Our concern is always ‘the place of value in a world of facts’. But there is no role waiting for us, there is merely the chance of making one out of the sheer courage of our perceptions.”
— Norman Potter, What is a designer