Today we’d like to introduce you to Lara Aldeghi and Stefano Lionetti.
Hi Lara and Stefano, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
The Milaneser idea was born a couple of years ago when we had the opportunity to visit an exhibition of covers by The Parisianer, Le Montréaler, and The Tokyoiter. For a long time, The Milaneser remained just an idea until the lockdown gave us a disposal of time that we would not have otherwise had. Our goal is to tell everything about Milan through illustration, a universal language that can interpret the reality that often goes beyond the stereotyped narrative. Moreover, Milan was suffering a lot from the pandemic at that specific moment: it was an empty city, a ghost town, one of the points in Italy where Covid had hit the hardest. Milan was unrecognizable, immobile. For us, telling it through images was a way to remember what the city is made of and to have faith in a return to that dynamism. There is no real correlation with current events. They are not covers made about what is happening at that moment in town. We need to work on scheduling in advance, and therefore, when we start with a new year, we already have all the covers that will have to come out in that year. The differentiation is based on briefs given to the illustrators. Each year the brief is different. Apart from 2020, when the project was in an experimental phase, and we only asked each illustrator to give us their version of Milan, in 2021, the brief was dreamlike Milan, which meant not only an ideal city but also desired, dreamed, imagined, fantasized. In 2022 the brief is “the living city” at the center of the subject. In addition to Milan, there are people.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The technical part of managing the artwork is nothing compared to managing people. The first phase was the most delicate: we had to convince 52 illustrators to work on something that did not yet exist at that time. Moreover, we chose among the best Italian illustrators because we wanted to give the project an image of excellence immediately. So basically, we went to 52 professionals saying, “Hey, the project doesn’t exist, but would you like to make a cover for us for free?”. Not exactly simple. We promised that if they sold the covers, they would earn royalties. And indeed it was, but on that first day, even though we strongly believed in our project, we were still determining if it would be successful. But it was. And the following year, we launched an open call to illustrators asking who would like to illustrate a cover, and we received over 400 portfolios. We will always be grateful to those first 52 pioneers who lent themselves to work for our project when it was still nothing.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Zetalab comprises 7 permanent people and relies on external freelancers when workloads increase. Two people actively work on The Milaneser, Lara Aldeghi, creator of the project, who takes care of the texts and editorial content, and Stefano Lionetti, art director of the project. We have been working in the creative field of communication design and visual identity for years. The Milaneser is a project we have created uniquely for us, without a client to dictate the guidelines, and we are very proud of it. We have yet to invent something new. The New Yorker was the first to give cover illustrations the power to tell stories. Still, the illustrated cover design for fictional magazines had already come to life in Paris, Tokyo, and Montreal. We are very proud to have been the first in Italy to develop this format, that in the past two years has gained a lot of other developments. Currently, there are lots of illustrated covers about as many Italian cities.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
Milan is a city we love. We have seen it change and grow, with a sense of self and an identity that is not the only sum of all its symbols. For us, it is a certain civic sense, a way of living, participating, and being present and proud of what is created in the city. It does not have the overwhelming beauty of Rome at all. To make you like it, you have to go and look at it in the details, in the corners, in the spaces, and in the things that are not the iconic ones everyone knows. In some respects, it can be a meat grinder, and we understand how bumper it may seem, especially at an economic level, but staying there is worthwhile for us. We like many things about our city that go beyond the symbols for which it is known in the world: how it can change and evolve every day,
Contact Info:
- Website: www.themilaneser.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.milaneser/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/the.milaneser
- Other: www.zetalab.com
Image Credits
The Milaneser
