"Book and musket”. Graphic design of Italian school reports and diplomas during the Fascism.

During the interbellum period in Italy, the dynamic and authorial graphic design of the Fascist regime prevailed the static and anonymous previous one. The Italian school reports and diplomas followed the symbolic scheme of the two educational institutions for children and young people: Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB, 1926) and Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL, 1937). Up to the beginning of the World War II, the Italian institutional graphic design turned into a direct expression of the artistic research of the period showing an authentic renewal. Fascism revolutionised the graphic of school reports and diplomas according to the effective communication calling at work painters, architects, caricaturists, cartoonists and commercial artists - among these Cesare Gobbo (Parma, 1899 - Napoli, 1981) and Viero Migliorati (Roma, 1910 - 1943). In the school reports by C. Gobbo, the lictorial fasces are reduced to essential lines shaping original architectures which recall the utopian visions belonging to Antonio Sant’Elia (1888 - 1916), the master of Futurism, for a “New Town” (1912-1914). The graphic production of V. Migliorati is based on the dynamics of the oblique lines using modern fonts and the experimentation carried out at the Bauhaus. His graphic compositions were conceived in order to create a free and non-consequential reading. Sometimes, the school reports had the function to advertise the autarkic products like the sugar produced by the beetroot. At the outset of World War II, the graphic design of the school reports and diplomas changed to perform the myth of the power. The visual mass communication lost its two-dimensional composition and the modern dynamism of Avant-garde favouring static compositions and the classical and monumental language of “Novecento”, the artistic movement promoted by Margherita Sarfatti (1880 -1961), Mussolini’s cultured friend. The symbols of the propaganda became a company brand. Some classical stylistic features were recalled with strong vehemence. Only some rhetorical and stylistic motifs were isolated, simplified and oversized in order visualise the grandeur of the regime and its values and to produce a sense of submission to young people, thus observing the motto “Believe, obey and fight”. The high school diplomas by the Ente Nazionale per l’Insegnamento Medio e Superiore - ENIMS (1939-1945) showed the big Roman symbols of the oak, eagle and the lictorial fasces. The print used the whole range of transparencies, loses the chromatic contrasts and follows the tonal passages. The three-dimensional vision was provided with the essential chiaroscuro. The propaganda also involved children. The primary school reports had a graphic design similar to the comics using painted backgrounds with essential colours. The school reports had oversized black rods shaping the verb “win”. Guns and war vehicles created the myth of the regime and made effective the motto: “Libro e moschetto – Fascista perfetto”.