Branding, mentoring, album covers and art
Showing just some of my skills as I moved from field to field in my design career
Many skills, one goal: creativity
Since a young age, I always wanted to express myself.
I became a professional gymnast at 8, where I could develop my passion for sports like football, basket, and horse riding.
At 18 I became a guitarist and then a composer, I toured Italy with my band and played our own music with the biggest rock bands like Marlene Kuntz, Paolo Benvegnu' and Negrita.
Instead of going to the military, I chose the civil service, which lead me to become an ambulance driver, and that taught me a lot about respect for anyone working in hospitals and care homes.
After all of this, I became a designer, a mentor, and consequently an artist.
All of this to say that I enjoy life, meeting people, learning new skills, and challenging myself to become the best version of myself in the world, while pursuing creativity.
International album releases with MySpace
I've been the main creative force for MySpace, in London, delivering ads, landing pages, and album launch designs for 52 countries. Some of the launches I'm most proud of are Green Day, Royksopp, Prodigy, and Lili Allen.
My work is not only digital, as I designed a MySpace bus touring Europe to bring the best music to the people.
During this time, while working for MySpace, I was also recognized by Kanye West as his favorite artist back then, with my unique style of mixing visuals, music and augmented reality.
David Beckham for Yahoo!
Just months before the 2010 World Cup David Beckham got injured, so Yahoo! decided to hire him as our ambassador for the World C, writing articles on Yahoo! Sports and delivering a worldwide interview on our channels.
It has been a pleasure working with him and creating a full scale global campaign that reached all media, online and offline.
Be flexible
When it comes to delivering a global campaign it is important to be flexible and to know how to adapt your creative into any slim, wide, or large format to reach the widest audience.
The campaign has been adapted for newspapers, online ads, tube station ad size and many more non standard formats.
The devil's in the details.
Advertising
At the beginning of my career, I have been delivering ads for Yahoo! and MySpace to engage the audience with our products, and I've been very successful at it, so my skills have been requested by many other companies on huge global launches.
At this point, I collaborated with Jay Kay of Jamiroquai on Yahoo! Answers, and created the global launch for Michael Jackson's This is It and all of MySpace albums and product launches.
It was around this time, in 2010, that I decided to lean into a new promising field, that could be more engaging and empowering for the user: UI/UX Design.
Branding
I've been the brand designer for Yahoo! and MySpace, where I learned how to properly create brand guidelines and where I could sharpen my skills as a logo designer and then move on to startups to create their logos and guidelines.
While at WPP I managed to deliver brand guidelines for brands such as HSBC, J&J, King, Zonza, and many more.
Mentoring
This is something natural to me. When I was touring Italy with my band I was also teaching guitar and composition to young students.
It happened again with my art, where I could show young artists a way to succeed in their own careers.
After decades of designing for the biggest brands, I decided to also start mentoring designers about UI, UX, branding, and creativity in general. After working with companies and professionals in the UK and in Italy, I'm now working with Springboard to give some of my time to the students of the University of South Florida.
Music, album art and awards
I've been creating and releasing my own music while working with some incredible talents around the world on their unique album covers, powered by my augmented reality.
In recent years I've collaborated with Franz Kirmann on our electronic experimental album called "In Waves" in 2020.
I've also recorded music for the BAFTA-winning documentary "Locked In - Breaking the silence" in 2021.
Check out all albums
Art
While working as a designer, I started experimenting with art and that's when I connected my passion for visuals, music, and technology.
While attending my art shows, it was obvious that everything is pretty static, and I'm used to play music for many thousands of people, so I needed a way to engage more with the audience.
That's when, in 2010, the idea of using augmented reality came through. By giving the audience a chance to use their smartphone and to interact with my art was a winner that brought me to have many solo shows around the world.
Art, music and augmented reality
I connected my art to music and augmented reality in 2010, to deliver something unique and previously unseen to the masses of art shows around the world.
You just need a smartphone, the Artivive app, and my art.
I had many shows in London, where I lived, in Europe, and in New York. In 2018 I won the prestigious Ashurst Art Prize in London and exhibited at One World Trade Center in New York for the Chashama Gala.
In 2018 I also had the honor to become the subject of a thesis of Maria Giulia Briganti, a student of fine arts at the University of Urbino, home of Raffaello.