Design: Vignelli exhibition, Rochester, NY. Poster Design

View of the "Design: Vignelli" exhibition, Benetton Galleries, Vignelli Center for Design Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, United States. The "Design: Vignelli" exhibition opened in 2010 at the Vignelli Center for Design Studies, which is also home to their entire professional archives. The exhibition mirrors the "Design: Vignelli" exhibition which toured nine countries between 1989-1993. As with the previous iteration, Lella Vignelli and Massimo Vignelli designed the displays, wrote the descriptive text, and curated the artifacts for the exhibition. It is the last exhibition designed by the Vignellis that is still open to the public. Pictured: U.S.A. Bicentennial Poster (1976)

Text from design: Vignelli exhibition label:
U.S.A. Bicentennial Poster; Washington 1976.
As part of a series for the United States Bicentennial, this poster was commissioned to celebrate the “melting pot” in American society. Massimo Vignelli bought all of the foreign-language newspapers published in New York by the different ethnic communities, and with them he made an American flag. Everybody liked it in Washington, D.C., except for one bureaucrat in the Pentagon who called Massimo to ask if he could do another one with better news. We refused the bureaucrats request, and the government refused to allow its printing. It still hangs in Massimo’s office as a symbol of the melting pot.