The Venetian street signs, or nizioleti, don’t prevent you from getting lost in the labyrinth, but they do comfort or allow you to get lost in the most elegant way. Developed at first for the identity of Common Ground, the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, Nizioleti is a reflection of Venice’s sign system, painted letters stencilled within white plaster panels directly onto the city walls, in use since the early 19th century. Like the city’s inhabitants, the nizioleti (‘white sheet’) speak in a Venetian dialect, and tell a chronicle of the events imprinted in the city’s collective memory. Our Nizioleti, rather than being a faithful revival, borrows from a variety of forms that evolved over time – an ‘O’ with a perverse double cut, an ‘R’ with a loose curled tail perhaps clipped from the mane of St Mark’s lion, and a beautiful arrow whose head seems to have been spliced from its own tail.
- Designed by John Morgan and Adrien Vasquez, 2011–17
- Available in 1 style (uppercase only) from £240
- Trial fonts are available on request
