From tomorrow a new Mondadori Bookstore will be open in Rome, at the AURA shopping mall, the large shopping hub opened in the Valle Aurelia area, just a short distance from the Vatican City.
With more than 15,000 titles on sale and an offer of events ranging from meetings with leading protagonists from the world of books and music to children’s workshops, the new Mondadori bookshop will be a point of reference for readers and visitors to the centre and place to discover a world of culture and emotions.

This new opening takes the number of outlets in the Mondadori Store network in the Rome area to 23, a level of coverage that confirms the Mondadori Group chain’s position as the most extensive bookshop chain in Italy, able, through its more than 600 stores, to serve over 20 million customers every year.

The new Mondadori Bookstore, located in a position close to the main entrance to the Aura shopping mall, is spread over an area of 300 square metres, where customers can find the latest book releases in fiction, non-fiction, classics and  graphic novels, an area for children and teenagers with books and toys, a sector for music and films, the best stationery products, gift boxes, and a corner dedicated to the Kobo e-reader.
The store also offer the possibility of accessing a catalogue of more than 7 million books available online at Mondadoristore.it, thanks to Pick up point services, where customers can pick up in the store titles that they buy online; Order and collect, where they can order online and pick up in store; or Home delivery, where products ordered in the store can be delivered straight to the customer’s address.

Inside the bookshop there is also a Mondadori Café, with seating for 35 customers, open all day, from breakfast time until the evening cocktail hour, with healthy gourmet products, and special attention to the needs of children.

Among the first events planned at the store will be a number of appointments for children between the ages of 4 and 10: on 28 and 29 April and 5 and 6 May, from 10 am to 12.30 pm and from 3 pm until 7 pm the Mondadori Bookstore will host two workshops run by professional educators who, using physical and musical expression techniques, will facilitate integration, familiarity between the participants and group training in teamwork.

The Mondadori Bookstore project was designed by Studio Kallipigia Architetti. Mondadori Café was developed in collaboration with Cibiamogroup.

Special issue for Casabella that this month, on the occasion of the Milan Design Week, brings numerous exclusive contents at newsstands.

The latest 180-page issue of the Mondadori Group magazine, edited by Francesco Dal Co, that is a point of reference for architects around the world, includes an entire section dedicated to Milan, in particular to CityLife and the Fondazione Prada; an extensive feature on the 30^th anniversary of the production, by TECNO, of NOMOS, the celebrated table designed by Norman Foster; and, above all, a preview of images of the designs that make up the first National Pavilion of the Holly See at the 16^th International Biennale di Venezia, that opens on 25 May. The project, curated by Professor Francesco Dal Co, editor of Casabella, was inspired by the famous “Woodland Chapel”, built in 1920 by Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm’s Woodland Cemetery, and reinterpreted by a group of designers from around the world. The pavilion of the Holy See at the Biennale di Venezia is “diffused” and will involve the creation of eleven chapels on the island of San Giorgio, eleven different interpretations in the style and character of their creators that are translated into small sacred spaces thanks to the technical skills of the same number of Italian companies. The project will be officially presented on Wednesday 18 April, at the new headquarters of the Casabella Laboratorio, in Via Vigevano 8, in Milan.

The space, which is in the heart of Milan and hosts exhibitions, meetings and events, has recently moved to the Chipperfield studio, where its work continues also with training activities in collaboration with ProViaggiArchitettura, a company specialised in the organisation of architectural itineraries which, in 2017 alone, involved over 6,000 professionals from the sector. Conferences, tours, visits to construction and production sites, exhibitions, lectures and meetings, are just some of the activities included in the offer Casabella and ProViaggiArchitettura, and aimed at expanding the magazine’s cultural reach, in response to the needs of readers and the need to obligation, foreseen by professional bodies, to keep up to speed on developments in the sector.

Every month Casabella proposes ideas, designs, trends, floor plans, historic documents, as well as critical essays and reflections, for architectural professionals and lovers of e per design, as well as building and furniture designer who are interested in understanding and discovering contemporary architecture and how the culture of architecture is evolving.

For more information, please visit: casabellaweb.eu

Grazia celebrates 80 years of the magazine at the Milan design week, as part of the exhibition event House in Motion, with Infinity Hub_a wandering place, an installation designed by Diego Grandi that will host readers, visitors and exclusive events with big names from the worlds of cinema, entertainment and business.

The celebrations marking the 80^th anniversary of Grazia continue. In fact, on the occasion of the Milan Design Week and as part, the Mondadori Group magazine, that is an international point of reference, presents

Grazia’s Infinity Hub is inspired by the succession of arches along the portico of Largo Richini at the University of Milan, and suggests an evolving path where experience becomes a fundamental element of a journey that celebrates the 80th anniversary of the Mondadori Group magazine, an international point of reference for the world of fashion and a voice in current affairs.

The installation, in perfect harmony with the existing architecture, gives life to a free and open space that is connected to the outside, in which the materials, colours and furnishings create a pathway that is full of suggestions related to the idea of infinity, developed across three modular structures: Infinite Movement, an installation that doesn’t just look at glam, but also at sustainability, thanks to the collaboration of Pinko X Treedom, made up of rotating geometric shapes, suggesting a timeless dance; Infinite Power, developed with the lingerie brand Triumph, a potentially infinite interlocking structure that takes over the Largo Richini portico with a series of high-impact graphic elements: slogans, images and icons, that intertwine to represent women’s strength and cohesion; and Infinite Beauty, conceived in collaboration with the vegetable cosmetic brand Yves Rocher, which thanks to two circular rooms that provide a repeating and always different  image of the individual, invites us to look at ourselves from a multitude of different points of view and to ask ourselves what perception and image we have of our bodies.

Grazia’s Infinity Hub also has an area dedicated to talk and, starting on Tuesday 17 April between 6 and 7pm with a debate on the concept of empowerment with the editor of Grazia Silvia Grilli, the actress Carolina Crescentini and singer Noemi; followed on Friday 20 April between 6 and 7pm with a meeting focusing on sustainability during which the editor of Grazia will discuss with the chief executive and founder of Pinko Pietro Negra, the TV presenter Filippa Lagerback and radio presenter Paola Maugeri.

For more information: www.grazia.it

Tustyle, the Mondadori Group magazine edited by Marina Bigi, is the media partner of MKS Milano Fashion School – a high quality professional training institute in the world of fashion and a centre of excellence for Made in Italy with a strong international vocation.
Together they have launched a competition entitled: TuStyle Fashion School with as the prize a scholarship to study fashion design worth €6.900 at the prestigious school.

The annual 500-hour course in fashion styling provides professional training for fashion designers across a  wide range of areas: advertising, personal styling, shop styling, event styling, editorial and digital styling and, finally, also television styling.
The course also includes practical lessons  on different sets –  show-rooms, backstage, photographic set – and shooting sessions which enable students to acquire the necessary autonomy to create editorial material.

For the launch of the competition the fashion team of  TuStyle has produced a video tutorial featuring three MKS students. The students create three looks under the supervision of qualified stylists and receive assessments and suggestions on their work. The video tutorial will be available of the Tustyle.it web site and will mark the beginning of the period of the competition.

To participate in the competition candidates must go to fashionschool.tustyle.it through which readers between the ages of 18 and 28 can upload a photo with a look created by them, a sentence explaining what fashion means to them and their curriculum vitae (from 3 April to 2 May). Readers are also invited to post a photo of the look they have created on their social networks using the dedicated hashtag #tustylefashionschool.

By 8 May a jury made up of the TuStyle fashion team and representatives of MKS will select the winner of the scholarship.

For more detailed information, please go to: www.tustyle.it

The digital offer of the Mondadori Group continues to grow with the addition of Oroscopo.it, Italy’s leading astrology website, which is now part of the Group’s portfolio of brands. This operation signals the continuation of the strategy for the consolidation of the magazine and digital area of ​​Italy’s leading publisher in the digital area, that began with the acquisition of Banzai Media.

With a total audience of around 17 million unique users per month (Source: Audiweb, December 2017), with Oroscopo.it Mondadori will expand the range of its offer and strengthen its leadership in women’s verticals through a successful and complementary site that offers a number of synergies with the Group’s existing titles: a service much appreciated by women, able to respond to the interests and enthusiasms of an ever-increasing audience and  offering advice and suggestions every day.

Oroscopo.it was founded in 1999 as the first portal entirely dedicated to astrology and the world of the stars. Thanks to a team of passionate astrologers, working to continuously improve the content and features, the site now totals some 2.7 million sessions a month (Source: Google Analytics January 2018). A clear and light tone characterises a site that every day satisfies the curiosity of many people with services such as the horoscope of the day – among the most visited sections -, romantic affinity, the horoscope of mothers and much more. From tradition to technology, Oroscopo.it lest users calculate their ascendant and birth chart for free, consult the Tarot and the iChing, find useful information on the cards and the responses. Moreover, every year Oroscopo.it gives to users an e-book with annual astrological forecasts, a detailed vademecum on their future with advice on love, work and health, as well as other insights.

Grazia, the Mondadori Group magazine that interprets Italian fashion and style and the most qualified point of reference for Made in Italy, is launch a social initiative called #InStatoDiGrazia, with which it invites people to share on Instagram moments when the magazine and the world that revolves around Grazia become sources of inspiration.
This is a continuation of the activities marking the 80^th anniversary of Italy’s leading fashion brand, which, with this new initiative extends and amplifies its relationship with its readers and followers.

“Lo stato di Grazia (state of grace) is the time we dedicated to ourselves while reading Grazia, and the freedom of our emotions, the beauty of finding ourselves,” declared Grazia editor, Silvia Grilli.

Since 1938, Grazia has accompanied women and men of different generations, thanks to its unmistakable mix of news, habits and trends, and its ability to interpret fashion with a sophisticated eye.
Today, the readers, with whom the brand has established an solid relationship that is always fresh and youthful, are being asked to describe in a contest the emotions evoked by reading Grazia, accompanying the images with the hashtag #InStatoDiGrazia. Every week, the editorial team will then select the best pictures that will be published in the magazine and re-launched on Grazia’s Instagram and Facbook pages.

The protagonists of  #InStatodiGrazia Eleonora Carisi, Tamu McPherson and Candela Pelizza, who along with the new generation of emerging influencers from Grazia Factory, including Luna Bonaccorsi and Amaranta Medri, will launch the contest on Instagram.
#InStatoDiGrazia was presented in preview at a special evening held at the Ristorante Berton in Milan, where the editor Silvia Grilli welcomed influencers and other personalities from the world of fashion, music, cinema and literature, including Eros Ramazzotti, Eva Riccobono, Martina Colombari, Francesco Scianna, Matilde Gioli, Davide Oldani and Luca Bianchini.

The activity will be amplified by the Instagram and Facebook accounts of Grazia, where the brand already reaches some 5 million people (Source: Facebook Insights January 2018).

Press-Di Abbonamenti S.p.A., part of the Mondadori Group and leader in Italy in subscription selling, expands its offering and services for third-party publishers by acquiring Direct Channel.

Established in 1997, Direct Channel specializes in marketing-related database management and information systems through the development of management systems and CRM for magazine subscription selling and the planning of marketing and fundraising activities for important non-profit bodies.

With the acquisition of Direct Channel – which will continue to operate on the market under its own brand – Press-Di Abbonamenti adds a top market player to its portfolio, well known for its outstanding services and specific know-how, guaranteeing partners and clients growing levels of quality and quantity, in synergy with the Group’s assets.

 Mondadori Store, Italy’s most extensive network of bookshops, presents a new tool to serve customers: MyStore, a digital assistant that can suggest content and provide customised advice thanks to the use of sophisticated analytics.

MyStore is in the form of a totem with an interactive multi-touch screen with which customers can interact rapidly and intuitively in order to receive highly personalised suggestions for purchases and gifts. MyStore uses GetInTouch software, an interactive cognitive content presenter developed by Mauden, one of the most engaged information technology companies involved in digital innovation. This solution exploits the augmented intelligence of the IBM Watson, a cognitive system able to elaborate an enormous quantity of data.

“With MyStore we are the first Italian retailer to introduce a service based on this kind of technology, a solution that will offer our customers a new way of exploring the Mondadori Store catalogue inside the stores,” declaredFrancesco Riganti, marketing director of Mondadori Retail. “The search function has been designed to be as personalised as possible and is based on the preferences of customers, also as reflected on social media, which makes possible new and more sophisticated profiling that can learn continuously learn from the history of interactions. This is why we have decided to partner with two companies like Mauden and IBM that, in recent years, have developed the most important cognitive solutions.”

The three functions on MyStore are MyBook, MyGift and MyFinder.

MyBook helps customers to find the right book thanks to a cognitive analysis based on the customers’ profile. By accessing from your Facebook account, the totem elaborates your preferences through a multichoice function based on books, music and films to identify the users’ tastes. The selection will then be combined with the Mondadori Store lists and data not protected by privacy on Facebook, such as pages followed, date of birth, friends lists, etc. In this way the system generates a “Chosen for you” list, with suggested titles from MyStore.
Users can also add books seen to a list of favourites, in the “Discover products” section, any time they access MyStore.

MyGift makes it possible to find the best book to give as a gift. Also in this case it is possible to profile the recipient by selecting titles and, consequently, also the type of books preferred which, together with the Mondadori Store lists, create a new “MyGift” list with the ideal books to select to give as a gift.

MyFinder enables customers to find products on sale in stores such as books, CDs and DVDs, with information about prices, pictures of the products and the area of the store where they can be found. This function enables customers to search for products by name and fro books a funtion will also be included to search using the ISBN.

The MyStore service, available for the first time in Italy, is active in the Mondadori Megastores in Piazza Duomo and via Marghera in Milan, and at the Mondadori Bookstore in Via Appia Nuova in Rome.

In Italy around 3% of children and teenagers are dyslexic. Dyslexia is considered as a Specific Learning Disorder and has been recognised by Italian law (n. 170 of 8 October 2010) which defines the condition, protects the right to study of sufferers and provides guidelines for schools on teaching methods. After years of research, much progress has been made, but after school-age how is inclusion guaranteed in the working world? Are companies prepared to deal with the issue?

In order to create a space to discuss the problem, on Wednesday 17 January, at 4.30 pm, at the Smart Arena in the prestigious Samsung District in Milan, a conference has been arranged with the title “Strategies and technologies for inclusion”, with the patronage of AID (Associazione Italiana Dislessia), FID (Fondazione Italiana Dislessia) and the City of Milan. Donna Moderna, the Mondadori Group women’s weekly, edited by Annalisa Monfreda, is the media partner of the initiative.

The aim is to create an opportunity to promote and spread a culture of inclusion.. Sergio Messina, specialist in child neuropsychiatry and Chairman of the Italian Dyslexia Association (AID) declared: “There is still a great deal of work to do to encourage the educational and social inclusion of dyslexics, but the Association has already done a great deal and, in the last 20 years, achieved important results, including the approval of legislation , the first to recognise and protect the right to study, also through the use of compensatory tools.”

The focus of the conference will be on consolidated experience in education and the workplace in Italy, with a panorama of the international scenario and specific reference to the situation in the English-speaking world.

Examples of virtuous inclusion, in which technology plays a leading role. “The aim of Samsung is to improve the experience and lives of people thought cutting-edge solutions able to inspire the world: our priorities include making all of our technological know-how available to society in order to meet the widest range of needs. We are aware how much technology can be a powerful tool for emancipation and social inclusion, and we have direct experience through many projects that we have developed in recent years, such as our Schools in Hospitals activities,” commented Antonio Bosio, Product & Solutions Director at Samsung Electronics Italy.

But technology alone is not enough. It is “a  tool” to help dyslexics to overcome their difficulties, but the real driver of change is the right information.

This is why  Donna Moderna, a  magazine that has always been sensitive to social issues, covers the dyslexia issue with ad hoc projects (like the longform piece on its website www.donnamoderna.com/news produced in collaboration with Lancôme and AID) and its support for the idea behind the conference. “Dyslexia affects some 2 million people and 350,000 families of school-age children in Italy. The families are often faced with conflicting diagnoses, teachers that often do not have adequate tools to support dyslexic children and the children themselves who suffer also from authentic crises of self-esteem by being misunderstood, not being involved in projects to promote inclusion and not being appreciated,” said  the editor of Donna Moderna, Annalisa Monfreda.

The conference is the result of an idea by Gabriella Schiavone, curator of the “around dyslexia” section of the literary competition “Una Città Che Scrive” (A City that Writes), conceived by Giovanni Nappi. In its 2018 edition, the competition, which was born in Casalnuovo di Napoli, has a special section for specific learning disorders. “The power of writing emerges in all of the stages of our competition. In “Una Città Che Scrive”, writing becomes an opportunity for individual and social  redemption; a form of cultural inclusiveness. With its Special Section for Dyslexia, and separate efforts for our autistic friends and a painting competition reserved only for them, we are attempting to respect the noblest principles of social inclusion, “declared Giovanni Nappi.

Speakers include, Pierfrancesco Majorino, Head of Social Policy, Health and Rights of the City of Milan, IBM Italia and Axia, among the first companies in Italy to have adopted a “Dyslexia Friendly” label. The conference speakers also include the creators and supporters of the EasyReading font that ensures readability for all, including dyslexics. Consequently, all of the material distributed during the conference on Wednesday 17 January will use this highly accessible font.

There will also be contributions from teachers and researchers, as well as direct testimonials from brilliant young students who have entered the world of work.

A limited number of places for a robotics laboratory using augmented communication methods will also be available for children.

Although the event is free, there are a limited number of places. To register please sign up at: https://milano.aiditalia.org

What is it that makes so many of the protagonists of Italian design authentic Icon Makers? It’s difficult to say. The recipe is based on a happy mix, the binding substance of which is the country’s long manufacturing history and a vital productive texture that is driven by a wide range of professional figures. and it is precisely to 100 protagonists from ‘behind the scenes’ of design – chosen among entrepreneurs, photographers, graphic designers and communicators, along with their iconic creations – that Icon Makers, a special issue in the INTERNI Serie Oro is dedicated, a continuation of the overview of Italian design begun in 2014 with the celebratory volume marking the magazine’s 60^th anniversary.

The introductory notes are by well-know international critics, such as Domitilla Dardi, Deyan Sudjic and Leonardo Sonnoli, who discuss the roots and peculiar characteristics of contemporary design. Meanwhile, the contribution of Cristina Morozzi and Christoph Radl focuses on the work of photographers and art directors, with the view to assessing the evolution of the role and skills of involved.

Following previews at the Salone del Mobile.Milano Shanghai, Icon Makers will also be presented in Miami at a special location: the Miami Ironside, the lively urban centre created by Ofer Mizrahi. On this occasion there will be a conversation between Gilda Bojardi, editor of INTERNI, Ofer Mizrahi (Miami Ironside Founder), Giulio Cappellini (Art Director at Cappellini and talent scout), Piero Lissoni (Lissoni Associati), Rene Gonzalez (Rene Gonzalez Architects), Carola Hinojosa (Hinojosa Design Studio) and Nasir Kassamali (CEO of Luminaire).

The book, for which an extra print run of 10,000 copies (in Italian and English) has been planned, will also be distributed at the leading  design showrooms in Miami and Milan.

Icon Makers has been supported by 56 of the best and most representative design brands, contributing to the excellent results of the INTERNI system which, in December alone, saw an increase in advertising revenues of over 50% compared with 2016.

With 216 pages, Icon Makers will be available from 5 December at all good newsstands as a supplement to the new issue of the magazine for just €10 (including the magazine).