Media

Riccardo Ruini is to be the new creative director of Icon, the Mondadori Group’s fashion and lifestyle magazine.

Riccardo Ruini began his professional career in advertising, working for leading international agencies. Art Director for the Fendi Group in the mid 1990s, he then went on to oversee iconic campaigns for some of the most prestigious luxury brands, including Bulgari, Gucci and Valentino and curated the art direction of more than ten international magazines, including Vogue Japan and GQ Style UK. During his career Ruini has also collaborated with numerous talents from the worlds of photography, art, cinema and music.

This appointment completes the new team of the magazine led by the editor Andrea Tenerani which has also seen the arrival of Federico Sarica in the role of editor-at-large.

The new formula of Icon, which will make its debut with the March issue, will give pride of place to a more focused presentation of style and Italian savoir-faire, with men and their passions at the centre. More fashion, but also more stories, more background and a more selective approach, in order to give readers a tool to help them find their way in the world of contemporary style.

Altervista, the Mondadori Group platform, leader in Italy in the creation, management and hosting of blogs and web sites, is celebrating its 18^th anniversary. Founded on 20 December 2000 by Gianluca Danesin, currently the CTO of the Mondadori Digital Magazine team, Altervista.org has kept its original mission intact: to enable anyone to open a web site, for free and without specific IT skills.

A simple but, at the time, revolutionary, idea the site’s particularity was to focus on user generated content, anticipating the concepts of sharing and interactivity associated with the Web 2.0. Altervista was thus able to build its success thanks to word-of-mouth and the reliability of the service, responding to a new and widespread need to talk about oneself online.

Altervista has been a web pioneer, able to make the most of the potential from the beginning of the digital economy: from the concept of the long tail, which through diversification makes it possible for content created by users to fill a wide range of market niches, to crowdsourcing made possible by continuous exchange and the contributions of volunteers, right up to revenue sharing, the “win-win” system that gives all bloggers the chance to earn money from advertising.

A sustainable business model that today allows Altervista to differentiate itself from other hosting competitors, feeding a consistent ecosystem of blogs and sites able to generate constant attention to the needs of their creators. The exclusive services offered cover professional free areas (also on mobile), unlimited plugins, automatic monetisation, semantic analysis and site clustering.

A “alternative view” of the world of the Internet, thanks to which the Altervista platform is now a “pillar of the Italian web” which currently has over 600,000 active blogs and wen sites. These include a number of leaders in the various sectors of the blogging community in the country: Ho voglia di Dolce (food), Maestra Mary (parenting/education), Spinoza (satire) and i400 calci (cinema) to name just a few, and with the last two having been a warded a number of times at the ai Macchianera Awards in their categories.

Altervista.org celebrates its 18^th anniversary with an audience of 12.6 million monthly users (Source: Comscore – October 2018) and record earnings for its bloggers, thanks to the introduction of new formats and innovative advertising partnerships, with the increasing use of multimedia.

From January Annalisa Rosso will be the new editor of Icon Design, the upscale magazine of design, architecture and interiors of the Mondadori Group; at the same time Maria Cristina Didero will take on the role of di editor-at-large.

With this new team, Icon Design will cover the world of design in all its varied facets through stories about cutting edge personalities, objects, homes and projects.
A multi-disciplinary and international approach open to the broadest range of issues and aimed at an expanding target of readers and advertisers, who have rewarded a formula that has become a point of reference with excellent results in terms of advertising revenues.

Design journalist and independent curator, Annalisa Rosso has written for and overseen production for numerous national and international titles, including Casa Vogue Brasil, Living, Alla Carta, Wallpaper, Ideat, 032c, Architektur und Wohnen. She led the launch of the new Domusweb designed by Mark Porter in 2017 and has worked as a consultant for numerous brands in the sector.
She has been a guest lecturer at the Design Canberra Festival 2018, the University of Genoa, TEDx Talks, the Salone del Mobile.Milano Shanghai and the Triennale in Milan.
She curated the seventh edition of Operae, the independent design fair in Turin, and the personal exhibition of Valentina Cameranesi in Milan’s 5VIE district, during Miart and the Milano Design Week in 2018.

Maria Cristina Didero is an independent curator, author and freelance journalist. She has worked with national and international institutions and a number of titles, including Vogue, Domus and Icon Design.
Her most recent projects include the exhibition SuperDesign in New York about radical Italian design; one-man show of Erez Nevi Pana entitled Vegan Design – Or The Art of Reduction for the Milan Design Week 2018; Fun House, an anthology dedicated to the Snarkitecture  collective, at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.. During the latest edition of the Design Week in Prague, OKOLO has dedicated and curated an exhibition of her texts, graphically visualised.

On Monday 17 December the  Mondadori Group  will be among the protagonists of the StartupItalia! Open Summit 2018, the event that promotes innovation, exchange and new collaborations between the founders of startups, companies and investors. The Digital Magazines team of Italy’s leading publisher on the web will take part in one-to-one meetings with 10 startups that have distinguished themselves for business ideas and a capacity to compete on the international market.

“Our involvement with StartupItalia! Open Summit 2018 is part of the digital development path adopted by the Mondadori Group,” declared Andrea Santagata, deputy general manager and chief digital officer of the Group’s Magazines Italy area. “We are big believers in innovation and are focused on consolidating out links to the ecosystem of startups by giving an account of our model of the “publisher of the future”: a publisher that is increasingly multimedia and able to stimulate a social relationship with its users. The aim is to continue to enhance our offer also through collaboration with new digital talents that area complementary and synergic with our business model. We are excited to be able to develop a dialogue with emerging new talent and a mutually beneficial exchange in the pursuit of creativity and the realisation of quality content,” Santagata concluded.

#SIOS2018 offers an opportunity for startups to demonstrate their innovation ideas and receive advice and suggestions from managers and professionals on the Group’s Digital Magazines team. The projects developed by the selected startups – distribution services for paid content, video production platforms, for influencer marketing on social networks, advertising solutions and mobile – can find fertile ground for exchange with the established business models of the digital brands of the Mondadori Group, leader in the most valuable vertical segments in the market: from Giallo Zafferano to Grazia, and from Donna Moderna to Studenti.it, Sorrisi and Focus, all of which are points of reference for the enthusiasms and interests of online Italians.

StartupItalia! Open Summit 2018 will also see the brand new Giallo Zafferano apecar which is at the heart of an engagement initiative through which founders and developers will be asked to reveal on post-its the ingredients of success and failures that young entrepreneurs must face. This will give rise to a “recipe for the perfect startup”, which will be shared by Giallo Zafferano on social networks.

The Mondadori Group is Italy’s biggest publisher of magazines and leader also in digital. With the country’s broadest and most diversified offer, thanks to a portfolio of 30 digital brands with an overall monthly audience of 26.5 million unique users and 4.2 million users per day. Leader in the highest value vertical segments, including women, food, wellness and fashion, with standout titles such as Donna Moderna with 13 million unique users, Giallo Zafferano with an audience of 14 million unique users, Starbene with 11 million unique users,  and Grazia with 3 million users (Source: Audiweb Total Audience – September 2018). A digital presence that also includes social networks, where the Group’s brands are present with 88 channels and an audience of 26.4 million followers.

A magazine aimed at all teachers of primary and first level secondary schools, to help them face the new challenges of the classroom in the digital age: this is Focus Scuola, a new monthly for teachers from the Mondadori Group.

Focus Scuola, edited by Sarah Pozzoli, has been conceived as a tool at the service of teachers, to support them in their day-to-day work with pedagogical and didactic advice for “feel better” in in the classroom and to manage classes, develop authoritativeness, control stress, attract and retain pupils’ attention and motivate them to study.

“This new magazine – underlined the editor Sarah Pozzoli – comes fro the experience of Focus Junior which for years with its projects for schools, class visits to the editorial departments and events around the country, is in continuous dialogue with teachers, children and parents. all of these activities have enabled us to gather information and to intercept the great need for support for teachers who increasingly need to know about and try out tools that can help them every day as they propose new, engaging and innovative teaching activities. This is why, in 2017, we launched the Osservatorio Trend Junior which has helped us to look more closely at the younger generations, their parents and teachers, and to understand how to virtuously triangulate these three targets in handling issues such as education and training.

Focus Scuola, which is available every month on subscription, offers background details on the latest scientific and pedagogic research, but also good experimental ideas from Italy and the rest of the world from individual teachers and provides suggestions about innovative methods and the use of technology in the classroom.

Extensive space is also given to the latest scientific news of relevance to schools and norms and regulations from the Ministry of Education, as well as reviews of films, books, exhibitions study tours and new trends in the world of children and teenagers, plus a wealth of ideas for lessons and labs that can be done in class.

An added feature is the inclusion of columns by authoritative exponents from the world of schools such as Marco Rossi Doria, Daniela Lucangeli, Alberto Pellai, Giovanni Biondi, Alex Corlazzoli and teaching kits as supplements to the magazine, produced on the logic of S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics).

Focus Scuola is available only on subscription at a cost of €69 (annual subscription, 10 issues) or €99 (a two-year subscription, 20 issues). During the whole of December it will also be possible to subscribe for a year to  both Focus Scuola and Focus Junior at the special price of €79.

In the first issue, available from this week, among a wide range of issues there is a cover dossier on strategies for communicating with parents and an interview with the philosopher Umberto Galimberti.

2018 has been a year full of initiatives and events for the digital brands of the Mondadori Group, which confirms its position as Italy’s leading publisher on the web with an audience of 26.5 million unique users every month and 4.2 million daily users (Source: Audiweb Total Audience – September 2018).

From Giallo Zafferano to Studenti.it, Donna Moderna to Starbene Grazia and Nostrofiglio, Mondadori’s digital portfolio offers the country’s richest and most varied range. A model based on innovation and continuous expansion that leverages engagement and emotional communication with readers, with the aim of transforming traditional magazines and web sites into multimedia brands.

As the leader in the highest value sectors of the market, including women, food, health and parenting, Mondadori’s 30 digital brands are a point of reference for the passions of online Italians and are able to respond to the needs and interests of users – who are increasingly the protagonists of content – and advertisers, and now well-established as synonyms of authoritativeness also in the context of B2B.

This is also demonstrated by the new multi-subject communication campaign, which celebrates with visuals and emotional headlines the particular strengths of Giallo Zafferano, Donna Moderna and Grazia. These three brands each communicate appeal, beauty and style, offering advertisers the opportunity of reaching millions of users and readers thanks to the visibility of their channels, where they stand out with monthly audiences of, respectively, 14 million, 13 million and 3 million unique users (Source: Audiweb Total Audience – September 2018).

The campaign, conceived and developed by the agency Casiraghi Greco&, has been planned across sector-focused print and digital media and foresees out-of-home advertising activities in strategic areas of the city of Milan and digital out-of-home advertising at Linate airport and key points in the metropolitan area using the 11 plants of the iDD Magazine circuit: from Piazza Gae Aulenti to Via Tortona, Piazza San Babila and CityLife.

The Mondadori Group confirms its role as the primary interlocutor for the digital world also at the leading B2B events. The Group was present at the latest edition of the IAB Forum with a stand dominated by a large central carousel, thematic activities and two workshops in which Giallo Zafferano and Grazia Factory were able to present their respective business models to leading players in the sector: a “merry-go-round of emotions” which, in line with the communicative mindset of the Group’s digital properties, generated over 1,500 contacts in the two days of the fair.

Giallo Zafferano, recognised by the ComScore report “The Food Sector in Italy 2018” as the brand in the Food Lifestyle category with the highest reach compared with the top European sites, and was also the special partner of the second edition of Netcomm Focus Food, a key event for the digital evolution of the Food & Grocery sector

The very recent Giallo Zafferano–branded ApeCar has also made a tour of the most important media centres in Milan, offering breakfast ot some 1,200 advertising professionals

On 17 December the brands of the Mondadori Group will facilitate exchange between emerging digital talents during the StartupItalia! Open Summit 2018, the event that  promotes the sharing of ideas and new collaborations between the founders and developers of start-ups, companies and investors.

Icon Architects is the fourth in the Serie Oro of INTERNI that is an ideal continuation of the account of Italian design begun in 2014 with the commemorative volume marking the 60^th anniversary of the magazine. The year the focus shifts to Italian and international architects who, in addition to having created prestigious buildings and interiors, have been involved in some of our country’s most representative products. Their experience takes us to the origins of the phenomenon, the result of work by designers who wanted to design all-round, day-to-day spaces in their entirety: from architecture to objects of furniture.

We asked 100 Italian and international architects how, in the context of changes in the scale of their projects, their design approach changes. It is a topic of perennial interest that offers a picture of how they work within the Italian International Design system and contribute to the transformation of creative thinking into iconic products.

Following the preview at the Salone del Mobile.Milano Shanghai, Icon Architects will be presented also in Miami. INTERNI, together with the Istituto Marangoni Miami and the Italian Consulate General, has organised a design talk ICON ARCHITECTS – 100 International stories and visions, a debate on the role of the designer and the architect in contemporary society, the current relationship between the two disciplines and the new perspectives to which the culture of design seems to have shifted.

Following opening remarks from Cristiano Musillo (Italian Consul General), Hakan Baykam (President and CEO of the Istituto Marangoni Miami) and Gilda Bojardi (editor of INTERNI), the participants in the discussion will be Nasir Kassamali (CEO Luminaire), Giulio Cappellini (Art director and Designer), Piero Lissoni (architect), Massimo Perotti (president and managing director of Cantieri Sanlorenzo), Mauro Porcini (Senior Vice President and Chief Design Officer of PepsiCo) and Allan Shulman (architect).

The event will take place on Tuesday 4 December at 10.30 am at the Miami School of the Istituto Marangoni (Building 3700 NE 2nd Avenue, FL 33137), in the heart of the Design District, one of the most dynamic areas of the city which, in recent decades, has become famous around the world as a key Art, Design and Fashion destination.

The volume, for which an additional print run of 10.000 copies (in Italian and English), has been planned, will be distributed in the main design showrooms in Miami, New York, London and Milan.

Icon Architects has been supported by over 200 of the best and most representative brands from the world of international design, contributing to the excellent results of the INTERNI system which, in December alone, has recorded an increase in revenues of over 3% compared with 2017.

With 208 pages, Icon Architects will be available from this week from newsstands as a supplement top the new issue of the magazine at €10 (magazine included).

For more information, please go to:  www.internimagazine.it

Icon, the magazine dedicated to the passions of the contemporary male edited by Andrea Tenerani, is reinforcing its team with the addition of Federico Sarica in the role of editor-at-large.

Sarica brings to Icon all of his professional experience with the aim of enhancing even more the global and contemporary approach that characterises the successful formula of the Mondadori Group brand.

Turin-born and Milan-based, Sarica has extensive experience as a journalist, having collaborated with, among many titles, il Foglio, D di Repubblica, Vogue and l’Uomo Vogue. In 2011 he was among the founders of Studio, a magazine of news, current affairs, culture and lifestyle, of wich he will continue to be editor-in-chief.

On the occasion of the Salone del Mobile.Milano Shanghai  (22 – 24 November 2018) the brand INTERNI will present the design talk ICON ARCHITECTS – 100 International Stories and Visions.

The event, organised by INTERNI China and INTERNI,  will propose the perspectives of a number of leading Italian and international architects who, as well as designing prestigious buildings around the world, have applied their approach to objects and created some of the most representative of Italian design products.

Icon Architects, the fourth volume in the Serie Oro of INTERNI, dedicated to 100 Italian and international architects, will be presented for the first time in Shanghai and will ideally extend the account of Italian design begun 2014 with the volume celebrating the magazine’s first 60 years, followed in 2016 with the collectors’ edition 500 Italian Design Icons Still in Production and in 2017 by Icon Makers.

The protagonists of the conversation Icon Architects – 100 International Stories and Visions, which will take place on Friday 23 November at 2.00 pm at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre (Dome Hall – Piazza Italiana), will beYang Dongjiang (editor-in-chief INTERNI China and professor at the Academy Art and Design of Tsinghua University) Gilda Bojardi (editor-in-chief of INTERNI), Carola Bestetti (Head of Marketing and Communications at Living Divani), Aldo Cibic (architect and founder of Cibic Workshop), Aric Chen (Curator-at-large of M+ – Museum for visual culture in Hong Kong) and Carlotta de Bevilacqua (Vice President and CEO of the Artemide Group).

 The international guests, representing the worlds of business, publishing and education, will take part in a debate on the role of designers and architects in contemporary society, on the current relationship between the two disciplines and on the new perspectives on the ways in which the culture of design seems to have shifted.

For full details please go towww.internimagazine.it

Today saw the official opening of the first edition of the “Focus Live” Festival, an event organised by Focus – the Mondadori Group brand that is a point of reference for popular science and entertainment – in cooperation with the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.

The programme, which will run in Milan until 11 November at the spaces of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum, features over 200 events, including conferences, workshops, debates, shows, labs and interactive installations – run in collaboration with Italian and international universities, institutions, research centres and companies – with the aim of presenting and offering a more detailed look at the current challenges facing humanity and the tools we have to  meet them.

At the official opening held this morning, Piero Angela was presented with a prize for his outstanding contribution to popular science by the editor of Focus Jacopo Loredan.

“For us, Focus Live is the culmination of an initiative that started one year ago together with the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan – declared the editor of Focus Jacopo Loredan. Focus Live, just like our magazine, is within the reach of anyone who is interested and curious; and we think it will be unconventional, stimulating, fun. This can be seen from the programme that we have pit together: with a rich variety and something for all ages, including events and labs also for young children.”

“We are delighted that at last Milan has a festival of science and we are proud that it will take place at our Museum with an innovative format – emphasised Fiorenzo Galli, General Manager of the  National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. With the ongoing cooperation, enthusiasm and ambition that we share with the Focus team, we have stimulated each other and developed a target of involving the public in unique experiences, with special personalities, around issues and topics that allow us to imagine the future and to help us to build it together. The result of the combined efforts of Focus and the Museum is an ideal marriage that brings together the  vision, competences, experience, networks and cultural resources of  both.”

Genetics, the environment, immortality, artificial intelligence, space travel, sex, climate change, robotics: these are just some of the issues on which the rich programme of events of “Focus Live” will concentrate, a winning exploration across 5 thematic areas (Earth, Homo Sapiens, Science, Technology, Space), and that will enable the public to explore the various fields of knowledge in a rigorous but fun way, in line with the Focus style.

On the fourth day of “Focus Live” over 100 scientists, presenters, journalists, writers and many other experts, will illustrate the latest developments in a number of scientific and technological fields and offer an overview of the adventure of Homo sapiens from our origins to the present, in order to have a better understanding of the big choices and ethical and pragmatic dilemmas our species has to face.

Tomorrow, Friday 9 November, the main stage will feature a one of many protagonists, climate scientist Luca Mercalli (at 10.30 am), who will touch on the very delicate and current issue of global warming and associated climate change, while at 11.30 am, on the same stage, pharmacologist Silvio Garattini, president of the Mario Negri Institute, will illustrate some of the most recent medical discoveries and talk about the current state of cures for diseases that we still haven’t defeated.

At 12.30 pm,  visitors will be able to explore the new frontiers in astronomy and listen to the “music of the stars” with astrophysicist Marica Branchesi.

On Saturday 10 November, at 1 pm, Salvatore Aranzulla, the popular information technology expert, will reveal many of the secrets for success on the internet, while Guido Tonelli from Cern will take a closer look at a number of issues related to cosmology (11 am).

Finally, on Sunday 11 November, the final day of “Focus Live”, we will examine the future of space missions with astronaut Paolo Nespoli (at 5 pm) and at the present state of the earth as seen by cartoonist Zerocalcare (at 12).

Across the entire events area  there will be a number of installations that will allow visitors to get an hands on experience of some of the wonders of science and technology, such as the transparent bath (in the Homo Sapiens Area) which is two metres long and 1.70m deep, and simulates the conditions of our organism when we are in in apnea. The Technology Area will host the robot Centauro, developed by IIT in Genoa and able to provide support in difficult contexts, such as natural and man-made catastrophes. In the  Earth Area, the Natinla Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology will make available to the audience of Focus Live an earthquake simulator: 6 people can access a platform and feel the sensations of horizontal movement of the kind provoked by a tremor. And then, in the Science Area, it will be possible to try Hyperscanning, a method with which a number of people interact while their brains are being simultaneously scanned, and discovering, for example, affinities between couples.

There will also be a Kids Area, run by the magazine Focus Junior, entirely dedicated to smaller children, where kids can take part in labs on topics such as space, coding, science and diet.

The realisation of “Focus Live” extends also to events the iterations of the Focus brands: an authentic system which in addition to the print and digital magazine includes a range of titles (Focus Extra, Focus Domande e Risposte, Focus Storia, Focus Storia Collection, Focus Storia Wars, Focus Junior, Focus Pico, Focus Wild), the web site Focus.it with a monthly audience of more than 1 million unique users, the Mediaset TV channel. on digital terrestrial channel number 35, the Facebook page, with over 1,500,000 fans and an app specially created to use the content of the print magazine in augmented reality.

The complete programme of the Festival is a available at https://www.focus.it/focus-live.

Tickets are available on the site of the del Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia at this link: http://www.museoscienza.org/focuslive.

Partners

“Focus Live” is supported by a number of prestigious partners.

Main Partners: e-distribuzione, IBM, Volvo

Partners: abmedica, AnnurKap, Candia, Calligaris, Essilor, Fruittella, Genertel, Lenovo, Università Telematica Pegaso, Yakult.

Charity Partner: IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele

Media Partners: Focus Junior, Focus Tv Mediaset, Meteo.it, R101

With the Patronage of: Asi, CNR, Esa and Inaf

With thanks to: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Università di Padova, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, Muse di Trento, Aeronautica Militare, Esercito, British Interplanetary Society, Italian Mars Society, INGV, Ris dei Carabinieri, Sony PlayStation, Imra, Jrc, Infn, Asferico, Orto Botanico di Padova and Bloom Project.