A new green season is opening for ICON DESIGN.  From this month, and for the whole of 2020, the magazine edited by Annalisa Rosso with editor-at-large Maria Cristina Didero, will explore the world of environmental sustaiability, looking at detail – together with leading figures from the world of design, interiors and architecture – at the ecologically-related challenges that the sector will be required to face in the coming years.

In this way the Mondadori Group’s upscale furnishing brand, a point of reference for the design world,  will inaugurate the new editorial path with which it aims to become a privileged channel of analysis and debate to help companies in the sector to interpret and respond to the changes and new needs for the future of the environment.

This issue will be the running theme for the whole of next year, along with a number of new features, including a special edition to be published with the March 2020 issue of ICON DESIGN that will present the most innovative brands and projects in this area.

“As Leonardo Di Caprio said when he received his Oscar: climate change is real! However absurd it may seem, in 2019 there are still people who don’t believe it and there is still a need to reiterate the fact that we must dramatically and immediately change course – tomorrow is already too late – change our behaviour and activate our efforts and determination to avoid a catastrophe and continue to have faith in humanity and the future,” commented Annalisa Rosso and Maria Cristina Didero.

Ti inaugurate this new path, the new issue of ICON DESIGN, on newsstands from 8 October, will appear with the headline Luce, Energia e Bellezza (Light, energy and Beauty), three key words which together summarise and represent different visions of what can more generally be taken to be green. There is a visit to Longhouse, near Melbourne, Australia, a biological design farm, cooking school and private residence all at once; two homes such as Villa Cardo, which is perfectly integrated in the surrounding Salento countryside, and an apartment in the heart of Brussels  redesigned by the French architect Pierre Yovanovitch following a play of light. Alongside the unmissable events at the  design festivals of Milan and Eindhoven, there are interviews with protagonists with green souls: la primatologist and activist Jane Goodwall, the light designer Ingo Maurer, the artist Linda Tegg and the architect Norman Foster. And then there is also the Natural Beauties project, curated by Felix Burrichter, Valentina Cameranesi and Enrico Pompili along with photographer Pim Top. “Why can’t we surround ourselves with beauty?”, asks Burrichter in his introduction to a feature that looks at 11 brands through the same number of surreal images and high-impact slogans, like “energy without meaning is an impossibility” and “love me now, love me forever”.

A fourth edition of ICON DESIGN Talks will also be dedicated to environmental sustainability during the 2020 Milano Design Week – with general coordination by Andrea Boschetti and guest curator Marco Sammicheli: a cycle of conferences, master-classes and debates with architects, designers and professionals who, in their work, are striving to redefine the relationship between the individual and the city, intercepting future needs and necessities in order to build a better world.

Mypersonaltrainer, the Mondadori Group site that is a point of reference for health for over 11 million unique users per month is enhancing its offer and has been transformed into an all-round editorial brand A new logo logo, a new look, a team of fitfluencers with video tutorials focused on wellbeing and a new Instagram profile: are among the main new features which, together with a new and authoritative scientific committee, will help to inspire a healthy lifestyle

• New look: the redesigned heart-shaped logo is emblematic of the brands new objective, to help you to live a healthier and happier life. The editorial content is organised in thematic areas and divided on the basis of energetic colours which help users to find their way. Moreover, the site is both more dynamic and easier to use, also from a mobile device, and able to make suggestions and point users in the direction of pertinent and personalised content

• Scientific committee: made up of specialist doctors from a selected number of hospitals, initially the Istituto Auxologico Italianoand the Ospedale Niguarda, who will provide additional supervision of the more scientific content

• Fitness influencers and video: an exciting collaboration has been launched with a pool of fitfluencers. Experts in yoga, Pilates, running, fitness, workouts and healthy recipes are the protagonists of a range of videos that Mypersonaltrainer users can access anywhere, on any of the brand’s digital channels, at home, in the garden, the office or the car.
  The videos will have a schedule, with fixed appointments each day of the week.

• Instagram: the brand is also expanding its social community, which is already strong on YouTube – with 264,000 subscribers and 1.5 million views – on Facebook – with 340,000 followers and reaching over 3 million people, with a new Instagram profile, and becoming an authentic social magazine. The content will range from the fitfluencer videos, to motivational memes, short video tutorials, photo recipes and thematic infographics

The new brand, already appreciated in the last year by leading advertisers in the health and wellbeing area, will offer its partners new, integrated, multi-channel communication opportunities, with branded content and tailor-made videos for storytelling initiatives for their products.

SCHEDA

The fit influencers:

– Gabriella Vico,  fitness trainer – Former volleyball player, professional trainer and nutritionist, working in Italy, France and Spain. Offering fitness training with exercises related to different muscle groups

– YOGAESSENTIAL, yoga lessons – Elena Vitale and Selena Mercandelli, yoga teachers, creators of the YOGAESSENTIAL clothing line inspired by the practice and Made In Italy, and the Milan yoga school Spazio Garibaldi 77, offer the different styles of yoga with the best teachers from the discipline

– Cristina Turini, running trainer – Architect and running mother, she is the creator of the Instagram profile Run and the City which brings together outfits, music, photos and a healthy lifestyle

– Federico Trombini, fitness school – Personal trainer, hiker and naturopath. Scuola di fitness is the titl of his column which focuses on functional training and the mistakes to avoid. For example, how to tackle a squat by improving balance and control skills, which helps to minimise injuries to the ankles and knees

– Denise della Giacoma, Pilates lessons – Former cross-country skier, teacher of Pilates, yoga and wellbeing techniques. A globetrotter, her videos are shot in some very attractive locations

– Alice Mazzo, the protagonist Alice’s Recipes. In fact, Alice’s heart beats for healthy eating: a food enthusiast, her mission is to transmit her passion for healthy cooking, transforming high-calorie bombs into light mouthfulls, without renouncing taste

Donna Moderna, the Mondadori Group brand edited by Annalisa Monfreda, has chosen Storytel, Europe’s leading audiobook platform, for its debut in the world of podcasts.

And it will do so with ten new stories that are an ideal extension of the Donne come noi experience, the project dedicated to female empowerment which is already a book, a theatre show that continues to tour Italy, and a training course with stages around the country to inform our readers.

Every Wednesday, from 25 September, for ten consecutive weeks, the Storytel platform will launch a brand new podcast, entirely conceived, written and spoken by the staff of Donna Moderna. The voices of the journalists will alternate with those of the protagonists: normal women who have realised extraordinary achievements and distinguished themselves for their strength and tenacity and shown themselves able to overturn the gender stereotypes to challenge the rules of the game and conquer new space.

A full list of episodes:

25 September Donne che non abbassano la testa (Women that don’t bend)

                        An entrepreneur, a judge and a reporter in the sights of the mafia

2 October        La rivincita delle scienziate (The revenge of women scientists)

                        Lucia Votano, a researcher born in 1947, and a battle still to be won

9 October       Ragazze nel pallone (Football girls)

                        Sara Gama, the World Cup with the national team and the long road to equality in sport

16 October      Una chef controcorrente (A chef against the grain)

                        Cristina Bowerman and the rise of female Italian chefs in starred kitchens

23 October      L’altra metà dell’architettura (The other half of architecture)

Sandy Attia and the challenge of sustainable design in a world of male archistars

30 October      Noi, mamme acrobate (Acrobat mums)

A journey through the dreams and problems of single mothers, from choice or necessity

6 November    La rivoluzione verde (The green revolution)

The Anglo-Italian designer Orsola De Castro talks about a different and more ethical fashion

13 November Io sono super abile   (I am super-capable)

Paralympic athlete Martina Caironi and the desire to start again with a broken body

20 November Donna per scelta (Women from choice)

Arianna and the others, born in the wrong body, and their difficult transition

27 November Steve Jobs è femmina (Steve Jobs is female)

The three very young Italian programmers that are designing the digital future

Sign up on eee.storytel.it/donnamoderna and download the Storytel app to your smartphone or tablet where you can find the Donne come noi podcast and start listening. With the app and the tag #donnamoderna you can discover, as well as the episodes of the podcast, a series of titles (non-fiction, novels and podcasts) published by Storytel and recommended by the staff of the magazine. Registration will give you a free 30-day trial of the service – after which you can decided to continue your subscription at a cost of €9.99 per month – and provides access to the entire Storytel catalogue, that includes some 100,000 titles in three languages.

Donna Moderna, is Italy’s leading network for women that through the magazine reaches 3.5 million readers every month (source: Audipress 2019/I) and on web and social media channels, a digital audience of 10.3 million unique users per month (Source: Audiweb Mar-May 2019) to which should be added over 1,300,000 fans on Facebook, more than 500,000 followers on Twitter and 175,000 on Instagram.

Storytel was founded in 2005 and is a digital pioneer in the market for audiobooks, a sector that is growing rapidly. Storytel is currently the biggest streaming service in Northern Europe for audiobooks and operates in 19 markets around the world. Launched in Italy in June 2018, in the Italian market it boasts a catalogue of over 65,000 titles in English and around 4,000 in Italian, including many exclusives and podcasts. The offer was further enhanced in the summer with the addition of Spanish, with around 3,000 titles, reflecting the value of linguistic variety that has always underpinned the international spirit of Storytel.

Leadership is not an innate quality, but rather a learned skill: in means learning to take decisions, being masters of your own life, choosing. And it is useful to live well, at home, as well as at work.

This is why Donna Moderna, the magazine edited by Annalisa Monfreda is organising. along with Facebook Italia a training day in Bari on 28 September – at the Impact Hub Fiera del Levante, in Viale Volga – and in Florence on 12 October at the Impact Hub, in Via Panciatichi 16.

The programme features a lab on new leadership curated by the Mondadori Group weekly with exercises “borrowed” from improvisational theatre which will serve to transmit the characteristics of new leadership: politeness, listening, empathy, and “networking”.

The two days will also feature laboratories on innovation and social marketing from the Facebook program “Vivere Digitale” in partnership with Freeformers, where participants will discover the bases of   design thinking, or better, a creative approach to problem solving. There will also be an analysis of social networks and the new job opportunities they offer. The programme is part of the Facebook Binario F project, dedicated to the training and development of digital skills in Italy, with courses and initiatives organised across the country.

An extract from the show “Donne come noi” (Women Like US) written by Giulia Minoli and Emanuela Giordano, will also be shown. Drawn from the book written by these two Donna Moderna journalists, it is the tale of Italian women that share an ability to overcome their own limits, transforming obstacles into opportunities.

In conclusion, in Bari, Liliana di Donato the magazine’s managing editor, will moderate a discussion with un talk Monica Filograno from the municipality of Ruvo di Puglia which will focus on the issues discussed during the day, while in Florence the same discussion will be moderated by Donna Moderna’s Montserrat Fernandez Blanco,  with Barbara Minotti, head of communication at Facebook Italia, who will talk about her professional experience.

The courses and laboratories will run from 10 am until 6 pm.

Both days are open for 60 female participants.
The cost of the day is €15 and Facebook will offer the innovation laboratory for free. Closer to the date, participants will receive an email with full details about the event. The ticket will bear the participant’s name.

Enrolment will close on Wednesday 25 September for Bari and Wednesday 9 October for Florence.

For info and bookings please go to: www.abbonamenti.it/donnecomenoi

Grazia, the Mondadori Group magazine edited by Silvia Grilli presents Together – Made in Grazia the third collectors’ issue, available on newsstands and at selected bookshops from 17 September.

Following the first issue dedicated to great Italian talent and the second which explored the future, this new edition will examine issues such as: inclusion, the fight against prejudice and discrimination, safeguarding the planet, the battle against digital bullying and probes new ways of working “together” to build a better world and the necessity to get active to combat all forms of discrimination.

“If divisions prevent us from finding a better way, with this special publication we want to contribute to overcoming the barriers, advancing rights and their constant defence. Because rights are never definitive, but are always provisional if we do not continuously fight to safeguard them,” declared the editor of Grazia Silvia Grilli.

The most significant contributions to this issue are by: writer and winner of the Premio Strega Edoardo Albinati who describes the discovery of beauty in mental  distress, Marco Balzano winner of the Flaiano, Campiello, Bagutta prizes and the Prix Méditerranée who writes about the encounter of cultures that finally open up after a period of diffidence.

Also the writer Teresa Ciabatti interviews Renato Zero and does not refrain from singing of the utopia of a better world. Oscar-winner Jane Fonda reflects on the taboos in a society that excludes women because of their age while pop star Bebe Rexha makes peace with her body and recounts how only love and pride in ourselves can demolish discriminations against our bodies.

Another Oscar-winner, the director Oliver Stone, denounces the conformism of Hollywood, and in an intense interview with Pulitzer prize-winner Michael Cunningham, screenwriter Ivan Cotroneo looks at the fight against homophobia, which cannot exist without a fight against sexism, racism and anti-Semitism.

Extensive space is also given to fashion, with spectacular images in honour of an idea of beauty able to embrace also imperfections and articles inspired by nature and encounters between different cultures.

Together – Made in Grazia aims to probe the human soul, put itself in the shoes of others, and to embrace differences.

For Mediamond this third collection from Grazia once again confirms the great interest of the advertising market, marked by an excellent +23% increase in ad pages and a rise of +17% in ad revenues compared with the last issue published at the beginning of 2019.

Smart working consists of carrying out work in a flexible manner in terms of time and place where it is carried out and presupposes a new organisational-managerial philosophy based on greater autonomy for workers, who can choose when and where to work, in the face of greater responsibility for results and priorities.

In Italy, there are about 460,000 smart workers, with a tendency to grow.
Of a sample of 183 Italian companies with more than 250 employees, 56% already have structured smart working programmes in place, 8% will introduce them within the next 12 months and 21% are interested in the subject.

With the company agreement signed last year, the Mondadori Group has committed itself to the development of a smart working project for all employees of the Grafici Editoriali contract, with the aim of promoting forms of work that combine private and professional life.

More than 30 colleagues from all areas of the company, after having received the necessary training to understand the implications and changes in mentality, but also operational and health and safety requirements, will experience agile work until December 2019: that is, they can work in a different location from the company from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 4 days a month according to agreements made with their direct managers.

As demonstrated by the many similar experiences in Italian and foreign companies, the expected benefits are many and on both sides: higher productivity and better performance, increasing sense of responsibility and satisfaction, lower transport costs and CO2 emissions, better balance between private and working life, less stress.

“C’è vita, in un libro. La tua” (There’s life in a book, yours) is the claim of a new book promotion campaign by Mondadori Store, the Mondadori Group’s chain of bookshops, and the fruit of an idea by the artist Mr. SaveTheWall with the creative contribution from the Action & Branding agency.

The initiative, which launches on 15 November, aims to enhance the reading experience through the voices and faces of readers: in other words real people who have taken part in an experimental artistic operation called Bookshot and who are the protagonists of the campaign by offering an unmediated account of their feelings and bring books to life in their own words.

“The result of this creative project is a form of communication that comes from and goes to the heart, because sharing a book is to share a part of your life,” declared Francesco Riganti, marketing director of Mondadori Retail. “Mondadori Store is making itself a spokesman and promoter of a message of social interest: an invitation to read, because we believe that more readers can lead to a more solid society that is focused on development and change.”

During two shooting sessions at the Mondadori Megastore in Via Marghera in Milan, Mr. SaveTheWall, aka Pierpaolo Perretta, the artist known for his situationist work that interprets issues and habits of contemporary society, met one hundred people. Each participant was asked to bring their favourite book with them and what emerged were  profound stories and feelings provoked by reading. Each of which was captured on video and fixed in a photographic portrait.

“An adage that I have made my own is ‘art is in the eye of the beholder’. And in Bookshot, as a work of art, I was able to note that the participants made the books the had read their own and created a  unique reading experience. The authenticity of the feelings of the participants is in itself something quite extraordinary especially if we consider that from a dialogue based on a single object – their favourite book – they were able to draw out a more profound and real synthesis of their life. This is why, for me, Bookshot is such an authentic, powerful and engaging project,” commented the artist Mr. SaveTheWall.

So readers are the exceptional witnesses to an initiative that will take place in the coming months on the web on a site dedicated to the project www.condividiunlibro.it, which will host he videos and photos produced by the artist. Users will be invited to take part by posting on Facebook or Instagram Stories their favourite book and a phrase the briefly explains why it is their favourite and using the hashtag #condividiunlibro. Alls of this content will be added to the platform, multiplying the sharing of experiences and will be rewarded by Mr. SaveTheWall who will choose the best shots.

“This is an ambitious and extremely valuable project that we are very proud of. A sort of perfect alchemy has been created among the people involved and this has enabled the idea to gather enthusiasm day by day and reach out to all of the touchpoints. The genesis itself of the creative idea was the result of collective intelligence working in harmony, a relationship model that can be taken as an example and that will increasingly find a place in the future.” concluded Alessandro Pedrazzini, CEO of Action & Branding.

The campaign will also benefit form articulated planning across different media and managed by MediaClub: press, with four subjects, on leading weekly and monthly titles and the Mondadori Store Christmas Gift Guide; the web and the social networks Facebook, Instagram and Youtube with di 30’’ and 60’’ videos; leading influencer networks; outdoor metropolitan digital posts, at metro, bus and train stations; and all of the shops on the Mondadori Store network and on Mondadoristore.it.

Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., FISTEL CISL, SLC CGIL and UILCOM UIL have signed a new Corporate Agreement that the Mondadori Group will implement from 1 January 2019. The text of the Agreement has been approved by 98% meetings of the staff.

The Agreement constitutes an innovative model in the publishing sector and places people at the centre by recognising the value of human resources, the primary asset of any business, with a cultural approach that moves from a traditional model to one based on performance and accountability.

The parties agreed on the need to draw up a single contract for all of the employees covered by the national contract for publishing workers (CCNL grafici editoriali) in the different companies of the Mondadori Group, while simplifying and harmonising previously agreed conditions.

The Agreement also aims to modernise and experiment with a new approach to work, starting from an industrial relations model that facilitates bilateral discussion of central issues concerning the relationship between the company and its staff.

The approach extends also to processes of innovation and reorganisation, the trial of smart working, with the aim of improving the quality of the professional and personal life of employees, and training. The latter is seen as an indispensible tool for the achievement and maintenance of skills and professional development, as well as a strategic measure for the qualification and enhancement of staff. Opportunities for professional development will be encouraged also through internal mobility and job posting to support and sustain empowerment.

In the overall context of focusing on the needs of human resources, the parties agreed that staff accountability, also through the autonomous management of working hours, that foresees a single “clock in”, to facilitate an harmonious reconciliation between professional and personal needs that will result if greater satisfaction and an increase in the quality of work.

The Agreement signed will also introduce trials for specific tools to reconcile professional and personal life, such as smart working, and measures in support of families, with the aim of providing conditions that are more likely to make it easier to combine the demands of professional life with the needs of the family. Special attention has been given to the protection of maternity, with reduced hours for six months after returning to work and the bringing forward of the full salary for periods of reduced pay, as well as the attribution, for new fathers, of 10 days of paid leave.  Also in the case of serious illness, the Agreement foresees the withdrawal of the limited period job protection.

Despite the ongoing critical concerns that continue to affect the publishing sector, in particular from an economic perspective the Agreement also foresees the introduction for the three-year period, 2019-2021, of a single variable results-based annual bonus for all the Companies of the Group and an expression of this value in the form of a Corporate Welfare System that offers staff a series of services and initiatives aimed at facilitating the wellbeing of all employees and their families.

INTERNI will take part in the third edition of Café della stampa organised as part of the Cersaie 2018 in Bologna (24-28 September), the international fair for architectural and bathroom ceramics. On this occasion the interiors & contemporary design magazine edited by Gilda Bojardi has organised an event to discuss an issue of pressing importance: sustainability.

In fact, the title of the event is La ceramica nel progetto sostenibile (Ceramics in sustainable design), a conversation featuring Mario Cucinella, architect and founder of Mario Cucinella Architects, the architect Massimo Imparato and students from the SOS School of Sustainability. Mario Cucinella will invite us to reflect on the importance of adopting design methods able to promote a balance between culture, nature and technology, making the latter a discreet instrument at the service of spaces for people. He will be joined in the discussion by Massimo Imparato, director of the SOS – School of Sustainability, which trains new professional profiles in the field of sustainability, with young designers trained at the school by managing projects of different scales and who contributed to the setting up of the Pollution 2018 project presented during the Cersaie in Piazza Santo Stefano in Bologna, which focused specifically on these issues.

La ceramica nel progetto sostenibile (Ceramics in sustainable design) will take place on Wednesday 26 September from 12 midday at the Café della stampa (Centro Servizi, Agorà dei Media).

For more information, please visit www.internimagazine.it

Donna Moderna, the magazine edited by Annalisa Monfreda, presents a project called Atlete: stories of female sports professionals who – despite many sporting successes – are relegated by Italian regulations to amateur roles with a marginal image, also among the general public. From winter to team sports, and from swimming to disciplines generally considered more male, such as football, car racing and boxing, their stories stand out for their strength and determination and a capacity to enter the collective imagination and bring honour and acclaim to the country.

“In the great chorus with which in 2018 we are giving voice to “Donne come noi” (Women Like Us), which looks at women who are making headway gaining space in society, we felt that athletes deserved a special mention,” explained Annalisa Monfreda, editor of Donna Moderna. “They are the pioneers of female empowerment, as they continuously challenge the limits of their bodies and the society in which they live. And yet, despite this, they still face disparity with the other half of the sky, a disparity that is even written into the rules!”

Atlete (www.donnamoderna.com/atlete/) is an online long-form response in 25 chapters, that will be published weekly, each of which – with video, photos and text – will tell the story of an outstanding sportswoman or group of sportswomen – that are representative of a universe, a specificity or a particular battle. Some examples: Eleonora Piacezzi, 23, is one of the brightest hopes of Italian women’s football. She plays for the national team and the Cuneo women’s team but she is still obliged to work part-time in her family’s greenhouse business in Liguria, and to train twice a week on her own and another twice a week in the evenings, after driving many kilometres by car to join her team-mates. Or Nataliya Shudruk and her team-mates of the Lobsters Pescara (a female American football team, a sport that in Italy has fewer then 100 participants) who in order to find the resources they need to participate in the championship had to organise a crowdfunding initiative and a self-produced calendar.

Atlete is also a series of 6 reportage article, published once a month in print, with outstanding photographs by Ugo Zamborlini and written by Gianluca Ferraris and Barbara Rachetti. And, from 15 June, an 8-part podcast, produced by Piano P, each of which telling a story in the voices of journalists, the protagonist and background sounds, along with audio extracts from the competitions.

The story continues also on social channels, using the hashtag #Atlete to share the project with the entire community of the Donna Moderna brand: the video interviews of Atlete will be available on YouTube and posted natively on Facebook and Instagram.