Lora Lamm
Graphic Designer
Lamm’s own style mixes typography with illustration, collage and photography, organising the space in an airy yet rigorous way, where everything serves the purpose of communicating clearly and elegantly, with optimism and humour.
Lora Lamm
Graphic Designer
Lamm’s own style mixes typography with illustration, collage and photography, organising the space in an airy yet rigorous way, where everything serves the purpose of communicating clearly and elegantly, with optimism and humour.
Lora Lamm’s graphic design work was refreshing, cosmopolitan and optimistic, in the way that it spread modern and positive messages.
In the middle of the Italian renaissance, when design and communication started increasing and being considered necessary for innovative advertising ideas, Lamm created a “perfect hybrid of Swiss rationalism and Italian exuberance.” (Sellers, 2017) Her graphic style was modern, light and fun in a rational way. It was surely influenced by her professors, in Zürich School of Arts and Crafts: the influential typographer and designer Ernst Keller, with his clear and precise graphic style, and the Bauhaus master Johannes Itten, a leading figure of expressionism and colour theorist. It was this dynamic education that encouraged Lamm to leave the conservative country of Switzerland to a regenerated Italy, in 1953.
She was the only woman employed in the Studio Boggeri, where she stood out with enormous experimental curiosity, use of colour and wit, merged with her formal rigour and precision. Lamm created catalogues, posters, invitations, mailers, advertising campaigns, packaging and other publicity material with such a sense of elegance and
energy that represent her style in each work.
From illustrations in pencil and gouache, Lora Lamm’s work evolved to collage, photocomposition and lettering.
Lamm was promoted to director of the graphics department in 1958. Her new position allowed her to develop a freelance career for brands, such as Elizabeth Arden’s cosmetics, Pirelli’s rubber manufacture, and Necchi’s sewing machine company.
As commercial products increased and time evolved, so did her gentle fashion illustrations’ style, which became a pop-art inspired one. Lora Lamm’s attraction to this American style motivated her to return to Zürich, her home country, in 1963, with the intention to obtain a US work visa to move to America. However, her application was declined, and she was obliged to stay in Switzerland, where she joined the Swiss advertising office of Frank Thiessing. In his office, Lamm was forced to discharge her fun and witty style, replacing it with a more serious tone.
As stated in a 2015 exhibition in the Museum für Gestaltung, Lamm’s work “traverses the borders between Italy and Switzerland, illustration and graphic design, past and present.”
Birth: 11th January 1928, Arosa, Switzerland
Font: Sellers, L., 2017. Women design. London: Frances Lincoln.
Lora Lamm’s graphic design work was refreshing, cosmopolitan and optimistic, in the way that it spread modern and positive messages.
In the middle of the Italian renaissance, when design and communication started increasing and being considered necessary for innovative advertising ideas, Lamm created a “perfect hybrid of Swiss rationalism and Italian exuberance.” (Sellers, 2017) Her graphic style was modern, light and fun in a rational way. It was surely influenced by her professors, in Zürich School of Arts and Crafts: the influential typographer and designer Ernst Keller, with his clear and precise graphic style, and the Bauhaus master Johannes Itten, a leading figure of expressionism and colour theorist. It was this dynamic education that encouraged Lamm to leave the conservative country of Switzerland to a regenerated Italy, in 1953.
She was the only woman employed in the Studio Boggeri, where she stood out with enormous experimental curiosity, use of colour and wit, merged with her formal rigour and precision. Lamm created catalogues, posters, invitations, mailers, advertising campaigns, packaging and other publicity material with such a sense of elegance and energy that represent her style in each work.
From illustrations in pencil and gouache, Lora Lamm’s work evolved to collage, photocomposition and lettering.
Lamm was promoted to director of the graphics department in 1958. Her new position allowed her to develop a freelance career for brands, such as Elizabeth Arden’s cosmetics, Pirelli’s rubber manufacture, and Necchi’s sewing machine company.
As commercial products increased and time evolved, so did her gentle fashion illustrations’ style, which became a pop-art inspired one. Lora Lamm’s attraction to this American style motivated her to return to Zürich, her home country, in 1963, with the intention to obtain a US work visa to move to America. However, her application was declined, and she was obliged to stay in Switzerland, where she joined the Swiss advertising office of Frank Thiessing. In his office, Lamm was forced to discharge her fun and witty style, replacing it with a more serious tone.
As stated in a 2015 exhibition in the Museum für Gestaltung, Lamm’s work “traverses the borders between Italy and Switzerland, illustration and graphic design, past and present.”
Birth: 11th January 1928, Arosa, Switzerland
Font: Sellers, L., 2017. Women design. London: Frances Lincoln.
