[...]

Giuseppe Musella, gix for friends.

I entered the print shop for the first time in 1996.

Then, after graduating and having a ridiculous university career, I started working.
Accountant, of course, in a fourth-rate graphic design studio.
Within a week and the invoices, credit notes, delivery notes, and anything of a fiscal and accounting nature flew through the studio.
Ok, look Pebass (yes, I wasn't Gix yet at the time), this job isn't for you, they told me.
And I, Wait a minute, let me go to the printer for a bit.
The Typography.
The Typography.
Damn, the typography.
There was "only" a two-color offset machine, an old Heidelberg 26×35 for the barrels (hot, dry, die-cutting),
A very small light table, millimetered for recording films and an age-old paper cutter, without any protection.
The acrid smell of the inks, the damp paper and the various "Smazza la carta" shouted by the Chromatist before placing in the car.
Here, the reels start.
Fix the inkwells, a little cyan. A little magenta, little precision but extreme speed.
The computer? An old Mac 6100, I think.
The high resolutions could only be done by Leonardo, in Capodimonte, as well as the editing.
The texts, the "transfers". The old letraset Transferables.
YES he was always working.
After a while, it was 1996, the first salary, 100,000 lire.
Fuck. But I was happy. Happy.
Then.
It was like September 1998. I was supposed to join the military. One day, thanks to a friend of that period, who "found and took and sent" my CV from the old dresser at the entrance of the house in Via Ruoppolo, I received a phone call.
It was Lorella: Hi, it's La UnionGraphics , can you come and give it a try?”.
Now, UnionGraphics was no ordinary agency. It was a fantastic place.
Well, I take the test, I take a Colossal Shit, and I still get caught.
The reason why? I do not know. I think it was a matter of demons and angels.
Well Gix (I had become Gix), I begin on January 19th.
Great.
The Military.
I left for the military the month before.
The fuck I leave. I have to go to Union.
Ok, Caserta Military Hospital, 184 days of hospitalization (in reality I didn't sleep there) to mark the visit.
Ok, in December, Reformed.

Like Colonels, Marshals, oberschultz they convinced themselves that I really had something.

Something.
UnionGraphics.
Bergamene and Gravina.
The first, technical, typography mouse, scruffy, crazy, hysterical, extroverted.
The second, Gaetano, Artist, Creative, Pure Graphic Designer, elegant in movements and vocabulary, crazy, calm, Introverted.
Me, I was at the beginning.
I studied, I studied, I studied.
I looked at them, I felt them, sitting at that desk.
Most of all, I played records.
And what records.
Here too, the beginning was Claudicante.
Naples in that period, there were really nice people communicating.
Us, Jfk, Zelig, Eikon, Alessandro Leone, and I forget anything else.
What was UnionGraphics?
UnionGraphics was a stroke, a brushstroke, a concept, a forgotten, visceral way of making graphics.
Then, Here Comes, We Change Studio and move on to the City of Science incubator.
Module 6.
Wonderful period. However, this story deserves a chapter of its own, perhaps one day.

Now, leaving aside who did this and who did that, I participated and I think I did quite well in:

• University of Sannio, Coordinated Image
• City of science, Logo and Corporate Identity
• Science City, Set-up of the Officina dei Piccoli and Spazio Gnam areas
• The Unveiled Castle, Castel dell'ovo
• Futuro Remoto, about ten editions
• UNESCO, Catalog of Italian UNESCO Heritage Sites, winner of the Fedrigoni Award for typographic technique, 2008
• Package, Discovering Packaging, Exhibition Setup, Conai
• Sustainable cities for girls and boys, traveling exhibition
• National Order of Architects, Traveling Exhibition
• Istituto degli Innocenti, Florence, Design and setup of the playroom.
• Logos and Places, Exhibition by Gaetano Gravina
• Ansaldo, Software design for TouchScreen for the presentation of the Copenhagen Metro, Berlin 2007.
• Ansaldo, Stand Setup, Karlshrue 2007
• Ansaldo, Stand Setup, Istanbul 2008
• CocaCola, different things, radio commercials, events and other things.
• ZetaZero Music Video, Barcelona 2006 Directed by Alex Orlwoski
• Music Video In Captivity, Epo, Portagallo 2008, direction I don't remember
• Dirty Music Video, Epo, BOlogna, directed by Alex Orlwoski
• Mamamu Rock Festival, Birraaaaaaa! 🙂
• Theatrical posters for a bunch of people (carpenters, Ranieri, Danieli, all rhymes, but also many others)
• three thousand other things, which I really don't remember, in addition to just as many hustlers.
  You can find something about me in "different" publications, including some by Pino Grimaldi, in some catalogs (the best thing Gaetano wrote to me).
• Patti Smith, live @ Pompeii, July 26, 2022.

Then, at a certain point, I was on the Naples ring road, between Vomero and Fuorigrotta, and, because of a song, I decided to change my life.
But this too, perhaps will be another story.

Here you can find my portfolio (more or less) updated for the last 3/4 years.