Dear reader, my name is Simone Forcina and I am a designer working in the field where communication & visual strategy meet. I was born in Italy on 5 May 1989, where I built the foundations of a method that I apply today to the brands I choose to work with.
My path began at the age of seven, struck by the paintings and illustrations in the family business: the first marks traced with a blue Bic on small multicoloured post-its. Later I was captured by my father's artistic joinery structures and by the rigour with which, among tools and materials, they took shape. That early inclination found a natural home in humanistic and artistic studies, up to my first paid editorial commission at seventeen. The quality of those results created a deeper need in me: to understand not only the how, but the why.
In 2009 I began my studies at IED in Rome, where teachers who were mentors more than lecturers contributed decisively to my growth. After graduating in Visual Communication Design, curiosity led me to explore apparently distant disciplines such as psychology, art history, marketing, architecture, not to accumulate qualifications, but for the depth they gave back to my method. Today my design looks to luxury, because I cultivate attention to detail and the search for a meaning that unfolds beneath the surface.
I value those who come already educated about their own positioning: anyone who does not simply ask “make it look good”, but seeks a visual solution able to improve how their business expresses itself on the market, has already done half of the strategic work. A brief, in this sense, works like a road sign: “if it is not drawn precisely, it leads somewhere else”.
As Sun Tzu teaches, “the outcome of every battle is decided in the strategic phase, before the field is ever reached”. I apply the same principle to every project: the impact a visual expression will have on its audience is not born in the execution, but in the phase where it is planned. With “Artist's Shit”, Piero Manzoni demonstrated that content, if properly given value, can be worth 275,000 euros; and yet I often see products sealed inside unsuitable packaging, and I wonder whether the producer considers their own work less worthy than a signed excrement. Results measurable in numbers matter as much as the historical persistence a visual expression imprints on the market: the two dimensions support each other, they do not replace each other.
I find it pointless to spend energy staying fixed on the problem, when that same energy could be invested in solving it. Thought, concept and project, lived through the ritual they share, give me back the same emotional impact as the final result: “the process is not a means, it is already part of the end.”
Away from the studio, what feeds my work is sport: tennis, for the mental tenacity it instils; kitesurfing, where learning to read the behaviour of natural elements teaches you to master adverse circumstances.
Observing nature, in the balance and harmony of its most complete form, helps me not to lose the idea of measured perfection. In the city, walking through public spaces and watching how people behave allows me to read the psycho-social and behavioural profiles of individuals, a precious asset when the time comes to engage with the end user.
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Merisi, Oliviero Toscani, Ennio Morricone, David Ogilvy, Federico Fellini, Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, Stanley Kubrick, Stefan Sagmeister, Quentin Tarantino, Steve Jobs: these are my guiding stars. “I hope that one day what I have learned may become a legacy of use to the designers who come after me.”
I believe a good client is one who knows the market they operate in, can define objectives and needs clearly, and is aware of their own limits. A good professional, in turn, is one who, confident in their own abilities, can advise and carry out the most fitting strategy so that the client's need finds its fullest expressive form.
“Only if you put value before price will people choose you for what you are truly worth”
Vision “I believe in a world where every brand stops settling for being seen and starts being told, because only stories build universes that people choose to enter, to stay in, to recognise themselves in”.
Mission “To turn the story of every brand I choose to work with into a coherent visual and verbal identity, built with method before inspiration, able to cross seasons, contexts and trends while remaining true to itself”.
