Design today

“Superwoman is a woman who takes care of house chores and her profession simultaneously”. This is a logical definition, but in a modern view on women, there is another definition: “The Superwoman of today wears Gucci, walks in Prada, reads the time from a Cartier, drives a Porsche and thinks that Cocking and Fucking are cities in China”. This satirical view was taken by Cordula Alessandri, in an order placed by the Hongkong Heritage Museum, to display this bitter fact in the form of three posters. Right at the same time, Saarbrücken University of Arts invited her to teach Communication Design as a guest teacher. Alessandri decided to teach her personal view on communicating the idea of touching sense and sensuality in graphic design under the title of “CooKing and FucKing”. She believes that publicity and applied graphics are so short-lived that by tomorrow, they will probably have expired. Thus, thinking and design should be touched by people’s hands and hearts; otherwise, they wouldn’t leave an indelible mark on them.

Cordula Alessandri was born in 1960 in Salzburg, Austria. She was the top student in art school. In 1982, under her professor Herbert Schwarz, she graduated from the Vienna University of Applied Arts. Consequently, she spent three years learning typography under Professor Joey Badian. At the age of 24, she was the youngest and first woman ever in Austria who had started work as art director in the advertising agency DDB Needham Worldwide. In 1987, she set up her own studio called Alessandri Design and during the 24 consequent years she created wonderful works, for instance the series of food packaging labels of Calinarium Österreich, Esterházy Drinks, Fangocur, Healing Soil, IQ and My Cosmetics.
To communicate the message, Alessandri addresses all five senses of her audience. She once said: “We want to reach the inner core of the people with our work. Reaching people also means reaching target groups. The same is true for making people smile or to stimulate their play instinct”.
Alessandri’s definition of graphics is not restricted to design; she aims to invoke the designer’s responsibility in the society and his or her getting the message across through communicating rightly. The chosen pen for writing, organization of information and combining the elements should all be carried out by the correct understanding of each nation’s daily life and regarding their needs and thoughts.  
www.alessandri-design.at