Design of Story the Sensual Way

This picture by Helmut Newton for Pirelli, the Italian group famous for its iconic and sensual calendars, never made it to a calendar.

If the project had come to completion twenty-one years ago, says the caption in Il Corriere della Sera, there would be another prize out there for icon hunters to chase -- the first, and only, Pirelli calendar made in Italy by Newton.

This image is a perfect example of the use of sensuality to tell a story. It reveals just enough to connect with your imagination yet not too much as that would detract from your subjective experience. The use of black and white photography adds a dimension of intimacy.

Comments

[Chris]

When I was in college, I worked in a bicycle shop.

There was a Bianchi poster we kept in the back: an image of a pouty, achingly beautiful Italian woman stepping off her city bike with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. I realize it's the same picture, essentially, as the one you shared from Pirelli.

This sort of marketing calls the buyer straight into the story, which is immensely powerful.

The shop closed in the late Eighties, and I took the poster with me. It followed me around for a decade or so before finally disappearing. But I've always had a romantic attachment to Italian bicycles, and I bet a lot of it has to do with the mental picture of that woman cycling home on her celeste Bianchi with a quiet lunch for two.

[David Armano]

"This image is a perfect example of the use of sensuality to tell a story."

This is a great example of the sensual side of our brains at work to tell a great visual story in the form of a powerful image that stimulates the imagination.

I make the case here that although there is a still a place for this kind of visual communication, creativity has become more multi-dimensional in regards to the creation of experiences and facilitation of conversations.

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/06/creativity_2e.html