Alias Magazine 2024

Alias was founded in 1979 as a profound and ironic reflection on culture. Since the presentation at the Studio Marconi gallery, Alias emphasised its strong association with the numerous expressions of creativity and enterprise, a credo that will forever accompany the brand on its journey. In this challenging and cross-cutting context, Alias identified stylistic innovation, material research and design culture as the founding values on which to build its identity. It was precisely this free-thinking perspective and desire for interdisciplinary experiences that prompted the company to set up the first Image 

Committee in its early years, in 1983, whose members included Carlo and Francesco Forcolini (the founders of Alias with Enrico Baleri and Marilisa Decimo), Giandomenico Belotti, Gianfranco Pardi, Emilo Tadini and Carlo Orsi, later joined by Renato Stauffacher and Emilio Genovesi. This period saw the launch of AliasMAGAZINE, which printed light critical contributions that fuelled the cultural debate in those years. The words of Omar Calabrese, Gillo Dorfles, and Marco Vallora (just to name a few) are complemented by Aldo Ballo’s photographs for bold advertising campaigns, along with the text and 

visual contributions of Emilio Tadini, who testified to the dual nature of Alias. While many design brands concentrated on creating glossy publications, Alias, starting in 1986 and for the next two years, chose a different path. It launched a magazine which, although seemingly simple in its form, was full of deeply cultured and sophisticated content. AliasMAGAZINE is a meeting point for virtuous minds. Its light paper and simple staple binding contain numerous articles of significant cultural depth, interspersed, as in a real newspaper, with “Alias advertisements” celebrating Alias and its vision.

It is a magazine in which the contrast between the simple form and the rich – sometimes ironic – content invites deep reflection. Today, Alias is shedding new light on the words featured in the first two editions of AliasMAGAZINE, through a printed collection of early articles with the aim of sharing archive content that takes us back to the origins of Something Else, the key value that has always described the Alias’ dual nature, combining functionality and creative experimentation, which has always positioned it as one of the most avant-garde brands on the design scene.