Vespa is an Italian brand of scooter manufactured by Piaggio. The name means wasp in Italian. Vespa scooters have been known for their painted, pressed steel unibody which combines, in a unified structural unit, a complete cowling for the engine (enclosing the engine mechanism and concealing dirt or grease), a flat floorboard providing foot protection, and a prominent front fairing for wind protection. There have been 34 versions of the Vespa.
Alexey Brodovitch’s knowledge of photography gave his work its classic feel. Brodovitch often cropped photographs in unexpected ways, and he placed them off-centre—sometimes bleeding them outside the margins of a page—to create compositions which were full of energy and movement.
“Surprise quality can be achieved in many ways. It may be produced by a certain stimulating geometrical relationship between elements in the picture, or through the human interest of the situation photographed, or by calling our attention to some commonplace but fascinating thing we have never noticed before, or it can be achieved by looking at an everyday thing in a new interesting way.”
—Alexey Brodovitch
Read more in my article on Alexey Brodovitch in Smashing Magazine.
Brodovitch was born in Russia in 1898. After moving to the United States in 1930, Harper’s Bazaar became Brodovitch’s most well-known project. It’s Brodovitch’s art direction for Harper’s Bazaar which has influenced designers since the 1940s. His designs were elegant, something Carmel Snow once described as “good taste, plus a dash of daring.”