1979. Tratto Pen wins the Compasso D'oro

The Compasso d'Oro prize, founded in 1954 and conceived by Gio Ponti, is the first and most qualified European prize in the sector. The purpose of the prize, a golden compass of superb proportions designed by Abe Steiner, is to enhance the value of Italian design quality. Initially sponsored by the La Rinascente chain stores, it has been exclusively managed by ADI, the Industrial Design Association, since 1964.

The jury's decision

Tratto. Future certainty
Anty Pansera: "Since the 50's, Gillo Dorfles worked and theorised on the culture of Italian design and, in 1979, participated as a Compasso d'Oro jury member. What do you remember about that time?".

Gillo Dorfles, Design theorist and critic: "I remember that period well, especially because Compasso d'Oro regained popularity in 1979. A prize which, initially sponsored by Rinascente and then ADI in the early 70's, had stopped holding events for the nine previous years. When it resumed its activities, it did it with class: along with me, the jury included architect Cortesi, Morello, who became President of the Triennale, and other celebrities in that field and at that time and I remember that one of the objects selected was the new Tratto Pen, the new comfortable writing tool which immediately caught our attention".

Anty Pansera: "Other writing tools were submitted at that edition of the Compasso d'Oro making it sort of hard to come to a decision. On the one hand, Marco Del Como and his Design Group with Tratto Pen, on the other, Marco Zanuso with his Astil".

Gillo Dorfles: "Certainly Zanuso's pen, very famous and also very beautiful, was a dangerous competitor but Tratto Pen won over. It was a less expensive object, less luxurious and was representative of what was, at that time, the design ideal: a return to simplicity, practicality, not yet discovered by those ornamental frills that became livelier in following years".

Anty Pansera: "How can this product's success be explained since, thirty years later, it is still sold, thus bought, as if it was hot off the production line?".

Gillo Dorfles: "Tratto Pen has important technical qualities, other than visual. Compared to the Bic, for example, compared to other pens sold at that time, Tratto Pen, and later, Tratto Clip, offered incredible writing ease: an especially fluid ink, a rather sharp point that adapted to both writing and artistic drawing. In fact, I know that the Tratto Pen is still used by many designers and illustrators as a useful composition means".

Anty Pansera: "In this twenty-first century, the computer is the star. Handwriting, writing with the Tratto Pen, writing using this traditional yet innovative writing tool, will remain in the future?"

Gillo Dorfles: "I believe that man will continue to write until the end of humanity because nothing is as immediate as writing. As far as the computer or cell phone can write, send messages, even short letters, I'm sure that the possibility of expressing thoughts using your hands is an absolutely irreplaceable gesture".

From 1979 to today. Difficult years?

Anty Pansera: "Another jury member at that edition of the Compasso d'Oro was a designer, Angelo Cortesi. We needed many different views to reach a more objective decision. Cortesi was a designer who worked and gave a lot to Italian industrial design as a designer and as the president of ADI, the Italian industrial design association".

Angelo Cortesi, Architect and Designer: "The 1979 jury was not a simple one because that edition of the Compasso d'Oro was not a simple one. We had to evaluate 1,700 products, all the ones that weren't able to participate in the previous 9 years since the contest hadn't been held. Reviewing ten years of production, also ten years of high design production, was difficult but, after a series of heated discussions, we made a decision: recognising the historic founders of design, who had a great amount of products on exhibit, but also recognising new generations, new entries in Italian design".

Anty Pansera: "Tratto won the Compasso d'Oro, the Zanuso pen, no. Two very different designs?".

Angelo Cortesi: "Succeeding in "writing" a design story on a product with so few elements, as a pen can be, is a difficult task. But Design Group Italia and Zanuso succeeded in writing a great story from the design standpoint".

Anty Pansera: "Does the future hold surprises for traditional writing tools?".

Angelo Cortesi: "For a certain period of time, some were certain that traditional writing tools would disappear, just as some theorist predicted paper would disappear. In reality, we now consume much more paper than before and also many more traditional writing tools, or manual ones, than before. In a discussion, one of the long ones with Enzo Mari, it emerged that product, in reality, multiply, they do not disappear; thus, despite the use of the computer, manual writing tools will always be around".