A3 Corporate Communications of Olivetti, 1979
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A3 Corporate Communications of Olivetti, 1979
Motoo Nakanishi writes a forward to the book A3 Design Systems for Corporations: Corporate Communications of Olivetti 1
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The following is a forward written by Motoo Nakanishi in April, 1978 to the book A3 Design Systems for Corporations: Corporate Communications of Olivetti 1. I selected this as it touches on corporate social responsibility, which was highly progressive for the time. If you enjoy articles like this, and would like to support the project, subscribe to Logo Histories.
April, 1978
Motoo Nakanishi.
Director The CoCoMAS Committee
For good design to be widely recognized as such and for its existence to possess value socially, it cannot merely exist as a beautiful form. Its worth must be publicized and appreciated by society. The value of existence refers to that characteristic, the social value which objects of superior form and function acquire when information about them is created and communicated.
We members of the CoCoMAS Committee are in the habit of using the phrase "informational value of corporations" in place of corporate image in our daily work. The establishment and relative importance of such a psychographic criterion for evaluating corporations will increase the more information-oriented the social environment becomes. Hence, corporations today must strive for good performance and the production of quality goods and, at the same time, must create favorable information and work to ensure that it will be evaluated as highly as possible.
The involvement of corporations in cultural activities is regarded by some people in the fields of economics and management as superfluous, a management pastime that should not acquire the status of an essential corporate objective. Our position, however, is completely contrary to this. In considering the future relationship between corporations and society we hold that corporations should not establish management policies simply on the basis of whether or not they are in line with the mechanism of the market. We have no contention whatsoever with corporations' conducting their activities with profit-making as their first principle. Considering the management environment that corporations are likely to face here-after, however, we believe that corporations will have to adjust themselves to the "mechanism of society" in addition to that of the market and that this will become an increasingly important problem. In this sense, the CoCoMAS theory that we advocate remains to be proved gradually. The Olivetti Corporation which was selected as the subject of our study is exactly suited to our purpose as it provides corroborative evidence for our views.
We have been focusing our attention on Olivetti for eight years now. Four years alone were spent on preliminary data collection and analysis, and another four years have passed since we came into direct contact with Olivetti and began gathering materials. Because a corporation is truly a living entity it is a difficult thing for outsiders to fully comprehend. With the wholehearted cooperation of the Olivetti Headquarters and Olivetti Corporation of Japan, however, we have obtained invaluable materials and information which we have examined with our theoretical system. To this we have added our own experiences in the process of collecting research materials. This book is intended neither as an introduction nor as a theoretical exposition. Rather. it is an analysis, a re-evaluation and a reconstruction of the Olivetti Corporation and its seventy-year history based on the CoCoMAS theory from the perspective of the value ascribed to information.
Because the existence of manufactured goods and corporations greatly affects people's lives whether they like it or not, we believe that corporations should take an active approach to the way they influence society. Furthermore, in fulfilling their social responsibilities, their aim should be to promote cultural values. In the long run, the adoption of this way of thinking and such activities will develop in corporations a better nature and give rise to an improved environment for management. In this respect, since the days of the founder Camillo Olivetti, the Olivetti Corporation has been creating an era rather than coping with the times. The 'Comunita inspired seed that was sown in the countryside of northern Italy in 1908 is no longer confined to Olivetti territory. Given the severe situation in which corporations throughout the world are being placed today, we believe that Olivetti should be re-evaluated not as an extraordinary phenomenon but as a model for all corporations.
We earnestly hope that this book may serve as a light to aid others in following the example of Olivetti.
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Logo Histories' Extra Issue unlocks opinion and insights lost to time, buried within the pages of rare out-of-print design books and magazines. Through this series, you'll come to understand the challenges and opportunities corporate identity designers of the past faced to help you better understand design practice of the present. For Logo Histories, click here.