Armando Testa

Armando Testa was a well-known designer, cartoonist and graphic and text author for the advertising sector. He made minimalism in the graphic design and the immediacy of the tag lines his winning weapons. The advertising agency he created, the Armando Testa Group, is still among the top, in terms of turnover and activities, operating in Italy. In 1937 he won the first poster competition with the poster for ICI published in «Graphicus»; However, his professional activity only began in 1946, when he founded the first graphic studio in Turin. His sometimes frenetic activity does not even neglect the social aspect, carried out with advertising campaigns by Amnesty International and the International Red Cross. Among the many figures he created over the course of a very long career, worthy of particular mention are the famous mysterious Caballero, Mexican gunslinger, and Carmencita, his sweetheart, protagonists of a famous television carousel for a brand of coffee from the Turin-based Lavazza, in vogue in the seventies.