Punt e Mes

Why it works

Punt e Mes is Piedmontese for 'a point and a half', named, legend says, after a Turin stockbroker's order for vermouth with half a measure of bitter added. In 1960 Armando Testa turned that name into a picture: a sphere hovering above a half-sphere, the brand set beneath in bold black capitals. The shape simply is the name. It is studied as a masterclass in fusing word and image, the kind of reduction Testa drew from geometric abstraction, and as proof that an advertising sign can outgrow its campaign: the Castello di Rivoli museum singles it out among his images whose fame outran even more successful campaigns. Apollo traces the idea to a Japanese Daruma doll Testa found in San Francisco. Carpano, by its own account, still uses the sphere-and-a-half as the Punt e Mes logo, and in 2015 a version four metres across was installed outside Turin's Porta Susa station in tribute to the man often called the father of modern Italian advertising.