Matteo Ragni was born in Milan in 1972. He took a degree in Architecture at the Milan Polytechnic. Since 1994 he has focused on design in a wide range of industrial and crafts contexts, concentrating on questions of function combined with typological innovation. He has worked for many companies, often mixing his activity as a designer with the role of creative director, creating perfectly synchronized systems of communication and production.
His working relationships with Italian and international producers have allowed him to construct a modus operandi that adapts to the background and history of each individual brand, in the conviction that this is the only way for the role of the designer to take on an ethical character, contributing to true evolution.
In 2001, at the age of 29, Matteo Ragni became one of the youngest talents to win a Compasso d’Oro award, with the disposable utensil Moscardino, designed together with Giulio Iacchetti. In 2014 he was assigned a second Compasso d’Oro, again with Giulio Iacchetti, for the design of a series of manhole covers for Montini.
He has received many other national and international honors, underscoring his discreet, eclectic approach always driven by the pursuit of irony and thoughtful, clean design gestures. He was selected by Campari to commemorate the centennial of Futurism, with a project of interior and product design and communication, across several seasons of collaboration with the famous Italian firm.
For the company Alpi Ragni has developed a reinterpretation of the expressive potential of semi-finished materials, generating an original approach to wood composites.
From this point on in his career, he has investigated the possibility of an open dialectic with every industrial sector, from production to communication.
Another area of intense research and activity is that of the creation of entrepreneurial projects, in which Ragni plays a fundamental role. The first is TobeUs, a brand created for self-production of toy cars in cedar wood. Over time this has become a project of great cultural breadth, leading to an exhibition entitled “100% TobeUs” that has traveled to six cities around the world.
W-Eye is another brand based on an idea of Matteo Ragni and Doriano Mattellone, who has converted his operation as a manufacturer of chairs into an innovative brand of eyewear in wood and aluminium. In 2012 the brand won the “Premio dei premi” for Innovation assigned by the President of the Republic, and the “Silmo d’Or,” one of the highest honors in the world for eyewear design.
Today Matteo Ragni, besides the ongoing work with his studio’s clients, is involved in the creative direction of Very Wood and Fantoni. In particular, with Fantoni he has developed a very close relationship in the area of projects of communication, leading to the ninth edition of the publication BlueIndustry and the formulation of a research project on the themes of labor and enterprise.
With Very Wood, on the other hand, the collaboration focuses on a relationship in which the figure of the creative director is involved above all in the identification of new design partnerships.
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