«For the covers of the La Stampa newsletters I combined the realism of the news with the dreamlike romanticism of my works». Antonio Prediction he lives in Rome, is 33 years old and is considered one of the most interesting emerging protagonists of contemporary Italian illustration. With his drawings he “dressed up” the six new newsletters that La Stampa offers to its readers. From the Coronavirus emergency to TuttoSoldi passing through the Top News and foreign news: every digital bulletin now has its own graphic imprint. «For this job I have been transformed – says Pronostic – My works are almost all in pencil, but for La Stampa I bought a tablet to work digitally. I wanted the result to be stronger and more impactful, from the colors to the lines. More consistent with the nature of the newsletter ».
The first cover designed was that of the newsletter which collects the main news of the Turin breaking latest news “Under the Mole”:« It was enough for me to read the title to create the image in my head. It is very evocative, which is why the illustration is direct and simple: a man peering under the symbol of the city as if it were a vase. He is looking for something and he will find everything that has happened in his “home”, which is Turin, evoked with the carpet and the cat on a bright red background ». The original color was grenade, but football has nothing to do with it: “The Juventus players are not wrong – he laughs – but I wanted to make the illustration more intimate and homely: I changed at the last minute”.
After the first table, Pronostic designed the electric blue newsletter “Metternich“Who will tell the news from abroad:” I liked the title immediately. I chose to represent him in formal clothes, but hidden by a large book so that he can also be exchanged with the image of the journalist who deepens the column with new readings: the reader can choose which interpretation to give. Even the armchair on which he is standing is made of books, with the carpet in front that takes up the shape of the five continents to give an idea of the different realities told by the newsletter ». An immersion in the different chapters of humanity, each of which represents a state and its news, its cultures, its traditions.
On the same blue, but shaded with the typical shade of La Stampa, also the newsletter “Today Top News“Represented as the illuminated building in the middle of a less bright city:” The surrounding environment is darker, colder, because I wanted to highlight the insight that Top News can offer. The extra content that can “shed light” on the hottest and most current topics ». To close the chromatic triptych the “TuttoSoldi” newsletter, dedicated to economic insights: “A large part of the industrious city is the least romantic illustration but the idea of sending a clear message to readers prevailed.”
The cat and the carpet of “Sotto la mole” are back in the newsletter “The week in pills” green hope: “A man and a woman in a park, a scene that I associate with the lighter moments of the weekend, who want to keep up-to-date and read this great front page with the most important articles of the week. The ideal moment – and the newsletter – to recover what was lost in the frenzy of working days and stay up to date ». Last but not least, the newsletter “more complicated to design” but also the most requested, for a year now, by readers: the orange one on the “Special Coronavirus” which tells, week after week, all the steps forward in the fight against the pandemic : «I represented the work of journalists as that of an investigator following the footprint in the shape of a virus. Why the most complicated? I came up with a lot of ideas, but for a delicate subject I needed the right balance between wanting to snatch a smile with the cover and the seriousness of the situation ».
A whirlwind of ideas transformed into images that will accompany the readers of the La Stampa newsletter for a long time. That the illustrator comments as follows: “I am satisfied, but now it’s up to the readers to judge.” Prediction will return to work – in pencil – on his second graphic novel which will be released in September after his debut with Sniff in 2019: «A second life as a cartoonist, the role that made me take the path I am taking today. A bit graphic, a bit artist, halfway between companies, comics and editorial magazines. Always self-taught, like this last piece of road made with La Stampa which led to the covers of the newsletters, teaching me to combine my most romantic storytelling style with the social issues of a newspaper ».