On the occasion of its centenary, we worked on the editorial project Manual of Made in Italy according to Ducati to collect and convey the vision of a motorcycle company with a century-long historical tradition.
The Manual grew out of a research process that we’ve conducted within Ducati: a series of dialogues, workshops and questionnaires with the people who live the company every day – designers, engineers, sales staff, executives. A work of listening and introspection that transformed the material gathered into a manual for rereading and recounting Made in Italy according to Ducati.
The typical “manual” structure (comprising a preface, chapters, glossary, and so on) makes accessible and shareable what often remains implicit: the way in which the Bolognese company designs, builds and tells its own story, where the distinctive mark of Made in Italy is understood not only as “made in Italy” but as “born in Italy.”
Its deeply Italian creative disposition and design culture weave together decades of history, territory, relationships, craft, and vision, producing a complex synthesis that is, for instance, laid out in the Ducati Code and translated into concrete instructions in the “Il Ricettario” (The Playbook) section of the Manual.
Through this work, the great Ducati bottega invites us to recognise that its value lies above all in its capacity to spark an imaginary, build relationships, and transform technique into narrative. Because today, more than ever, it is essential to understand the key themes of Made in Italy, as embodied by a company of national significance like Ducati:
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