Within the early 1960s Italian design legend Bruno Munari published his visual case studies on shapes: Circle, Square, and, a decade later, Triangle. The usage of examples from ancient Greece and Egypt, in addition to works by Buckminster Fuller, Le Corbusier, and Alvar Aalto, Munari invests the three shapes with specific qualities: the circle pertains to the divine, the square signifies safety and enclosure, and the triangle provides a key connective form for designers.
One of the nice designers of the 20th century, Munari contributed to the fields of painting, sculpture, design, and photography even as teaching all the way through his seventy-year career. After World War II he started to concentrate on book design, creating children’s books known for their simplicity and playfulness.