Studi Umbri is renewing itself. A new graphic design, elegant and modern, which however is not meant to be a mere aesthetic affectation, an end in itself, a new outfit to show off for the simple pleasure of self-congratulation.
Studi Umbri is and remains first of all a magazine in the most traditional sense of the term, as does its mission, the founding purpose that animates it: to inform, to prompt the reader toward critical engagement in free discussion on the most varied themes and the most diverse interests. It might even seem rather banal to say this of a magazine, but perhaps today, in the age of Twitter’s 140 characters, critical depth, or the simple reading of articles, are matters that may not be so obvious.
There remains, moreover, what is the magazine’s complement: Umbria, understood not as mere parochialism, but as the common denominator of the contents and/or of the container. And so, alongside articles whose subject is our culture, our places, our history, others freely coexist as well – whose authors come from the Umbrian cultural sphere – that we might, without any shame, call international: consider, for example, as regards the present issue, the articles on cinema or the invitations to read. This, then, is why Studi Umbri.
Where, then, is the novelty with which this editorial opened, represented almost allegorically by the renewed graphic design? It might seem a paradox, or even anachronistic, but the magazine’s novelty lies precisely in its being traditional from a formal point of view, in a landscape, that of the web, in which the norm now seems to be exceptionality, the elaborate form, sensationalism (and allow us, a good dose of self-reference) often to the detriment of content and, above all, of the public.