Celestino Piatti

He was a popular illustrator of children's books and achieved international success as a designer for Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (DTV).

Between 1938 and 1942 he trained in the Gebrüder Fretz studio, and took evening classes with Ernst und Max Gubler at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich (today the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste), and then qualified as a graphic teacher.

As well as their cover designs, Piatti was responsible for the company's typography, signets, letterheads, advertisements and posters, giving the DTV catalogue a uniform identity which combined the International Typographic Style with quirky illustration.

Piatti's work is recognised for its simple broad black outlines of figures that contain great detail and smaller shapes of vivid colour.

[7] In 1971 Piatti was commissioned by the American Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to design a 30" x 45" poster to promote the closed circuit viewing at the State Armoury in Harlem of the March 8 Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden.