His success as a draughtsman was established at the Prima Esposizione Internazionale delle Arti Decorative in Monza (1923), but he continued to diversify, designing fashion accessories such as handbags, shawls and poster advertisements for famous names such as Campari and Martini.

During the 15 years after World War I, Nizzoli demonstrated his remarkable talent for handling the most diverse forms of the avant-garde movements, from Futurism to Cubism, from the Viennese Secession style to Novecento Italiano, adapting them to the taste of his cultivated middle-class clientele.

Nizzoli had already designed (with Fausto Melotti) mannequins for Baldessari's early Rationalist Craja Café (1930) in Milan when he met Edoardo Persico (1931) who, with Giuseppe Pagano, had begun to transform the magazine Casabella into the main forum for architectural debate.

The first of a long series of calculating machines, the MC 4S Summa, was created in the Olivetti planning and research office, surroundings highly favourable to collaboration between artists and technicians.

In-depth consideration was given to technical and ergonomic aspects of the product and to easy user-identification of its parts, resulting in a unified concept, based on careful analysis rather than on an a priori formula.