Designer and architect, he believes in design as a tool for spreading poetry in the world of things. Director of the Master in Design of the Domus Academy from 1990 to 1993, he was part of the Olivetti Design Studio, designing ATMs and personal computers.
In 1999 he founded FRAGILE, an internationally renowned brand design studio which he led together with Frida Doveil.
Mario Trimarchi’s creativity is expressed through the design of brands, products and artworks.
In 2024 he curated the exhibition “The New Poetic Activism”, at the ADI Design Museum in Milan, inviting a group of Italian designers to investigate the poetics of inevitable objects.

BRAND DESIGN

He has designed brands and corporate identity systems, especially in the banking and financial sector, for Banca Intesa, Cariparma, Poste Italiane, Banca IMI.
He also designs communication systems for Alessi, Artemide, Coop Italia, Macef Fiera Milano, Gebana, Inglesina, Olivetti, Poltrona Frau.

PRODUCTS

He designs with a certain continuity for Alessi, creating unexpected products, including “Ossidiana”, a coffee maker that won the prestigious Compasso d’Oro Award, the Red Dot Award, the International Design Award Silver and the DfA-Quality Design for All.
In March 2017 he presented Swan, a technological and high-performance sculptural tap, developed for Hansa and Alessi, winner of the Good Design 2017.
He designed “Botanica” for Caimi: an innovative sound-absorbing system, which was selected in the “Quirinale Contemporaneo 2020” collection.
Mario Trimarchi also explores other fields of research, such as fashion: he designed a line of printed fabrics for a Ferragamo capsule collection, entirely made of Orange Fiber.
He also designs products for Addo, Alias, antoniolupi, Artemide, Deborah Milano, Ichendorf, Numa, Pasabahçe, Serafino Zani, Tensoforma.

ARTWORK

In 2018 he designed “Samotracia”, a concept bike created by De Castelli, which reinvents the aesthetics of movement and the passage of time through the use of copper: after one hundred years, the bike will be completely oxidized and will appear totally green.
In 2019 he held two solo exhibitions of drawings: “Mario Trimarchi: un romantique radical” at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris, and “La cerca de la frontera entre l’útil i l’inútil” at the Design Hub in Barcelona.
In 2022 he was invited by the Korea Craft and Design Foundation to design five small Altars in Yugi Brass, then exhibited at the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation in Milan.
In 2024 he held “Barricades”, a personal exhibition of small sculptures and drawings, at the Antonia Jannone Gallery in Milan. He constantly continues his sculptural research on objects, creating the “Oggetti Smarriti” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” collections, self-produced under the MT Artworks brand, together with “Fleurs”, a series of shirts printed with black and white floral designs.

PRIZES

In 2022 he was awarded the Gold Plate by the UID, Unione Italiana del Disegno.

In 2024 the film “Dieci tipi di nero” was made, directed by Emilio Neri Tremolada, which tells of his passion for freehand drawing. The film, in which Trimarchi tells how his black and white drawings “serve to forever fix the presence of things and ensure their peaceful survival” won the Design Film Award of the Milan Design Film Festival, in the short films section.

Formerly a teacher of Corporate Identity at the Faculty of Architecture of Genoa, he currently teaches Brand Design at Naba and Design Thinking at Iulm.

He draws day and night.