Livia Massaccesi on Designing Sanremo's Iconic Singer Emojis

Livia Massaccesi, a 34-year-old Roman designer, created the emoji-like portraits of singers for the 2019 Sanremo Festival, hosted by Claudio Baglioni. The collaboration came through director Duccio Forzano, who knew her ongoing portrait project. Massaccesi studied fashion and design, specializing in editorial graphics, and has worked with major Italian publishers. Her portrait series began in 2008, initially covering Rome's independent music scene, including Calcutta, Tommaso Paradiso & Thegiornalisti, and Lucio Leoni. For Sanremo, she studied available images and videos to capture each artist's expressions and key features, then refined the designs to match the artists' festival looks. She found Achille Lauro the most satisfying due to his facial tattoos, which challenged her flat drawing technique, while Daniele Silvestri was the most difficult because his smile and expressiveness were hard to capture in a static image. Massaccesi is currently working on a personal book project about the evolution of the female figure in the 20th century, using her portrait technique to distill essential elements of fashion and appearance.