Olivetti Valentine: Difference between revisions

The Olivetti Valetine is a portable, manual typewriter manufactured and marketed by the Italian company, Olivetti, that combined the company's Lettera 32 internal typewriter mechanicals with (typically) red, glosssy plastic bodywork and matching plastic case. Introduced in 1969 and designed in 1968 by Olivetti's Austrian-born consultant, Ettore Sottsass, assisted by Perry A. King^[1] and Albert Leclerc,^[2][3][4] it was the world's first plastic-bodied typewriter — using injection-molded ABS.^[5]

Despite being an expensive, functionally limited and somewhat technically mediocre product which failed to find success in the marketplace,^[2][6] the Valentine subverted the status quo of typewriter design, ultimately becoming a celebrated icon^[6] — largely on account of its expressive design.

The Valentine is featured in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, London's Design Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as the Triennale di Milano in Milan.^[7][6] Italy's Association of Industrial Design (ADI) awarded the Valentine its Compasso d'Oro in 1970.^[8]

Poet Giovanni Giudici, who was employed with Olivetti, called it "a Lettera 32 disguised as a sixties girl."^[9] Over time, Sottsass himself, who called the Valentine the oggetto rosso, the red object,^[3] would tire of its design, calling it "too obvious, a bit like a girl wearing a very short skirt and too much make-up."^[10][2]

Sottsass originally conceived the Valentine^[5] as a response to the early 1960s flood of inexpensive pragmatically-designed manual typewriters from Japan^[11] — e.g., from Brother and Silver Seiko. His design would ultimately capture the zeitgeist of post-’68 counterculture and the age of mass production^[12] — anticipating a global wave of competing plastic-bodied ultra-portable typewriters.

Believing design should not merely be functional but also sensual and emotionally appealing,^[13] Sottsass suggested the use of the then-new material, color-impregnated ABS plastic, proposing to Olivetti a very basic but boldly-colored and highly affordable design, using only upper case letters and exposed ribbon caps, forgoing a bell. Sottsass lavished cost-minimizing or cost-free details throughout the design, going so far as to carefully resolve in sketch studies, the negative space around each carriage end.^[11]

At a time when most typewriter cases featured elaborate zippers and bulky suitcase designs, Sottsass proposed an inexpensive injection-molded, color-matched plastic sleeve with softly rounded corners and a textured-finish, that could mate to the typewriter's plastic bodywork^[14] — the rear 'plate' of the typewriter becoming the top of the case, locking onto the typewriter itself via two black rubber straps/tabs on opposite ends of the case^[6] thus allowing the Valentine to be carried like a briefcase.^[5] The case could likewise serve as a trash can or stool when the typewriter was in use.^[14] Art historian Deborah Goldberg said "that as much attention went into the case as the typewriter [was radical].”^[12]

Olivetti resisted,^[15] pushing for more features — and pushing for what would ultimately be a relatively expensive typewriter. Following this core conflict with Olivetti, and after having largely completed the design as well as its launch advertising campaign,^[5] Sottsass distanced himself from the project. His colleagues, British designer Perry King with Canadian Albert Leclerc, completed the design.^[14] It was formally introduced on Valentine's Day 1969^[12] — to a largely unreceptive market.^[6] Production took place initially in Italy, then later in Spain and Mexico.^[14]

The design itself was surprising and non-conformist, largely deconstructing what would typically be the typewriter's bodywork, revealing elements normally concealed, using a body-colored plastic 'rail' floating ahead of the spacebar, visually detached from the typewriter's main body. Sottsass cited the orange nipples and pink breasts in Tom Wesselmann’s nudes as inspiration for the Valentine's orange ribbon caps. He chose the bright red color to emphasize casual creativity rather than the serious monotony of office work,^[15] anticipating the trend toward a less formal workplace.

Details included black plastic keys and white lettering; orange plastic ribbon spool caps, silver metal return arm and paper guide; black rubber feet; red plastic swing handle at back of typewriter, as well as integral raised "Valentine" lettering along the front — and "olivetti" at the rear plate.

Over the course of production, design revisions included enlarging the orange ribbon caps, and adding two prominent dimples atop the bodywork, to help prevent scuffing when removing the typewriter or returning it to its case.^[14] Tab functionality was later added to Valentine S models, operated by a contrasting red key on the right side of the keyboard.

Though often called la rossa portatile (the red portable), the Valentine was also subsequently manufactured in very small numbers in white, blue and green, respectively for Italy, France and Germany.^[9]

Notably, the Valentine shared numerous features — including its bold red color, floating black keys, and ABS typewriter body with a pronounced rear 'plate' that mated to a plastic sleeve case — with the Monpti typewriter, designed by Stefan Lengyel in 1968, the same year the Valentine was designed for Zbrojovka Brno NP in Vyškov, Czechia — manufacturer of Consul typewriters.^[16][17] Furthermore, industrial designer Carl Wilhelm Sundberg (Netherlands, 1910-1982), working for Sperry Rand Corporation, patented a plastic-bodied typewriter in 1963 without specifying ABS for the company's forthcoming, red typewriter, the Remington Starfire.^[18]

Sottsass wanted the Valentine to have its own distinct image, that would "prevail over the global image of Olivetti."^[3] Together, they committed to creating the market for the Valentine, prioritizing the demographic that might appreciate the typewriter's design statement as much if not more than its mechanical specification,^[9] appealing to "young people or people with a youthful sensibility, open to the appeal of the new and fashionable."^[3]

Olivetti conducted extensive market research. In Olivetti's marketing statement at the Valentine's introduction, Sottsass noted:

"Since they asked us to think about designing the ad(s) for this product as well, we tried to do something that represented and explained these ideas, and we went to put the Valentine in as many places as possible to see how it behaved and what was happening around it and we took a lot of photographs."

"So after a while we came into possession of a large documentation, a sort of reportage of the journey made among people by an object instead of a person, and it didn't even go that bad, because everyone was quite happy to play with this Valentine and to be together with her and for the rest she too, this red object, ended up blending in quite well with the things that already exist in the world, the natural things and the artificial things that make this great confusion in which we live."

The campaign advertising ultimately used a range of graphic artists: Sottsass himself^[9] along with Roberto Pieraccini,^[19] Walter Ballmer [it], Yoshitaro Isaka, Graziella Marchi, Adrianus Van Der Elst^[20] — and Milton Glaser,^[5] who depicted the Valentine in a renaissance setting with a dog, suggesting that "it, too, was man’s best friend."^[2][21]

Launch advertising positioned the Valentine as a mass consumer product that anyone could use anywhere.^[9] Large posters were posted on city streets, in subways and railway; radio spots announced its arrival along with advertisements in popular magazines. Olivetti also commissioned a series of short, avant garde advertising spots to be played before movies, during the previews,^[9] including Woman with cigar (Donna con il sigaro), Write From the Heart, Woman in Space (Donna nello spazio), Young Japanese (Adolescente giapponese), Boy with Motorcycle (Ragazzo con la moto), Young Hippies (Giovani hippies), Flipper and The Red Portable (La portatile rossa).

At Olivetti's 1969 presentation of the Valentine, Sottsass announced "the laptop, today, becomes an object that one carries with him as one carries a jacket, shoes, hat — the things that we pay attention to and yet don't pay attention to, things that come and go, things that we tend to demystify more and more."^[9]

Brigitte Bardot and Elizabeth Taylor were noted Valentine users; in 1970 Richard Burton was photographed in a London airport carrying a Valentine;^[22] and the Valentine was used by the main character in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971).^[5] Braun-Designer Dieter Rams owned a Valentine.^[23]

In 1999, in its home town of Ivrea, the Olivetti Historical Archive mounted an exhibition in honoring the 30th Anniversary of the Valentine, titled Rosso, Rosso Valentine, subsquently replicated in Milan, Prague, Budapest, and Turin.^[4]

In 2016, David Bowie's Valentine typewriter sold at an auction at Sotheby's in London for £45,000 (US $57,000).^[24][25][26]

• Olivetti typewriters (all models)
• Olivetti S.p.A.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Olivetti Valentine.

• Olivetti website
• Collections in Motion: Valentine Typewriter (Brief film by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)