Music Club Free Press

Music Club was an independent, free magazine focused on music and film, published in Italy from 1989 to 2016. Originally created as a separate bimonthly supplement to Rockerilla magazine for strictly legal reasons, from its eighth issue onward it was edited by the Cultural Association Music Club. In 1993, it became a monthly publication, and in the same year the magazine’s name was registered as a trademark. In doing so, it anticipated the wave of Italian free press titles such as Zero (1996), Metro (2000), and Leggo (2001).

The idea came from Luciano Massetti, a young graduate in modern literature. In 1988, he was working for the historic Milanese record label Saar Records (founded in 1948) and often traveled to London to purchase music editions from Pickwick Records. In a pub near the Camden Town warehouse, he was struck by a magazine that, as Massetti explained in the interview conducted for this brief study, “was distributed on a pay-what-you-want basis in London venues,” and listed events in the city: Time Out Magazine.

Massetti grasped the potential that a free magazine — conceived first and foremost as a concert guide — could have in Italy. Back in his hometown of Fermo, he developed a prototype with his friend Maurizio Forconi. On January 1, 1989, Music Club was officially born. It was, in fact, an editorial innovation. After overcoming initial distribution challenges, the magazine found a natural alliance with the emerging network of nightlife venues. The project aligned perfectly with the rise of Anglo-Saxon-style pubs in early 1990s Italy. These were hybrids between taverns and clubs, offering stages equipped with sound systems to a multitude of eager bands. Music Club became the ideal bridge between supply and demand in the world of live music.

From its base in central Italy (Marche, Umbria, and Abruzzo), distribution soon expanded to cities such as Genoa, Bologna, Catania, Naples, Turin, Asti, and Rome. The concert listings section grew alongside the magazine itself: from an initial print run of 5,000 copies and a single page of events, it reached 25,000 copies and over 160 pages in the early 2000s, most of them filled with live dates.

Graphic design was entrusted to Agostino Cartuccia, a 1986 graduate of ISIA Urbino and a former student of Michele Provinciali. After analyzing the initial draft created by Massetti and Forconi, Cartuccia developed a solid, distinctive concept and handled the layout for the first thirty issues (until 1994). The tabloid format was chosen, with a newspaper-style layout that visually structured the lead article and sidebar columns to create what resembled a portal — a visual metaphor evoking entry into a “temple of music.”

The Bodoni typeface featured prominently in the masthead, fully aligned with the editorial concept: a nineteenth-century font (Giambattista Bodoni, 1798) selected for its balance of formal rigor and classical memory. According to the interviewed designer, the strong contrast between thick and thin strokes, the pronounced vertical axes, and the fine serifs help preserve — despite its modernity — “a direct link to the architectural structure of the classical column.” The first and last letters of the magazine’s name were vertically stretched, becoming a hallmark of the project.

The cover featured an editorial on a major artist, followed by music sections divided by genre (rock, world music, metalcore, jazz, dance, avant-garde, folk), along with reviews and a cinema column. Section headers echoed the graphic gesture inaugurated on the cover, functioning as drop caps — this time, however, without deformation.

Initially printed in two colors on a type of paper that, according to what Massetti and Cartuccia recalled in their respective interviews, was Fedrigoni Arcoprint, the magazine introduced and discontinued various columns, featured comic strips, and in some issues included a folded poster listing the ever-growing number of concerts. From issue to issue, the layout adapted to evolving needs, increasingly shaped by the demand for advertising space.

The first issue was produced using photocomposition technology. Cartuccia developed the layout by applying the principles of a design philosophy he and a small group of fellow ISIA students had called “poor graphics.”

“Poor” in a material sense: they couldn’t even afford Letraset, which had made typography more accessible. They employed every possible trick to use typefaces, cutting them out or tracing them from disparate sources. But “poor” also in a critical and conceptual sense: a deliberately essential, measured, content-driven approach, with minimal use of images and a strong focus on legibility.

A comparison between the mastheads of the first and third issues (the second has not been preserved) reveals several notable changes: a different Bodoni variant, a different degree of deformation, and — in the first issue — clear manual intervention on the letters “M” and “B.” These had been traced by hand on transparent paper, a process that was no longer used in later issues, marking the shift in production methods. From the second issue onward, Music Club was laid out using QuarkXPress, replacing the artisanal methods with software that had been released just two years earlier (1987).

Cartuccia embodied the full transition from analog design to desktop publishing, and later to CTP (Computer to Plate) technology, which gradually spread during the 1990s and early 2000s. These newer technologies coexisted for years with habits and practices from the analog era — for example, many artist photos were still sent by fax.

The story of Music Club is therefore also the story of a transitional era: a confluence of perfect timing, technological revolutions, social change, and shifts in the design profession — all of which are reflected in the evolving phases of the magazine, up to its decline with the rise of social media.

Primary Sources

Interview with Luciano Massetti on 24 April 2025, at the headquarters of Music Club, Corso Cavour 89, Fermo, Italy

Interview with Agostino Cartuccia on 4 June 2025, at Grafiche Fioroni, Via Cura Mostrapiedi, Casette d’Ete (FM), Italy

Bibliography

Falcinelli, R., (edited by) Filosofia del graphic design, Torino, Einaudi, 2022

Vinti, C., Grafica italiana dal 1945 a oggi., Firenze, Giunti, 2022