Festina Lente” as a motto and “a dolphin twisted around an anchor” as a symbol: Brand meaning, materiality of book and the printing revolution”

This work introduces a historical perspective to investigate the socio-cultural dimension of branding processes as “sources of brand meaning” and “meaning-making practices”. The expression Festina Lente and the logo of the anchor with the dolphin constitute the brand of Aldus Manutius, the first modern publisher, in the Venice between 1490 and 1515: (i) his attention to design was the basis of graphic revolution of the modern book; (ii) and nourished the studia humanitatis, at the basis of the creation of that canon of classical education at the foundation of Western civilisation for the next five centuries. Between historical institutionalism and critical marketing studies, brand meanings processes emerge as forms of institutional work that contribute to the institutional dynamics of markets “as meaning based, shaped by big cultural ideas and animated by institutional agents”.