Travelling cultural project · Italy’s smaller islands
For cultural institutions, banking foundations, superintendencies, bookshops, civic museums, publishers, authors, photographers, journalists and corporate sponsors preparing a merchandise programme around the stops of the Arcipelago Italia project — the photographic-literary exhibition dedicated to Italy’s smaller islands — and needing bilingual catalogues, stop-bookshop items, institutional delegation welcome kits, coordinated giveaways for the public and representation material for the inaugurations, ready in time for each venue opening.
Arcipelago Italia is the cultural project that tells through images and texts the story of Italy’s smaller islands — the archipelagos of the Aeolians, the Egadi, the Pelagie, the Tremiti, the Pontine islands, La Maddalena, the Sulcis, the Venetian Lagoon and the other islands that dot the perimeter of the peninsula — through a travelling photographic-literary exhibition and an editorial collection that accompanies the stops. The project is promoted by the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana with the collaboration of local cultural institutions in each stop venue, and over time it touches exhibition halls, civic museums, cultural foundations and institutional spaces in several Italian cities, with a calendar of inaugurations, guided visits, meetings with the authors, public readings and editorial presentations. For the hosting institutions and the sponsors accompanying the project, cultural merchandise is one of the most important contact channels with the public: the stop bookshop, the exhibition folder, the bilingual catalogue, the giveaway coordinated with the project visual identity.
For a cultural merchandise programme around Arcipelago Italia, Corp-Merch.IT runs the full chain from its operational hub: receiving the hosting institution or sponsor master graphic files (AI, EPS, PDF/X-4 with CMYK images at 300 dpi, FOGRA39 colour profile, bleed allowances for the perfect-bound catalogues), adapting them to the personalisation techniques (four-colour offset printing plus overall varnish on the bilingual catalogues, screen printing on FSC-certified paper for the posters and the art prints, blind embossing on hard covers in 2.5 mm grey board, hot-foil stamping in gold or silver foil on covers and bookmarks, scoring and perfect binding for the stop catalogues, sewn binding for the numbered editions, digital printing for the reduced runs of the local variants), physical pre-production sample with Pantone colour map and technical sheet, production on the Italian art-printing supply chains (Fabriano paper mills for the coated papers, Florence and Milan printing houses for the catalogues, Turin bookbinders for the numbered editions, Rome screen printers for the art prints), and delivery to the stop-venue bookshop, the hosting institution press office or a consolidation warehouse in the stop city on a slot confirmed by the institutional contact. For programmes covering several stops or several institutions we split into recipient-labelled lots, with distinct delivery addresses if a banking foundation headquartered in Milan or Rome wants to collect its share from its own warehouse.
The audience of the Arcipelago Italia stops is a combination of Italian visitors passionate about photography and travel literature, readers of the editorial collections dedicated to the smaller islands, secondary school and university students on educational trips, cultural tourists who take the opportunity of the stop to visit the city, residents of the stop city curious about the project, journalists from the national and local cultural press who follow the inauguration, delegations of cultural institutions twinned with the hosting venue, and representatives of the local authorities and regions that sponsor the stop. A merchandise programme that respects these seven audiences converts much better than a single kit trying to cover them all. The Italian visitor passionate about photography wants a quality bilingual catalogue with the stop images and the critical texts; the university student wants a limited-edition art print with an iconic image; the cultural tourist wants a bookmark or a postcard coordinated with the project visual identity; the reader of the editorial collections wants a tote bag in GOTS-certified organic cotton with the collection mark; the institutional delegation wants an FSC-certified paper folder with the stop catalogue, the guided-visit programme and the artwork technical sheet; the cultural journalist wants a coordinated press kit and a selection of small-format art prints; the local authority representative wants a small coordinated item that represents the stop venue.
A recurring case for our clients is the banking foundations that support one or more stops of Arcipelago Italia as institutional sponsor: for these jobs we propose a coordinated neutral graphic base aligned with the project visual identity (bilingual catalogue, bookmark, press folder, coordinated press release) and add the specific stop details (hosting venue name, opening days calendar, curatorial claim) in a reduced run, so that each visitor finds a specific memento of the stop they visited. For institutions requesting printing on FSC-certified paper and GOTS-certified organic cotton, a frequent request, we run it with FSC and GOTS certified printing houses and screen printers. For the art books and numbered editions that accompany the project we mirror the logistics on the different stop venues with a single operational contact.
The Arcipelago Italia calendar is distributed across the year and the stops follow at regular intervals, with an inauguration for each venue opening the calendar of guided visits, meetings with the authors and editorial presentations. For the hosting institutions and the sponsors the gap between confirming the stop and the inauguration is normally under ten weeks, and any item that must be at the bookshop, in the exhibition hall or in the delegation welcome area for the inauguration day must be closed and shipped at least one week before the debut. We work backwards from that moment: the bilingual catalogue production must close three–four weeks before the stop inauguration; the courier slot must be booked for the Thursday or Friday of the inauguration week; the institutional addressee list must be finalised ahead of the guided-visit programme confirmation; the specific stop details only add a small reprint to an already-produced graphic base from the earlier stops of the same edition.
For institutions following several stops of the Arcipelago Italia project we mirror the logistics on the different venues with a single operational contact and a per-stop print-run planning, with a dedicated MOQ price list for the total edition volume. This split is a frequent request because the stop-bookshop audience that actually takes home an Arcipelago Italia memento is much smaller than the audience visiting the exhibition, and most institutions do not want surplus material left in the warehouse after the last stop of the edition.
Bilingual catalogues (Italian and English) printed in four-colour offset on FSC-certified paper, perfect-bound with hard cover in 2.5 mm grey board, hot-foil stamping in gold or silver on the title, limited-edition art prints on Fabriano paper, coordinated bookmarks in FSC board.
GOTS-certified organic cotton tote bags with water-based screen printing, coordinated postcards with iconic project images, ceramic fridge magnets from Caltagirone, small coordinated stationery.
FSC-certified paper folders with hot-foil stamping of the mark, bilingual institutional brochures, artwork technical sheet, guided-visit programme and meetings schedule, coordinated press release.
Limited-edition numbered art prints, small coordinated stationery with the project mark, FSC-certified paper shoppers for the bookshop, multilingual labelling on request.
Before starting production we close graphic masters, quantities per stop and per recipient, packaging and named recipient. The final delivery address is locked against the hosting venue director or sponsor institutional contact calendar: the stop-venue bookshop, the hosting institution press office, or the Milan or Rome office of the banking foundation or publisher for programmes that stay elsewhere. The Italian stop-city historic-centre access constraints condition the loading slots, which is why most institutions choose early-morning or after-20:00 deliveries, when commercial vehicles are again allowed in the central areas of the city.
For an Italian programme routed through Milan or Rome the consignments are consolidated at the hub and shipped to the stop venue with 24–48 hour windows via BRT, SDA, GLS or DHL Express Italia, by appointment for institutional venues that require telephone notice. For programmes above 1,000 pieces we offer appointment delivery with telephone notice and, on request, on-site set-up by our staff at the stop bookshop or the delegation welcome area. For materials that require controlled-environment conditions (catalogues, art prints, numbered editions, Fabriano fine papers) we coordinate transport with specialised partners. For kits bound for international delegations we run multilingual labelling (Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic) and tamper-evident pouch packaging with bilingual packing list in the recipient’s name. For clients subject to CSRD reporting (D.Lgs. 125/2024, transposing Directive (EU) 2022/2464) we attach a sustainability sheet per order with a Scope 3 CO₂e estimate under the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain on the Lombardy–stop-venue leg and from the production supply chains involved, with material-level and leg-level breakdown usable for the client sustainability statement.
All Italian B2B orders are invoiced in EUR at the standard 22% VAT rate (with reduced 4%, 5% or 10% rates applied where the product category allows: publishing, art objects, PDO/PGI products) and routed through the Sistema di Interscambio (SdI) of the Agenzia delle Entrate to the recipient code or the buyer’s PEC address. Corp-Merch.IT is an Italian VAT-registered operator, listed in VIES for intra-EU transactions, and handles reverse charge, split payment and self-invoicing for the public administration under current Italian legislation.
Ten–twelve weeks is the safest window for production on the Italian art-graphics supply chains and delivery to the stop bookshop or to the hosting institution press office. Eight–nine weeks work when the product mix is simple, the project graphics are already approved and the per-stop quantities are already defined. For institutions following several Arcipelago Italia stops in the same edition we mirror the lots across all venues with a single operational contact.
Only after the hosting institution and the sponsor logistics contact confirm the set-up window, the loading lane and the named recipient. Most institutions combine the stop venue with the press office, with the banking foundation or with a consolidation warehouse in the stop city. For the evening-before inaugurations we propose delivery to the venue bookshop or to the delegation reference hotel with twenty-four hours’ telephone notice.
Yes. Items for the single stop-venue bookshop, public exhibition giveaways, institutional delegation welcome kits and inauguration items can be packed and labelled as distinct lots, with different delivery addresses if the banking foundation or publisher has more than one venue or more than one destination address (for example the stop bookshop for public sale, the press office for journalists, the Milan foundation office for storage). For programmes involving several hosting institutions we mirror the lots per institution and consolidate in recipient-labelled crates by logistics node.
No. Corp-Merch.IT is an external, independent B2B supplier that helps cultural institutions, banking foundations, superintendencies, civic museums, publishers and sponsors prepare their own cultural merchandise around the Arcipelago Italia stops. It does not organise, sponsor or represent the Arcipelago Italia project, the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana or the hosting institutions of the stops.
Corp-Merch.IT is an external, independent B2B supplier for cultural institutions, banking foundations, superintendencies, civic museums, publishers and sponsors taking part in the Arcipelago Italia stops. This page helps these parties prepare their own cultural merchandise around the project. It does not represent the Arcipelago Italia project, the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana or the hosting institutions of the stops.