Beautiful Legacy

Tiago Pinto

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This is Beautiful Legacy, a podcast about creators and the traces they leave in the world. Twice a week, in just five minutes, we’ll get to know some of these stories. A glimpse into the life, the work, and the lasting mark they’ve left behind. Out on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

7H AGO

Battista Pininfarina - The Aerodynamics Of Desire

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore the life and impact of Battista Pininfarina, the man who gave motion its visual language. From the revolutionary Cisitalia 202 to decades of collaboration with Ferrari and other European manufacturers, Pininfarina transformed aerodynamics from technical necessity into emotional persuasion. He proved that engineering alone does not create desire - proportion does. Line does. Tension does. By integrating design and performance into a single sculptural idea, he helped define what speed should look like. His work shaped not only automotive history, but the broader cultural link between movement, aspiration, and beauty.

13 min
2D AGO

David Abbott - Advertising That Built Trust

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore how one of Britain’s most respected copywriters reshaped automotive communication through his work with Volvo. At a time when car advertising celebrated speed and status, Abbott chose restraint, clarity, and responsibility. He reframed safety not as fear, but as credibility - transforming it into a cultural value. From the iconic ad where he lay beneath a suspended Volvo to prove the strength of its welding, to his broader influence through AMV BBDO and campaigns for The Economist and beyond, Abbott demonstrated that intelligence and honesty can outperform spectacle. This episode examines how advertising helped normalise cars into everyday life - and how the language of trust became part of the safety system itself.

12 min
3D AGO

Brand Special - Pirelli

In this Brand Special episode of Beautiful Legacy we explore how Pirelli manufactures one of the most technical and overlooked components of modern mobility: the tyre. And yet, over more than a century, it became something far greater than a rubber manufacturer, it became a cultural institution. This Brand Special explores how Pirelli positioned itself at the intersection of engineering and art. From early poster commissions with illustrators such as Marcello Dudovich and Fortunato Depero, to the disciplined modernist influence of designers like Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda, Pirelli treated graphic identity as serious work. The episode then turns to the Pirelli Calendar - a bold cultural gesture that commissioned photographers including Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, and Peter Lindbergh, transforming a technical manufacturer into a patron of contemporary image-making. Through advertising philosophy, motorsport credibility, and sustained cultural patronage, Pirelli proved that even the most industrial product can carry artistic weight.

13 min
FEB 12

Jesse Alexander - Seeing Speed

Before speed could become part of everyday imagination, it had to be translated into something readable. In this episode, Beautiful Legacy explores the work of Jesse Alexander, the photographer who helped define how motion looks. Working at a time when motorsport was fast, dangerous, and largely under-documented, Alexander chose proximity over distance. His images placed viewers at the edge of risk - close to cars, crowds, and tension - establishing the visual grammar of speed we still recognise today. Motion blur, compressed space, human vulnerability, and mechanical force became not just aesthetic choices, but a language. Through his lens, speed moved from abstraction to experience. This episode examines how Alexander made extreme motion culturally legible - allowing speed to travel beyond the circuit and into memory, media, and everyday perception.

12 min
FEB 10

Victor Vasarely - When Motion Became Visual Language

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore the legacy of Victor Vasarely, the artist who transformed motion into a visual language long before movement became digital. Best known as the father of Op Art, Vasarely went far beyond optical illusion. He understood perception as a system - one capable of organising speed, direction, and clarity in a rapidly accelerating world. The episode focuses on his landmark collaboration with Renault in the early 1970s, where he designed not just a logo, but a complete visual identity system built for legibility at speed. Through geometry, rhythm, and optical vibration, Vasarely proved that a car brand moves visually before it moves mechanically. By treating visual identity as infrastructure rather than decoration, Vasarely anticipated contemporary principles of wayfinding, motion design, and interface thinking. His work reshaped how brands, transport systems, and public environments communicate movement. This episode examines how Vasarely helped make motion readable, reliable, and humane - and how his ideas still structure the world we move through every day.

13 min
FEB 8

Brand Special - Shell

Shell - When an Energy Brand Learned to Speak Visually This Sunday Special explores how Shell used graphic design, architecture, and communication to make an invisible product - energy - legible, reassuring, and everyday. From early poster designers such as Edward McKnight Kauffer and Hans Schleger, to later brand-system thinking associated with figures like Michael Wolff, Shell treated design not as decoration, but as infrastructure. The episode looks at how service stations became recognisable places of safety and pause, how visual consistency worked as wayfinding at speed, and how Shell bridged the gap between extreme performance and everyday driving through motorsport - most famously with Ferrari and the claim “Shell V-Power. Ferrari fuel for the road.” This is not an episode about fuel. It is about how design builds trust at scale and how one brand helped movement feel safe, readable, and normal.

16 min
FEB 5

Ludwig Goller - Typography For The Moving World

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore the work of Ludwig Goller, the designer who helped transform typography into infrastructure. DIN 1451 was not created for reading, expression, or style. It was designed for movement. For roads, railways, factories, and public systems where information must be understood instantly - often at speed, under pressure, and without room for error. This episode examines how Goller approached letterforms as tools for decision-making, prioritising legibility, neutrality, and consistency over authorship. Through standardisation, DIN 1451 reduced cognitive load, increased safety, and enabled millions of people to navigate shared spaces independently.

12 min
FEB 3

Michèle Mouton – Proving Performance Is Not Gendered

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore the legacy of Michèle Mouton, one of the most decisive figures in motorsport history, not because she broke barriers symbolically, but because she dismantled them through performance. Competing at the highest level of World Rally Championship in the 1980s, Mouton proved that speed, control, and strategic intelligence are not gendered traits. Driving the revolutionary Audi Quattro, she became the first woman to win a WRC event and went on to finish second overall in the 1982 championship - a result that still stands as one of the sport’s most quietly radical achievements. Beyond her victories, Mouton’s impact reshaped how talent is identified, developed, and evaluated in motorsport. Her career exposes a deeper truth: when systems exclude, they often mistake tradition for capability. This episode opens the February season How Movement Became Everyday by examining how performance, once proven, can change culture - far beyond the road.

13 min

This is Beautiful Legacy, a podcast about creators and the traces they leave in the world. Twice a week, in just five minutes, we’ll get to know some of these stories. A glimpse into the life, the work, and the lasting mark they’ve left behind. Out on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Creator

Tiago Pinto
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

32
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
Show Website

Beautiful Legacy