The black cow inside the triangle, the pedestrian crossing the road on a blue background, the car skidding on the wet road: these are all drawings that drivers are very accustomed to, because they are depicted on signs that we often see on Italian streets and that we know how to recognize from afar. It is already less obvious, however, to think about the hand behind these famous graphics. Each of these signs, as well as many others, was in fact imagined and created by a single artist: Michael the Archangel Ioccaalso known as Jocca.
This cartoonist and illustrator from Abruzzo (died in 2023 at the age of 97) had been commissioned to take care of the graphics of the vertical signs towards the end of the fiftiesin view of an update of the Highway Code.
Jocca had always experimented with this type of art: he had created covers for books and magazines and illustrations for children’s volumes (as well as some stories for the famous Carosello programme). With the closure of one of the magazines he worked for, Jocca had to look for a new job: he thus became employed at the Civil Engineers (the state body that dealt with public works), where he was tasked with designing the graphics for the new road signs inspired by the suggestions of Geneva Convention on Road Traffic of 1949. This was designed to align all UN countries with similar signs of prohibition, obligation and danger, although the details were then left to the various members.
How did Jocca work? The priority for the artist was to create gods drawings that are easily understandable and visible even from afarso that they were clear to pedestrians and cyclists, but also to moving cars. Then, it could not be taken for granted that those who looked at them could readtherefore we could not rely on words. The result is beautiful, clear and extraordinarily evocative drawings, which we all know very well by now: for this reason the comics historian Gianni Bono defined Jocca as “the comics artist most seen by Italians”.
