Massimo Vignelli was born in Milan, Italy in 1931 and died in 2014 in New York City. He studied architecture in Milan and Venice. From 1957 to 1960, Vignelli traveled to the United States on fellowships from the Towle Silversmiths in Massachusetts and the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In 1960, with his designer wife, Lella Vignelli, he established the Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan. In 1965, he became co-founder and design director of Unimark International Corporation, based in Chicago.

The Vignellis founded Vignelli Associates in New York in 1971. Work includes corporate identity, packaging, interior and furniture design, public signage, and product design for many leading American and European companies. Vignelli designs have been published and exhibited throughout the world, and are included in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Montreal, and the Neue Sammlung in Munich.

Numerous awards include the first Presidential Design Award in 1985, presented by President Ronald Reagan for the National Park Service Publications Program, a 1994 honorary doctorate in architecture in from the University of Venice in Italy, and honorary doctorates in fine arts in 1982 from Parsons School of Design (New York, NY) in 1982, in 1987 from Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY), in 1988 from Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI), in 1994 from Corcoran College of Art + Design (Washington, DC), in 2000 from the Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA), and in 2002 from the Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY). In 2003, Lella and Massimo Vignelli received the National Design Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.