- Hi, could I have a decimetre?

- A decimetre of what...?

- Ah, all right, then give me a hectolitre...

- Ok, but a hectolitre of what...?

- Then give me a sextodecimo!

- Ah ok, I have that.

- Thanks.

- Thank you, bye.

 

A sextodecimo is the basic letter size used in the production of books and magazines, but for Corraini Edizioni Un Sedicesimo – the Italian term for sextodecimo – is a 16-page magazine with a different author each time. 

By folding and cutting the sheets used by offset printing presses (100x70 cm) a small booklet of sixteen 17x24 cm pages is created where not a single millimetre of paper is wasted.

In 2007 Pietro Corraini had the idea of creating a magazine “that did not talk about graphic design but instead made graphic design”. Un Sedicesimo does not have an editorial team, nor a theme, nor a specific graphic layout; and that’s why the illustrators, artists, architects, graphic artists and designers are asked to design it with one single instruction: it must be a project designed for those specific pages and format. 

Each issue is different from the next, sometimes it just features photographs, sometimes it is illustrated, sometimes it is completely free and unrestrained to the point of showing the shapes of cardboard packaging or the reverse relief of an OSB wooden plate on paper. Each issue resembles the artist who designed it: it might become a dress, replicate thermal satellite paper or even bioluminescent flowers.  

Both emerging authors and big international names, such as Milton Glaser, Italo Lupi, Parasite 2.0, Antonio Marras, Alessio D'Ellena, Martí Guixé, Steven Guarnaccia, Paolo Ventura, Alice Ronchi, Parco Studio, Giancarlo Iliprandi and Nora Krug, have created their own.