No.007
Metaromantico
An editorial concept for a magazine about Rome that embraces the city’s most recognisable, excessive and unexpected sides. Each issue explores a different aspect of Roman culture, from public art and cuisine to fashion and architecture, through a deliberately saturated and playful visual language that turns the clichés of the tourist experience into a new way of looking at the city.
Client
University
Year
2022
Discipline
Editorial
Filed under
Editorial
Overview
A love letter to the ugly
Meta-Romantico is a magazine about Rome that starts from the most familiar image of the city: the postcard. The saturated sky above the Colosseum, the tourist guide with an umbrella, the promise of the “best gelato in Italy” — all those exaggerated and sometimes kitsch representations that have become part of the way Rome is imagined. Rather than rejecting these clichés, the project deliberately embraces them, using their excess to explore the city with irony, affection and a certain degree of sincerity.
The name itself plays with multiple meanings. “Meta-romantico” suggests going beyond the conventional romantic image of Rome, looking at the less polished, more trashy and unexpected aspects of the city. At the same time, meta means destination, making Rome itself a romantic destination, while ROMA is embedded directly within the name.
Each issue focuses on a different cultural aspect of the capital — from public art and Roman cuisine to fashion and architecture — approaching it through the same deliberately excessive visual and editorial language. The result is a magazine that sits somewhere between a tourist guide, a cultural publication and a love letter to Rome: an attempt to show that the city’s beauty does not necessarily need to be refined or idealised, and that sometimes the ugly, the kitsch and the absurd can be the most honest ways of talking about what makes a place beautiful.
