Dwell:
Making a Home in the Modern World
“Architectural Digest” and “House & Garden” may be publishing’s heavyweights of architecture and interior design, but the groundbreaking, progressive Dwell magazine is the favourite of a growing generation of green-leaning readers.
Just six years old, the modernist magazine already reaches 300,000 architects, designers, builders, and design-savvy consumers who, says founder Lara Hedberg Deam, “want an intelligent yet accessible conversation about modern residential design, how it fits in our culture and how it can fit into their lives.”
What’s more, thanks to Dwell’s ability to publish across multiple media, Dwell fans can find Dwell on the web, Dwell podcasts, Dwell TV (on Fine Living Network), a Dwell Design Guide, Dwell on Design conferences, Dwell Homes — even a Dwell shoe.
Whether it’s in print, on the web or on television, the young company showcases interiors and exteriors of modern homes designed with clean geometry and often built using low-cost prefabricated materials and sustainable elements such as living roofs, convection ventilation and photovoltaic panels. And the stories focus as much on the people who design and live in these homes as they do the designs themselves.
A Network for Multiple Media
To manage the content for its multiple media — especially print, the web and podcasts — Dwell’s creative team depends on Adobe Creative Suite and a wired and wireless network of Power Mac G5s, PowerBooks and a Dual G5 Xserve file server.
Dwell content, says Editor-in-Chief Allison Arieff, “is essentially cross media, repurposed for all platforms. All of the homes featured on our Fine Living TV show, for instance, have been published in the magazine. Our editors create the web content — on Macs, of course — often posting photos or text we didn’t include in the magazine. Going forward, we expect that user-generated content will inspire web content, stories for print, possibly even events and podcasts. And we all use Mac hardware and software for all aspects of content creation.”
Local Office, Global Sources
Dwell is produced out of offices in San Francisco, but the art and edit staffs work with writers, photographers, and architects all over the world. “File sharing is everything in publishing,” says Bruno, which is why Dwell magazine, web and podcast producers use the network and Xserve to gather assets and keep production moving from concept to completion.
“We’re small and we’re lean,” Bruno adds. “We can’t throw money or people at the magazine just because it’s growing. That’s why our tools are so important. Everything we need is in the computer. We can generate lots of ideas, faster. There’s a quicker exchange of ideas. We can see portfolios, search them online, and connect.
“Recently we had a magazine issue where we had a British photographer shoot an incredible house in Singapore, and I’m starting to work with an illustrator in Glasgow. He does beautiful stuff, and when he’s finished with a job, he’ll send me eight or nine pages of illustrations through his ftp site.
“We’re looking at stories coming out of Korea, the Netherlands, Milan. We can be in touch with the world.”
Packaging the Content
In her role as creative director, Bruno sees that the graphic design language of the magazine and web — which carries its own original content — provides a good organization and entry to a story without calling attention to itself. Bruno, who joined Dwell in 2005, has worked to evolve the design gradually so continual changes don’t hit the reader over the head. “We’re creating cadence so each section has its own visual vocabulary that ties back to the theme of modernism.”
Before Bruno joined Dwell — she had been an art director at “Martha Stewart Living” magazine — some of the art was researched, some supplied, and some art directed. Now the magazine shoots more of its own content, “which is very exciting,” says Bruno, “because we have more control.”
Bruno herself has used a Mac since she became a designer. “For me,” she says, “the technology isn’t changing what I’m doing, but it is making it happen in a more efficient way. Ideas can still be sketched out on a piece of paper and brought to the Mac where it can come to life.
“But because of the ease of being able to self publish and the ease of being able to manipulate images and to layer images with design elements, it’s really changing the way things are being generated. I’m not jumping between programs as much, because I can get do all of the image manipulations, like transparencies, gradients, scaling of items on the page, pictures and text, in InDesign.”
Part of the pleasure of using Macs, Bruno adds, is that information is presented on a Mac is “intuitive to a visual process so it makes sense that people in publishing are working on it. I’m also a visual person and a designer. I want to have equipment that’s designed well, like a piece of furniture that’s designed well.”
