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for how we live
Small shelter title balances accessible and smart
By Jamie L. Jones
"Form follows function" is not only the quintessential litmus test of modern architecture. It's also an effective measure of shelter magazines.
When the function is to provide decorating tips to ladies who lunch (and spend), forms like "House Beautiful" and "Architectural Digest" naturally follow.
Dwell magazine founder Lara Deam had a different function in mind.
When she was building her own house a few years ago, she wanted to see a non-technical magazine that would give her ideas for a custom-tailored, modern house.
No form fit Deam’s function, and she got frustrated enough to go to design school and develop the magazine she was looking for.
The result is the independently published Dwell magazine, a consumer-trade hybrid that will celebrate its first anniversary this fall. Dwell has a rate base of 100,000 and is published bi-monthly.
The San Francisco-based title is still tiny compared to shelter giants like Better Homes and Gardens, which has a monster circulation of 7.6 million.
Yet it has its own distinct mission.
"Our goal is to demystify architecture," says Deam.
"Architecture was—and still is—perceived as a sort of off-putting word, when really it is just the house you live in."
Dwell is a modern magazine that profiles exteriors along with interiors, explains function as well as form, and would like to please consumers and architects alike.
The magazine meets formidable competition among the chic new books in the booming design category. Young, hip magazines like One, Nest, Surface and Wallpaper all court design-savvy consumers.
But only Dwell specializes in private homes.
Still, Dwell is not exactly a shelter magazine for the masses.
Not exactly a specialist’s magazine, and not exactly a niche magazine for the design amateur, Dwell’s greatest challenge lies in balancing the technical with the accessible.
Dwell’s readership is divided about evenly between design industry insiders and consumers.
Otherwise, the readership is unusually rich, well-educated and mature. The median age of the readership is 43.
Surprisingly, 53 percent of Dwell’s readers are men, a peculiarity that Deam attributes to readers inside the still-male-dominated architecture industry.
Dwell’s content reflects its dual consumer/trade identity. In the September/October issue, an architect’s account of zinc roofing precedes a friendly feature on the residents of a renovated Newark factory building.
"We’re always walking lots of lines," says Deam.
"We’re always wondering if the magazine’s accessible and smart: is it too accessible? Or is it too smart? We grapple with that."
Dwell has a West Coast casual look that softens its technical edges.
For example, people show up in photo spreads. A woman reclining on her staircase and a man on his telephone punctuate the bright, minimalist spaces.
Deam believes that the dressed-down aesthetic differentiates the art in Dwell from still-life photo spreads in other shelter magazines.
"Most consumer shelter magazines are still showing houses in a perfect-world environment," says Deam.
"We are interested in showing how people really live in a house."
That’s where the functional aspect of the magazine comes in.
Dwell’s coverage of the practical aspect of modern home design also differentiates it from the shelter magazines.
Covering exteriors necessarily brings in an element of practicality. Taffeta upholstery and Persian rugs may be the staples of interior design, but magazines that cover exterior design necessarily deal in coarser, more functional materials like plumbing systems and zinc roofing.
And new subjects bring in new readers—like men, who are, after all, the majority of Dwell readers.
Dwell’s advertising base so far is endemic. Advertisers from the home category are the magazine’s biggest backers. Of the magazine’s 100 pages, 30 are ads.
As the magazine grows in pages and circulation, though, Deam expects that it will attract non-endemic business from the automotive, fashion and technology categories.
The magazine plans to expand to 125 pages in January, and 150 in June, and to increase its frequency to eight times a year in 2003.
September 11, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life.
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