My first project 36 years ago was published in House Beautiful and I have had the privilege since then to work with most of the top interior design magazines and their editors. Some of these publications still exist, others have come and gone, but the one thing that has been a constant amongst all the successful ones is their integrity and how they manage to stay true to their brand. What many of you may not know is that there is a split between editorial and advertising that is similar to the split between church and state. Editorial will never be influenced by advertising as that would seriously hamper the integrity of the magazine and maintaining a high integrity is the holy grail to all editors-in-chief.

In my post yesterday I wanted to express my sadness at the demise of another publication with such integrity. I also feel frustrated at the amount of publications that are still around. Every single designer out there dreams of being published in a magazine, but very few of us are lucky enough to have that opportunity. When the number of high quality outlets dwindle down to only five, even fewer of the really talented designers have the chance of being featured, because, let’s face it, there are only so many pages per magazine.

I agree with those readers who have commented on the post below about how the richness of picking up a magazine and leafing through the pages will never disappear. How it looks and how you can pass it around the room and show to different people cannot happen on a computer screen. All the pages, whether modern or mid-range or traditional have a richness because of paper, printing and it makes a designer’s work really shine.

While I cling to my love for magazines and the experience of reading one, I hope that there is an opportunity in our future that will allow all designers to have the exposure they need in order to get new business and build up a hefty ‘look book’ to showcase their work.

My work on the Met Home cover, December 2008

It is sad that in our industry, where publications are the inspiration and the platform from which we can show our work and worth, top quality magazines keep closing. To me the closing of Met Home feels like a personal loss. Editor-in-Chief Donna Warner is a great friend and a really special lady and Linda O’Keeffe, the editor that I most worked with at the publication, is somebody who is great fun to work with as a photographer and an editor who really allowed my work to shine.

You know, we think that the economy only affects us in our work and in our capability of getting clients, but here is one more affect of how it keeps eroding our capabilities to expand our exposure and expand our possibilities of getting work. We’re basically left with five national magazines in which to showcase our work and it is a sad state of affairs, which creates a situation where more demands are made on us of what these magazines want to show, which affects how we choose to design spaces, which affects the working relationship where magazines can become demanding and force us to go through the eye of the needle to be able to appear on their pages.

The conditions that we as designers have to adhere to in order to appear in their pages, gives us no recourse but to succumb and adjust, in some cases our design and in other how we choose to represent our work, and in turn affect how people view the work, the trends that they see coming down the pipe and the sense of what is the state of design. (If more magazines are traditional, more traditional work will appear which will give the impression that traditional is the direction of design.) Nationally, only Elle Décor is left out on the marketplace, to show contemporary work that speaks of clean, simple design. We’re lucky in a city like New York where magazines like NY Spaces give us another venue of exposure.

The closing of Met Home is a great loss to our industry.

Yesterday I had a roundtable discussion with Megan and Linda from The Skirted Roundtable. I thought I’d share the clip with you here, but be sure to head on over to their website to participate in the conversation.