Domus in the NYT

Domus makes the New York Times's list of Four Examples of Quietly Excellent Design by Alice Rawsthorn.

In an article published yesterday in the New York Times, Alice Rawsthorn counts four examples of "quietly good design". Domus magazine is cited along with Penguin Great Food books, the Wasara eco-friendly dinnerware and the Jaime Hayón's tableware for Maruwakaya.

About the good design, Alice Rawsthorn reports:
A quietly good design project is exactly what the name suggests. It isn't necessarily innovative or iconoclastic, but it fulfills its function in so subtle and unshowy a manner that it somehow brings us pleasure.

And about Domus magazine, she says:
There are currently two stereotypes of magazine design. One is a frenzied, fragmented style of publication, which seems desperate to reassure its readers that it is as newsy and dynamic as the Internet. The second is a magazine, which looks like a book. The message here is that the content is likely to be more thoughtful, authoritative and memorable than anything you'll find online.

The latest incarnation of Domus, the venerable Italian design and architecture magazine, favors the second approach, but executes it in a particularly imaginative way. Designed by the Milan-based design group Salottobuono in collaboration with Domus's internal graphics team, the new format, which was introduced last month, accentuates the tactile qualities of print by mixing different types of paper, each with a distinctive scent and texture.

"Domus is over 80 years old and has an incredible tradition of excellence and innovation in graphic design, but has always resisted the temptation to be 'trendy,"' explained Joseph Grima, the new editor-in-chief. "We wanted it to feel contemporary but classical at the same time, and focused on the 'magazineness' in every respect: the print quality, the different types of paper and so on. The risk is, of course, that a magazine can quickly become boring, so we tried to counterbalance that by putting a huge amount of work into the details — creating ad hoc diagrams and infographics for each article, and creating special layouts that break the rules of the rest of the magazine."

A quietly good design project is exactly what the name suggests. It isn't necessarily innovative or iconoclastic, but it fulfills its function in so subtle and unshowy a manner that it somehow brings us pleasure.

Domus in the NYT

Domus makes the New York Times's list of Four Examples of Quietly Excellent Design by Alice Rawsthorn.

Latest on News

Latest on Domus