A horse stars on the front cover of the new Domus redesigned by Onlab. The photographer Tim Flach, renowed for his interest in animal portraiture, has been around the globe to capture the secret nature of horses (from the cold and proud Lipizzaner to the wild temperament of the Mustang of the Utah desert, the Marwari horses of India, and the rough beauty of Icelanders). The results of his research will be published in a book entitled Equus.

The Arabian horse on the cover has undergone a surgical intervention, and the protector hood on its face (which makes it look like a boxer about to climb into the ring) prevents it from injuring itself during the recovery period. The photo is part of the Masks series, in which the photographer investigates the ambiguity of man-made contrivances created for horses: from respiratory measurement masks to protection in a stricter sense (from insects, collisions, the cold, etc.).

Nicolas Bourquin and Sven Ehmann, Onlab’s two creative directors, say they chose this image not only for its mysterious air, but also because to them the horse seems to be the perfect transposition into an image of the term “vigorous”, often used by the editor Flavio Albanese to describe his idea of Domus. If vigour refers to the “vital strength of every living organism”, the task which the magazine has set for itself is to trace a sort of diagram of this vitality within the flow of things. According to them, “The racehorse is elegant, strong and highly ‘professional’, though nevertheless wild at heart.”

As regards the graphics, the most striking aspect of the new Domus is its aspiration to transform the page frame – the instrument on which, in publishing, the composition of a page layout hinges – into something more fluid and less rigid, freer and more open. In short, it is an aspiration to build a system whereby structure can switch to flow. In this way the binder holding things together is primarily a rhythm. It is rather like what happens in music, where it is the score that incorporates the notes of each instrument in an orchestra or ensemble, marking out the pace for them all. In a sense, the cover likewise interprets this aspiration to pass from structure to flow: from a fixed, clear and defined image to a more iridescent, changeable one that is open to interpretation. The cover is still more intimately constructed with its “outer” cover, because the overlapping of their two images produces a third. The image vanishes, however, with the act of unwrapping the magazine, with the disposal of its outer cover.

As a rule, the cover picture corresponds to a statement. In general it is what best describes the vision behind the choices within the magazine. In this way the image that comes across loud and clear is shaded into a multilayered story. What appears well defined turns out to be only a fragment of another image: a part, albeit important, which shows however that it possesses no univocal meaning. It is only a fragment of a statement with different points of view, which doubles and multiplies to become part of a confused, enigmatic image, charged with mystery and the unspoken. Like the eye of the inscrutable jockey that, in reality, turns out to be the eye of a mysterious horse. F.P.