apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

magazines pile up and make me nervous. internet shelter porn all the way! i can save it all in a nice file that doesn't take up any visible space and feel content. it's awesome.

why does it have to be either/or anyway?

You have to admit, though, that from time to time, you have provided links to magazines--either to their photos or their ideas. Just last week it was Martha's color-coordinated, hidden home office...

Oh, and don't forget the furor over Bluprint folding...And House and Garden...there were a lot of unhappy people posting in the comments sections.

I think that only dwindling availability of paper will cause the demise of magazines. There are still too many people who dislike computers--whether aged people who never got on board, or people who have decided they are not as necessary as they are touted as being.

My design blog addiction is now taking the place of my shelter magazine addiction. Why wait a whole month for the next print issue when I can have new, inspiring images on a daily basis for free? For years, I've kept a file of tear sheets from magazines that I steadily added to, but now I have a Flickr account that I use to capture Web images instead and I really think twice before ripping something out of a print piece to add to my paper clutter. Sometimes, I'm even motivated to see if I can find an image I really love on the Internet instead. I've also been reading the new digital editions of a couple magazines and saving digital clippings to Flickr. I always knew that print magazines were mostly advertising but now that I can look at thumbnails of all the pages in a digital magazine at once, I really get a sense of how little content is there. I still love Domino and will subscribe to their print edition (but wish they would get a digital one up and running and archive all the past issues). Maybe magazines will turn to some of the tactics newspapers are using to retain print readers. I've heard of some newspapers giving lapsed subscribers the paper for free so they can maintain the readership level they need to attract advertisers.

Your last photo, David & Im's OneSpace, is a great example of the relative differences between one and the other as a cover and spread of their home was featured in Dwell after it appeared on AT. On the one hand, the Dwell photos were more produced and professional and the article was able to convey more of the story behind their space. On the other hand, because the Dwell photos were mostly limited to detail photos, I never could get a feel for the space - its layout and character. Your wide shots conveyed that aspect much more effectively. In fact, I first found AT through a google search looking for wider photos of their apartment after I read that story in Dwell and was disappointed by their lack of scale. Also, Dwell completely missed that architectural table that you guys hit. The point: both are great sources of p0rn and I'll continue to use both.

There is one element of the internet photograph process not under your control that can make a big difference: the user's equipment/monitor quality.

Seriously? I am always disappointed by home design magazines. They seem so unrealistic, and always contain such a small number of photos and ideas, whereas I can barely keep up with the AT blog and house tours. And magazines are expensive! $5-10 a pop is out of my budget for more than a handful of them. You win, no contest.

However, I wouldn't use a photo of an apartment that was on the front cover of Dwell to back up your point.

I love AT and visit daily, but internet shelter blogs and shelter magazines are not in a fight to the death. They are part of a shelter magazine eco-system, for lack of a better analogy. Can you imagine if AT had to hire all the photographers and stylists and reporters to produce 100% original content everyday. It would go under in no time flat. The magazines and shelter blogs need each other.

I receive digital copies of Met Home through Zinio and hard copies through mail. I always read the hard copy. The digital copy is for archiving. Its great to have to find an old article and keeps the stacks of old magazines to a minimum. But reading the magazine on my computer is a totally different experience.

@mudrick: I still get a lot of paper magazines, but I've started scanning the pages I want to keep. Scan them in as jpgs or pdfs, name the file whatever's interesting on the page, and you've got a good-quality copy that takes up no space.