- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 10
-
Sparkle (0)
Last week, publishers Condé Nast announced the closure of Domino magazine. Domino fell in the wake of other shelter titles including everything from newcomers like Blueprint (from Martha Stewart) and classics like Home and Garden (after more than 100 years of publication) to titles including Cottage Living, Home and O at Home from Oprah Magazine. The outcry and wails of lament over the loss of Domino have ricocheted around the blogosphere this past week and petitions and blogs protesting the shuttering have sprouted like May flowers.
The New York Times took notice of the "howl of protest" coming from design blogs that appeal to similar demographics as did Domino. In announcing Domino's closure Decorno (which sports the tagline: "If decor is your porn, this is your blog." received 104 comments, Apartment Therapy received 177 and Design Sponge received a whopping 506.
Domino closing seems surprising even in our currently dismal economy. By all accounts subscriptions and readership were growing. Additionally, Domino, in contrast to many other old media properties, *got* the web and had a terrific website. Plus, readers tended to be young people setting up and designing their homes, developing their style and taste and using Domino as a combination of a how-to manual and catalog.
It used to be that one would hire a designer to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to get pictures of ones home in Architectural Digest or Metropolitan Home. Now those of us with ordinary pocket books shop Etsy, Craigslist and eBay, gain low cost DIY inspiration from shows like Trading Spaces and Design on a Dime and more affordable shopping emporiums like JC Penny, Costco, Wal-Mart and especially Target, have morphed into havens of modern design elements. But even though we no longer take our design decisions as commandments handed down by Sister Parish or The Prince of Chintz, Mario Buatta, it is still fun to get a glimpse at someone else's decisions especially coming from a talented designer or a do-it-yourself'er with savant-like style and taste.
I know because I used to be that girl. Shelter porn was my vice. I got them all and diligently tore page after page out to someday place in binders full of inspiration and win. I even took interior design classes so I could learn how to make all the magazine pages come to life. Shelter porn then became "research."
But, problem is that I keep moving. And, in addition to all my lovely design pieces getting trashed in the process or being left behind because the buyers love my taste so much they want my cute stuff thrown in on the deal or, like fabulous light fixtures or door knobs, they become part of the house that I could not removed after showing the house with it installed. Plus as my space changes so does my taste. What I would have found perfect for my cute little Cape Cod on the snowy east coast would have looked oddly out of place in my California suburban Ranch house and wouldn't make the transition to the Spanish Bungelow style of my current apartment. Dreaming of design is fun but the practical realities of sprucing up an ever-changing series of domiciles is fantasy bubble-buster.
Most of all, in addition to no longer wanting excess paper in my house (As part of my junk-reduction project, I recently sent to the recycling bin a stack of those torn-out magazine pages, including several from Domino) I have blogs. If I need inspiration I turn to those same sites which bemoaned the loss of Domino. Design Sponge has "Before and After", Apartment Therapy has "House Tours" and their Scavenger series. I can bookmark inspirational posts and pictures and return to them someday, if and when I ever settle down long enough to seriously put together a stylish home.
In addition to the lack of need for physical magazines, the primary problem that brought down Domino and others is declining advertising. Here is my completely un-scientific hunch. Design blogs have allowed us to show off and democratize our style on a mass scale. Perhaps what folks are learning along the way is that we no longer need what advertisers are selling - either the guidance or the objects. For a while there, remember when you'd head over to a friend's house for dinner
