foreign design journals

Domus is an Italian Design journal. The first thing I noticed about the September 2007 issue was that the photography and graphic designs are beautiful. Everything is so sleek and modern looking, it creates an extremely sophisticated look. Domus has all of the text in both English and Italian, so it understanding the articles is not an issue. I love how a lot of their photographs have a kinetic feel because of the blurred figures. It reminds you that the space we design is for us to live in, and therefore, they are alive. One section in the magazine is almost a miniature zine, and is a bunch of full length pages cut 4/5 down to create two funky flip book type sections. A lot of American magazines do not utilize these types of interactive features. Domus features articles about interiors, product design, and architecture. I love how the Italian design featured is sleek, clean, and modern, yet not completely emotionless, as I feel some "modern/contemporary" American design is. This magazine is extremely colorful, and printed on heavy, high quality paper. In the US, it's worth $33.95!

Abitare is another Italian journal, one that has a lot less English that Domus. It also has a lot more ads. In this magazine, I again noticed the sleek and innovative Italian design, and the very interesting kinetic photography. There are ads on almost every other pages, which are very distracting to the aesthetic elements of the articles. The coolest thing I found in the October 2007 issue was the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London. Abitare includes articles about buildings, art, interiors, and new modern products.

Archithese is a German design journal, and I was happy to find a foreign journal with no english translations what so ever. It is so interesting to see the things that we talk and think about everyday in another language because it you realize it's global, and that people across the world are thinking and talking about the same things you are. While looking through the May 2007 issue of Archithese, I recognized two things: The first was a little snippet about the Guggenheim museum in New York, and the second was an arial view of "the Bean" and Millennium Park in Chicago. Archithese definitely has a more "report-like" feel as compared to the edgy Domus and the ad-filled Abitare.