THESIS WRITE MY THESIS: MAGAZINES, BLOGS AND DESIGN…WIKI-STYLE Brittany Watson Interior Design In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Master of Art Corcoran College of Art and Design Washington DC Spring 2010 2 Thesis Statement Design blogs and other forms of social media have assumed a more prominent role over the traditional printed magazine in disseminating information, creating a sense of community, encouraging artistic collaboration and identifying new tastes, which is explored in this thesis through author-mediated crowd-sourcing through a blog called Write My Thesis leading to an online magazine, Baker Street. Abstract The day Domino magazine folded in January of 2009, a silence was heard throughout the design community. This marked yet another design magazine that had fallen victim to declining advertisement sales in recent years. Until this point, magazines were at the forefront of identifying design trends and up-and-coming designers, while providing one of the only locations to provide guides of where to find products and how to assemble looks. The rise in social media, including blogs, vlogs, wikis, podcasts, wall postings, and photosharing, has quickly assumed a more prominent role in the wake of printed magazines. Like Wikipedia, this thesis is mass-collaboratively written by the users of the Web 2.0 through crowd-sourcing the content on a wiki site with the author acting as mediator and main contributor. The aim is to discover the benefits of social media versus 3 traditional print and how it affects design. The project describes the qualities that made the magazine successful in its golden age and how they eventually grew outdated as social media became more popular. Using other fields as models, like journalism and business management, the project explores the roles of community and collaboration and how they influence design via a blog called Write My Thesis. Also explored is the importance of tribes as essential elements in successful social media by creating a built-in readership, as well as the necessity of audience feedback. Other important elements to the project include the importance of easy-to-use features, the time required to maintain social media programs, and the statistics required to make a blog successful. Interviews with editors from magazines that have folded, editors from magazines that continue to thrive, and editors from magazines that have both a successful print and web component in addition to successful design bloggers and online magazines comprise a generous portion of the research and are woven throughout the wiki site as major discussion points for the reader. Blogs and wiki sites contain the most up-to-date information and allow for author-to-author contact; thus they fund the bulk of the research. The research shows that designers and design enthusiasts with varying levels of 4 experience are able to create blogs while acting as authorities on the subjects because of the availability and ease of the programs. They build up their audience by associating with other bloggers and attract readers with the same interests, thus building communities and encouraging a less-formal, participatory experience than magazines. The speed of disseminating information is quickened so that designers' work is discovered more rapidly, but also shortening the duration of their popularity. By treating this thesis as an experiment in social media through crowd-sourced efforts versus the traditional researcher versus reader format, the most current research is collected that is mutually beneficial to both the designer and the reader. Readers and designers address the pros and cons on social media and in the process attract their own audiences. By attracting a larger audience, the author collects a wide variety of examples of how new media has changed design and what it means for the future. The information gathered from Write My thesis lays the foundation for Baker Street, an online magazine in blog format featuring people in Washington, D.C. and their places. The author photographs people from a variety of walks of life in their homes, offices, or studios and writes about their relationship to their well-designed space. Much like the online web community that blogs enhance, the project focuses on D.C. as a physical community. By getting to know the people that inhabit the neighborhoods, the communities are 5 strengthened and awareness of D.C. as a creative hub expands. The website features crowd-sourcing opportunities to its readers and offers tools on how to find well-designed spaces. 6 Table of Contents Thesis Statement……………………. 3 Thesis Abstract……………………… 3 Introduction………………….………. 8 Design Magazines…………………… 9 Blogs and Social Media in Design…. 15 Arriving at Blogging…………………. 27 Crowdsourcing and Wikis………….. 32 Write My Thesis……………….……. 36 Warhol’s Role………………………. 43 Discussion Questions……………….. 44 From Write My Thesis to Baker Street… 130 Format of Baker Street……………… 131 Content of Baker Street…………….. 132 Conclusion……………………......... 134 Bibliography……………………….. 138 Appendix……………………………. 140 Notes……………………………….. 155 7 Introduction Andy Warhol started Interview magazine forty years ago this year. The magazine explored his obsession with the cult of celebrity fused with art. It was the ultimate collaborative affair. Warhol was no stranger to collaboration as his infamous studio and parties, The Factory, from 1962 to 1968, the year before Intervew was founded, became a melting pot for artists of all types: musicians, painters, sculptors, printmakers, designers, actors, and filmmakers. Nighttime was their time to forge new ideas and experiment. It brought together people with various backgrounds but similar goals—to create art. Over the years, magazines like Interview have come to summarize American culture in a monthly format. In more recent years, blogs have blossomed as another medium to showcase stellar work while allowing the community to become more involved and voice their opinions about the work. Like Factory parties, they bring together like-minded individuals with the same goals. In essence, blogs are an online Factory party, but one available for all to see at any time of day. In recent years, blogs have increased in numbers and status. Coincidentally, print magazines have decreased in numbers. One by one, favorite magazines have folded as the state of the economy. Is there a parallel? Are blogs taking the place of magazines? 8 Design Magazines Understanding how design information has been disseminated in the past is crucial to learning how we can best direct the future of design blogs and other forms of social media. This story begins most recently in the nineteenth century when interiors of similar aesthetics was not uncommon in any given household. Because of the relatively slow speed of communication and lack of transience, interior styles remained fashionable for sustained periods of time with little variance. Since the Renaissance, interior design and decorating information had been disseminated through engravings or in books and treatises. This changed slowly overtime but substantially quickened as the industrial revolution introduced household products in mass quantities and required a venue to market their products through catalogs and decorating manuals like Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1806, which was intended as a copy-book of decorative examples for professionals.1 As wealthy industrialists and middle-class workers entered a world previously reserved for the upper class by decorating their homes, an educational tone arose in these publications and authors felt the need to explain design options to distinguish their products from the competition. Soon, the interiors of important houses began to be profiled and new styles proliferated resulting in the need to improve taste and teach how to achieve a certain look. One of the most influential books in Britain and America was Charles Eastlake's Hints on 9 Household Taste of 1868. It was one of the first books on decoration that was both readable and accessible and accomplished the need to educate the customer and promote quality and simplicity. Other influential publications promoted domesticity in a masculine perspective like Andrew Jackson Downing's The Architecture of Country Houses of 1850, though it was women who embraced interior decoration in the home as seen in Miss Leslie's Lady’s House Book of 1854. While books and decorating manuals proliferated, magazines and periodicals on the subject of interior design and decoration rose to provide the most up-to-date coverage on the developing field of interior design. The result of the London Great Exhibition of 1851 was the Journal of Design and Manufactures of England from 1849-52. It included articles by leading designers and theorists like Richard Redgrave, Henry Cole and Owen Jones. The Journal of Decorative Art, also in the UK, had one of the longest runs lasting from 1881 to 1937 and provided evaluation of the decorative arts. These magazines heralded the new avant-garde styles and addressed the new realities of modern life while celebrating simplicity and efficiency especially after the cluttered Victorian days.2 Popular American design magazines like The Art Amateur, 1879-1914, the still running Ladies Home Journal, since 1883, and the once-again defunct House and Garden, 1901- 1993, 1996-2007, were and are valuable for documentation of the most current trends in interior design though the Ladies Home Journal in particular has focused more on women's 10 issues.3 As the interior design profession evolved, publications became instrumental as a communication tool to promote, advertise, and educate professionals. At the same time, emphasis was placed on current, notable designers and firms rather than the thematic articles we have come to know today.4 Interior Design magazine started out as a resource for professionals covering a wide variety of installations and has been noted for its ability to identify trends since 1932. Glossy shelter magazines like House Beautiful originally started out appealing to both professionals and a wider general audience.