Reviewing Arcade

Today, I went through four issues (volume 27) of Arcade, the Seattle-based design journal. Doing so triggered a lot of thoughts about the merits of print vs. digital as media for covering design. One of the issues has a great piece by Trevor Boddy on architectural criticism. He talks about the merits of film and about the web's potential to "broadcast" criticism, but he also notes the greater immediate, local impact of newspaper-based criticism. Yet (as he notes, too) as local newspapers decline, architecture critics are the first to go. Arcade is a beautiful thing - tabloid format, 48 pages, even glossy color printing for a photography feature. It's also really and truly regionally focused, without the parochialism that this can sometimes engender. It makes me nostalgic for print, but it has all kinds of limitations that the web doesn't. On a personal level, I initially organized my own tiny journal, Common Place, as a printed publication, and then ported it to the web. Now that I've launched it there, however, I find myself wanting to go directly to that medium. It's a dilemma.

Comments

  1. Anonymous8/04/2009

    John,

    Glad you like ARCADE. We are big fans too. My wife and I designed the 27th volume for them.

    If interested, you can see more of our work here. We do quite a bit of work for architects in the Seattle area:

    www.somelabdesign.com

    Best,
    Ed

    ReplyDelete

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