Specificity

My takeaway from reviewing the regional architecture and design journal Arcade is that specificity matters, both for print and digital publications. This echoes Rick Klau's advice. (His remarks at a panel I attended several months ago motivated this blog's creation.) Arcade's focus is on the northwest - Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver and their environs. This permits a wide range of topics, but viewed always in regional terms. This perspective lends coherence to the journal and makes it interesting to outside readers. The challenge for Arcade may be to broaden its impact. Regional journals (El Croquis, for example) certainly have the potential to find a larger audience. That audience is hungry for difference, I believe, and specificity is part of what provides it. The other tack is to try to cover the world, but this is viable only when there's a specific (and compelling and enlightened) editorial rationale for what's being shown. Among design magazines, Abitare and Domus have it. In another realm, Monocle and Wallpaper illustrate the difference between having it or not.