A BETTER-BUILT MAGAZINE

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When a company publishes a magazine, or at least an “editorial” product, for whatever reason, it is called custom publishing. I have a long editorial background in custom. And custom has a surprisingly long history itself.

How long?

John Deere started publishing The Furrow in 1895. The Michelin Star started as a form of custom content: what better way to sell tires to monied Parisians than by enticing them to take a drive to the countryside to try a great restaurant?

Amex Publishing famously published Travel + Leisure among other titles for decades. That in-flight magazine you once enjoyed on your flight overseas? That, too, is custom publishing.

Now, after some down years, custom publishing is leaning waaaaay into print again. Henrybuilt is an industry leader in designing and constructing well-built products and furnishings for the home. Henrybuilt is not, however, a company that you would think is screaming for a magazine.

But the qualities that make a great magazine—attention to detail and craft, the curation of ideas, hard work—are the very qualities that have made Untapped, a “design journal that looks back to look forward.” 

Led by editor-in-chief Tiffany Jow, Untapped is a smart, well-designed magazine that avoids the pitfalls of most design journals in being free of jargon and thus accessible.

With an enviable level of editorial freedom, Jow has created an editorial product that richly explores livable spaces and champions “ideas-driven work.” The result is a growing media entity across platforms independent of Henrybuilt while hewing closely to its brand. It’s good stuff.

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press.

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