EDITOR’S LETTER
We’ve always championed the multisensory wallop of print, the tactility and touchiness of it, the particular pop it gives to the best photography, the creative potential of page design, the heart-lifting heft of the physical thing (and we have got very hefty recently).
But in light of current concerns, I felt it worth alerting you to another plus for print. This issue of Wallpaper*– as with all previous 231 editions – will not drill into your data vaults nor sniff along your digital trail. It will not take your details and auction them off to the highest bidder. The transaction’s simple and transparent. We give, you receive.
We know that the relationship with print can and should be uniquely personal, but not that personal.
Of course, with 2.1 million Twitter followers, 950,000 Instagram disciples and the best website in the business (which will not, by the way, pop at you with ads for shoes or sofas you just bought), we fully understand the delights of digital. We work hard to ensure that the immediacy and considered flow of our digital offering complements rather than competes with the collect-and-keep qualities of the print edition. And we understand our readers through the focus of what we do. Content, not data, builds that understanding.
We are far from digital deniers; we just believe that the printed magazine remains a vital, evolving medium – with all manner of side benefits. And the print benefits in this issue are plentiful. Check out our annual Architects’ Directory (page 102) featuring young visionaries from around the globe. Select the finest new furnishings for your every room in our W* House (page 113). Read our eight-page report on the new brutalism (page 060), and update your wardrobe from our edit of the pre-fall collections, as seen through the eyes of conceptual photographer Barbara Probst (page 208). Finally, cut out and keep and wipe clean our Kitchen & Bathroom Digest (page 139).
This month, then, we’re launching a campaign to remind people of just one benefit of print, and we welcome fellow champions to join us. Order your own stickers or even banners, badges, T-shirts. And of course, feel free to join up and spread the word, in an analogue or digital fashion: #dataharvestingsafezone.