Stories on paper: why we brought our online magazine to print

As a purely digital platform, launching a physical magazine might seem unexpected. But to us, it felt like a natural next step. Print is experiencing a quiet revival right now, not out of nostalgia, but because we are all probably craving something real.

For architects and designers, whose world is shaped by the physical and the tactile, this is especially true. Stories from ARCHITEXTURES, was designed to reflect that mindset. By bringing our articles to print, we wanted to offer a moment of inspiration away from the screens, something that can actually be held, kept and even hung.

Through the words of our Graphic Designer, Meg, this is the story of Stories from ARCHITEXTURES, our inaugural print.

ARTX: As a designer for a digital tool, what made you feel that a screen wasn't enough to do these stories justice?

Meg: When I was first introduced to Stories, I immediately saw an opportunity to take them beyond the digital display and bring them to life in a different way. While ARCHITEXTURES is a digital tool, we aid the creation of physical spaces and are always working with real materials. It only felt natural that we produce an output that could be touched and held. Over time, these stories had grown into a sea of thumbnails that failed to convey their intimate nature. This first venture into print was about exploring a thoughtful medium that could take our stories off the screen and directly into the hands of our design community.

ARTX: How did you visually translate ARCHITEXTURES' digital identity into a physical layout?

Meg: Designing the newspaper was all about how to translate our purely digital brand into a physical format. One featured story, A recipe for success: Built Works creatively mix materials for chocolate store, Barnaby, showcased a technical tile plan for the shop floor by Build Works. Its patterns felt similar to ARCHITEXTURES’ own editor tool.

Inspired by these similarities I designed a tile pattern that utilised the newspaper’s borders as the boundary, becoming ARCHITEXTURES’ floor. The cover encapsulates the convergence of the digital and physical worlds of ARCHITEXTURES, bringing work to life and reminding users that behind every material, there are real people and unique stories.

ARTX: Why did the newspaper format feel right for the ARTX community, and what drew you to Newspaperclub?

Meg: For this first print, we worked with Newspaperclub to create a small run of Stories. We chose the newspaper format for its tactile, informal quality, making it accessible to our community. While we initially sought a playful, new way to distribute our articles, we soon fell in love with both the people and the process behind printing at Newspaperclub (a mirror in mirror situation?).

ARTX: You got to see the actual production run for Stories. What was it like for you as a designer?

Meg: Newspaperclub have thoroughly pushed the newspaper from its pigeon-hole of being a news outlet to a contemporary format of publishing, accessible to all, and the process of printing with them was truly magical. I was lucky enough to visit their printers for our traditional print run where I saw the process of production from start to finish. In an age of hidden processes and digitised production it felt so beautiful to witness such a traditional way of printing with a team member at each stage of production. From pouring ink into the troughs, feeding rolls of paper the size of hay bales into the press, to manually checking through each page of the print as it came off the belt, it felt like those at Newspaperclub really care.

ARTX: How did witnessing this physical printing change your outlook?

Meg: As a designer, you can forget the process once you hit send but being able to see the people and time that goes into producing that tangible print is what makes the outcome so special. 

Want to get your hands on a copy?

We can't wait to share this tangible experience with the ARCHITEXTURES community. Our newspapers will be up for grabs at our next event with Material Matters in Shoreditch this coming September.
We hope to see you there!