Design literacy - transcript

dfactory talk 31 May 2007 - Design literacy

Panellists: Karen McCartney, Dr Paul McGillik and Kate Bezar Hosted by Nell Schofield

Nell Schofield: Yes, welcome to d factory. We gather here in this cavernous cafe at the back of the Powerhouse Museum every month to thrash out ideas around design. And this month, in cahoots with the Sydney Writers' Festival, we're talking design literacy, with three people who have devoted their lives to the subject.

We have Karen McCartney with us. Karen is the publisher and editor of ‘Inside out’ magazine, and she's also working on a lush coffee table book about architecture of the '50s, '60, and '70s, which will be out later this year.

Dr Paul McGillick is also with us. He is the editor in chief of the essential ‘InDesign’ magazine, and editorial director of InDesign Publishing. Thanks for joining us, Paul.

And we also have Kate Bezar with us. She's the editor of a very precious little publication called ‘Dumbo feather, pass it on’. So please join me in welcoming our three guests tonight.

[Applause]

Nell: And I notice a few of you are standing at the back. If you'd like to come down and sit at the front, there are quite a few comfortable chairs for you, so come on down.

First of all, I thought we'd start by asking Kate about the title of her publication, because it is rather unusual, ‘Dumbo feather, pass it on’. What does it mean, Kate?

Kate Bezar: [laughs] There's a long version and a short version of the story. I'll give you the short version. Most people remember that Dumbo the elephant flew. And they remember he flew because he had really big ears. And he did. But Dumbo only believed he could fly because he was told that if he held a magic feather in his trunk, he would be able to do so.

So Dumbo held this feather in his trunk, launched himself off a tree, and I still haven't worked out how he got himself up the tree [laughs] in the first place…. and flies. He drops the feather mid-flight, but he can still fly, because, of course, he just had to believe in himself. And I hope that ‘Dumbo feather’ does that.

‘Dumbo feather’, the magazine, each issue tells the stories of five remarkable people who have done something that has taken courage and guts, and they have had to believe in themselves. And so I hope that, in reading it, ‘Dumbo feather’ readers also have the courage to do whatever it is that they really want to do.

Nell: You call it a ‘mook’, which is a mix between a magazine and a book. Are there many mooks on the market?

Kate: I think there are more and more. I think the traditional magazine format is perhaps on its last legs, in terms of the rise of digital publishing and electronic media. So, unless something has great quality and is a tangible object, like a book, and unless it's quite a good read, then I think it could be usurped by digital media. So I think the mook, as a format, might be on the rise, yes.

Nell: And do you have a mission statement with the mook, with ‘Dumbo feather’?

Kate: Oh my goodness. I guess its aim is to inspire a community of creative, courageous, gutsy individuals who do what they're passionate about. And so, part of that is publishing a magazine that I hope does that. It's also about holding events, starting conversations on our website, and in doing so, encouraging that community to do whatever it is they love doing.

Nell: You publish about 5,000 copies each quarter. Karen, you publish about 53,000 copies, don't you? Do you sense a real hunger out there in the marketplace for stories and conversations on design?

Karen McCartney: Yes. Kate, her ideas are actually much more condensed and rarefied, and ‘Inside out’ is a much more commercial product; it has to be, to sell that number of copies. But quite a few of the principles, talking to Kate, resonate with what we do, because our motto on the magazine is ‘inspiring homes with heart’. So that sets us a little bit apart from the other magazines in the home-maker market.

And it's very much about people and their stories at home and how they live their lives. So it isn't just endless beautiful pictures of homes. It actually relates back to people, and what they do, and how they do it, and how they live in their space, so there are common elements with that approach.

Nell: And what's your editorial line with the magazine?

Karen: Well, we try and take this really strong line between inspiring people, but also providing practical advice. So it is a coffee table magazine, but also, after every eight-page home story, we try and drill down and give people the information. What is the coffee table made of? What does it cost? What's the house made of concrete flooring done?

So that it gives people points of access, it's just on a rarefied experience that allows people to buy into the ideas, as well as enjoying the visuals that the story provides.

Nell: And Paul, what about you, with ‘InDesign’? What's the line you take with that magazine, as far as design literacy and talking about design?

Paul McGillick: Well, Nell, that's probably a better question than you think.

[Laughter]

Paul: Because, you know my publisher's an Indian, right? Now, I understand that, in India, Maoism is still alive and well. They're still hoping to take over, and I think that's where my publisher’s got his publishing line. Because, basically, at ‘InDesign’, we have a permanent revolution going on, so [laughs] each issue of the magazine's almost an entirely new magazine. I'm exaggerating, of course, because you can't do too much of that. I was just about to say, everybody in publishing is neurotic. You've just made me even more neurotic, because you've just predicted the death of my magazine.

[Laughter]

Paul: ‘InDesign’, I guess, is a kind of one-stop shop, in the sense that we do all aspects of architecture and design, from product design through interior design and hospitality design. Those people who have been following the magazine will know that it keeps expanding, so that now it's a sort of door-stopper size magazine. It’s the kind of thing you don’t want to travel with because your luggage gets too heavy.

Nell: Is it expanding because the market is growing? Or is it still quite a niche market?

Paul: It's a niche publication. I guess we're selling something somewhere in the range of 19,000 per issue. We come out quarterly, but we do so around the world. Is the market expanding? I mean, our readership is expanding and growing, that's true, since I've been there.

If you're asking me to guess, yes. I think there's a growing awareness of design, and people are more interested in it. And eventually, various elements of society, like governments, for example, even the New South Wales government, may eventually be forced to acknowledge this. So yes, I think there is a growing interest in design, which means a growing interest in design publications, virtual or otherwise.

Nell: Writing on design can often be quite clinical, can't it? Especially when writers indulge in a lot of design speak, it can be a bit alienating. Do you find that?

Paul: Are you talking to me?

Nell: Yeah, yeah. I’m looking right at you.

[Laughter]

Paul: Absolutely. But it's difficult to find good writers on design. And one of the reasons…. – good writers on the visual arts, good writers on the theatre…. I've done all of those things. Because there is not a marketplace for these people. You can't earn a living doing that. It's very, very hard. And writing is basically a skill which is developed by doing a lot of it over a long period of time.

Everybody, I would think, and certainly, that includes me, starts off being critically pretentious and using jargon, because in a way, jargon is kind of like a crutch. It helps you. But eventually, if you keep thinking about it, if you keep reflecting on what you're doing, you start throwing the crutches away, and you try to just speak in plain language to your audience, whoever your audience is.

But if you don't have the opportunity to do it then it's quite hard. So I think that's one of the problems we face is a marketplace within which people who aspire to write about design and architecture can earn a living.

Nell: Karen, how do you nurture design writers at your magazine?

Karen: It's quite difficult. We were talking about it the other day. Though we are a very small group of writers and we tend to write a positive magazine like mine which is much more commercial, than a magazine like Paul's, you know. They've got to spread themselves incredibly thin and, they're poorly paid so they've got to actually generate quite a lot of work to make a living out of it.

So, we have a very small group of people that we use regularly, and we just try and build on that relationship with them. We try and brief them very clearly so that, you know, that they know what's expected. We like them to kind of have a bit of an opinion, to take a line on things. To have a bit of a lightness about it and sense of humour where possible, so that it doesn't....

I mean, our readership, it wouldn't be as design-savvy as Paul's readership, so we need to be quite inclusive in the way that we address people so that it doesn't become alienating and a bit up itself and design-ey…. you know, it needs to relate. They're interested, but they’re willing to learn, but you can't patronise and I think that there's a fine line in how you address people to communicate clearly and achieve that.

Nell: And Kate, what about you? Do you find that in order to make stories more user-friendly, you tone down your writing around design?

Kate: Well, I tend to get around writing about design by actually not writing about design. Instead of writing about design, I tend to interview the designers themselves, and get them to talk about their designs. And there's a challenge in that, too. I have to make sure that before I actually interview someone, I'm good at talking about their work. Which is something that designers, and I don't know how many of you guys are, can or cannot be greater. I've had some examples of people who are absolutely fantastic and it makes my job that much easier.

So then it just becomes about taking the words and we always use them verbatim. I never change their words. But edit them into a format that's reader friendly.

Nell: Do you think that good designers are naturally good communicators?

Kate: No. No, not at all. Although, I was thinking about this yesterday. I think some of the great designers, the names that you all know as designers, have often got to where they've got to, not just because they're great designers, but also because they can talk incredibly compellingly about their work. And they can explain the influences behind it. They know why it resonates with you. And they can talk about it in a historical context. And critically as well, which is often lacking in this community.

Nell: Well, let's just talk a little bit about that, criticism on design in this country. Why is it like that?

Kate: I think, as a design community, Australia is relatively young. It doesn't have the history that somewhere like Italy or France even has. So there's an aspect of nurturing – and that needs to happen. So it tends to be a nurturing, complimentary, praise of design, as opposed to giving them their own...already having an opinion that may or may not be positive about it.

Nell: Paul, you've mentioned your opinion, which is that you think Australia might be a little bit deficient in its critical writing as well. Why is that, do you think?

Paul: Do you mind if I just pick up something that was said?

Nell: No. Please.

Paul: Because you said that we're relatively young, in design terms. I don't know whether that's actually true. It depends on how you think about it. If you think back to 1788 with all those people being dumped here at Botany Bay or Sydney Cove, they had to survive. And actually when you start looking back into our design history, and after all, what is design? Design is just the way we organise the way we live, essentially.

Then we actually have a remarkable design history. It may not be terribly, but this is what it's all about. It's about how we live and how we survive in the world in which we live. Having made that point, I think the evidence is, and again, I'm a bit out of this, maybe somebody in here can correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect that we don't teach our own design history in our tertiary institutions.

And when I've travelled – and met designers – to a place like Sweden, which is really hot, in design terms; even if they react against their design, which they're tending to do at the moment, nonetheless, they still know their design history and they're aware of it. And it's something they react against and it helps define what they are doing today.

So in terms of talking about design, personally, I think it's important that we understand the breadth of what design means…. It's about practically a whole world within this design. It may be design by default…. the issue really is the quality of the design.

Nell: Well, how do we then nurture that debate around the quality of design and critical writing on it, and the craft of actually writing critically? I mean how would you say we should be writing about design?

Paul: Well, I’m an old unreformed social democrat. So for me, design is about everyday life. Fundamentally, that's what it is. I mean, alright, I think there are other elements of design. There’s design that’s just pure fantasy and creativity. But I think, like anything else, whether you know a bit about the visual arts, or performing arts…. One of the things that interested me and kept me doing it was to try and establish why you are doing it. What's the function or role of this dialogue? Because I think it is a dialogue.

That's, again, personally, if I write, I'm attempting to initiate some kind of dialogue. When the people with whom I'm dialoguing may not have a direct line back to me or can ring me up, but nonetheless I think there is a kind of dialogue which can give excitement, whether or not you agree with that one.

So there is a kind of a dialogue. So I think you have create a kind of epistemology of criticism – to say ‘What is it about? What are the fundamental beliefs that you take to this act?’ Now your thing might have different principles that they bring to this activity of writing about design. But I do think before you do anything, you have to identify why we are doing it.

Nell: It's interesting because writing about design, either in a magazine like yours or in a magazine like yours, Karen, might come up against some obstacles, such as advertisers who might not like what you're writing about, who might not even like a photograph that you publish in your magazine. How do you deal with that?

Karen: This is something that we deal with all the time because, you know magazines, commercial magazines, in order to survive, we need to carry advertising and that pays for the costs of the print, the paper, the staff, all that kinds of practical stuff, but as the years go by they become more demanding.

They're not just happy with the page in the magazine any more that they pay for. They want a relationship with the magazine, because they want to reach those readers. And that relationship they want to go beyond just, you know, booking a page. So they want events. They want promotions. They want editors to give talks. They really want to kind of, you know, marry one with the other.

And often.... I mean, we're quite fortunate in that most of our advertisers, there is that kind of…. I'm comfortable with them, but occasionally there's something comes up where you feel this is crossing the line where you…. What we tend to do is be kind of quite an affirmative, positive magazine and if there's something that we don't really like, we just leave it out. We don't write, ‘This is crap’. We just don't put it in. And that's our way of editing, really.

Karen: Paul, you had an interesting experience with an advertiser recently, didn't you, over a photograph you commissioned?

Paul: Yeah, we published a design, and the designer supplied some very beautiful shots and the clothes were her idea of clothing. She built on them in layers. So the shots were designed to reveal how this layering took place.

One of the shots we ran was of a girl with exposed breasts, which I thought was a really beautiful shot, but one of our advertisers did not. He rang up and he said, ‘We run a Christian company and we object to this story, and we therefore are pulling our advertisement.’ Which was difficult, because it wasn't something you could actually talk to them about. I respect the man's values. If I had the opportunity, I guess I could debate with him about where he was coming from.

But, yeah, you do get a bit of that, from time to time. But I can't say that we have a lot to complain about. I think, I don't know about you, but, for example, here, you have a problem like everybody wants their own little spot in the magazine. Whereas, if you're in Europe, probably, they'd be quite happy to run their ads all at the front, so they don't interrupt the articles. But here, they're used to a different way of doing it, and it's really hard to dissuade them to leave that. Now, that's irritating, because it can mess up your magazine.

Nell: Think of the other issues surrounding writing on the subject. One of the things that we've been talking about is writing to get away from that kind of design-speak, writing stories about people and the designers themselves, and humanising them a bit, and making the language more user-friendly.

But what happens when a subject, for instance, Kate, you might talk to someone, interview someone at length. What if they don't like what you've written about them, even though they've said it into your recorder? How do you deal with that? Do you publish? Or do you give them some kind of right-of-veto over the material?

Kate: I do, I do. I don't know if many you know ‘Dumbo feather’, but essentially it's a series of very in-depth interviews with individuals. So I do as much work up-front to make sure I know that the interview is going to be good. So I make sure, as much as I can, that they can talk about design and what they do, that they're going to talk eloquently and well, and have something great to say.

But occasionally, you'll get one, as much work as you do up-front, that actually turns out to be a bit of a dud. And there's not a lot you can do. I mean, I don't rewrite words, so there's nothing I can do about that. And it's incredibly important, for the way that I do things, that people are as eloquent as possible.

But what I do is, once the interview has been transcribed, and slightly edited – just for length, generally, and structure – I can then go back to the person I've interviewed and they can make any changes. And that's mostly just for fact-checking purposes. The way things look on paper often feels different to how we said them, so it's also an element of just checking that that all reads OK. So I would hope that, in going through that process, they're happy with what's going to print. I would hate to print something that they weren't happy with.

Paul: You do have to watch your back sometimes, and we do live in a very litigous society. And I think we live in a very anti-critical society. People are very thin-skinned, which is a pity. But I'd like to think that I'm not that risk averse. I like to take it on.

Because otherwise, how do you grow up if you’re not prepared to have some healthy….? What Carl Popper called ‘a healthy conflict of values’. That's what he called the open society, right? He defined it as having a healthy conflict of values. That's what our magazine should be doing. We're doing a lot of other things as well - entertaining, and so on. But that critical edge, sure. I'd like that. I'd include my own magazine. I'd like us to have sharp critical edge.

Nell: OK. So I guess the question is how do I develop that, and how do we push more of that, given the obstacles that we've been talking about. Karen, do you see...?

Karen: I do think it's really difficult. I mean, the book that I've been working on, which is on architecture, as opposed to the day job, which is more kind of lifestyle-oriented. I find that a lot of the…. it sort of shocked me when the publishers said, "You've got to sign this thing that you're responsible for all your content," meaning if there's any problem: they sue you, not them. So it does make you.... I was moving into an area that I wasn't really that sure-footed, so my approach was to, if the architects were still alive, to get them to read it.

If they were not alive, to get their wife or ex-partner, whatever, to read it, so that I felt both the facts were correct, but also that somebody close to them had eyeballed the thing, and it wasn't going to come back to me. So I think what Paul is saying is very true. It's very hard to develop an atmosphere where criticism…. and it needs to be very intelligent, you see. If you're going to criticise, it's got to be excellent criticism. Then I think people are more open to accepting it. If it's unintelligent and half-baked, and not thought through, that's when people get really angry.

Nell: Kate, you mentioned this whole realm of cyberspace, and online publishing websites. blogs, for instance. How is that changing the way we write about design?

Kate: I think you'll find that's where a lot of the discussion is occurring. Mainly because it's a forum that is great for that. Online, you can…. bang-bang-bang like that, and have a discussion. A magazine, or a publication, is often a very one-way dialogue. You know, you get the odd letter to the editor, but that takes three months to get published, and then you might get another one back. So I think that’s the beauty of the online forum; it works in that regard.

I think also websites don't cost a lot to run, so there isn't this need for advertising or sponsorship, so that frees them up from some of those restrictions. I think there’s less of that litigious…. at the moment, perhaps not so much, in the future there may be a crack down. But, you feel freer online to voice your opinions. Once it goes into print, there’s something very concrete about that. So I think for all those reasons it's where a lot of that debate is happening, and possibly should happen.

Nell: And yet really there is nothing like holding and flipping through a magazine or a book that's been beautifully put together. There's a real intimacy in that. I've never seen your editorial, Kate, for instance, in your little column, you write it in your own handwriting and you sign it "with love". Is that what you're trying to get at then, just a real intimacy with the publication?

Kate: Yeah, I hope it's not a contrived intimacy. I really do feel that in my letter, it's from me. It's often the last thing I write and I'm banging it out at one o'clock in the morning and we're going to print the next day. But it does come from my heart. It's what I'm feeling at the time. There isn't a lot of rational thought that goes into it.

And the "with love" bit. I just think there should be a bit more in society. I think if everyone did stuff from a real, just a perspective of genuine caring and authenticity, then things would be done a bit differently.

Nell: How do you approach your editorial, Paul? Do you put the same amount of heart into it?

Paul: It's just a lot of hard work, you know. Bringing out a 240 page magazine….

Nell: And encapsulating it in your editorial there at the front.

Paul: My editorials, yeah. People actually read them, I'm surprised to learn. I thought they have small attention spans. But it's amazing how many people read them. I think I've started to get a bit more abrasive with these things. And people are responding, which sends a signal to me. I think people do want more content or more point of view.

They want people to stick their necks out a bit. I think they do want more discussion. We've become too polite as a society, too risk-averse. I think these little editorials which, like Kate rushed off in the last minute or the last bit dropped in usually…. Sometimes when we don't know what we're going to write about.

I think they’re a little measure or a little barometer of the fact that people do want more. We often have, when we bring out an issue, we have a lunch and we invite people who have been involved in the issue to come in.

Initially we used to do this to get feedback. Then we realised, well we didn't really need their feedback since we knew what was wrong with the magazine, we didn't need them to tell us, I mean you always could.

These things have now evolved into a kind of round table discussion about issues which have emerged from that particular issue of the magazine. And it's become quite interesting, much more interesting than the other agenda that we have. One, of course, of the interesting things is that they all say, "Oh we want more criticism in the magazine." I have no problem, as long as they don't criticise me.

[Laughter]

Paul: So I think taken at face value people are saying it. I think they do want more criticism, just everybody’s a bit nervous about buying it.

Nell: Karen, with your editorial, what's your approach to writing those few hundred words to encapsulate the whole edition?

Karen: I try and just make it a bit personal and tell a bit of a story that is related on whatever the topic of the magazine is, so it feels just more direct.

And I also try and keep it quite light with a bit of humour, because it is a very attractive looking magazine, but you want people to be entertained and have fun and look at it with a spirit of kind of lightness and amusement, that design isn't all about angst. It's actually about the things we live with and getting some pleasure from what simple things. So I try and, yup, make it personal and kind.

Nell: What I might do is open it up to the floor. There might be some questions that you have, that you'd like to ask the panelists tonight. If so, just raise your hand and there is a roaming microphone, Stephanie has it on her. Any hands shooting up? Yes?

Question: Hi, I came in a bit late so I'm sorry if you've already addressed this question, but I did wonder about what you thought about the number of design publications that are published in Australia. I believe it's the highest per head of population anywhere in the world and they all seem to have been around for quite some time. So obviously there's a market out there for them.

Nell: Paul do you want to take it on?

Paul: Yes, I have to be careful what I say though, because, yes, there are a lot around. How viable, how commercial, of course, is another matter. Well, I'm personally very happy to be working for a commercial magazine. When I say that, I mean we are commercially independent. All the salaries, all the rents are paid from our income. We don't get any subsidies. Nobody's subsidising us. And I think that's interesting because the challenge, of course, is to bring out a magazine that you can be proud of, that has its own integrity, that pays its own way, and makes a profit, and which you can be reinvested.

A few of the latest magazines out there, the lady referred to, are not paying their way actually for various reasons. They're being cross-subsidised. So if some kind of commercial tsunami struck tomorrow, I think you'd see a lot of these things fall over. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I think there are a lot of magazines out there and a lot of them are not actually paying their own way. They're artificially maintained....

Nell: Are they just sitting on the newsstands or are they being gobbled up by readers? The ones that are out there.

Paul: You mean the ones that are not paying their own way or...?

Nell: Yeah, or.... [crosstalk]

Paul: When I worked for ‘Monument’, they wouldn't even tell me what the print run was. So…. for some reason a trade secret which the editor himself couldn't be told. That's not unusual, I might add.

Nell: Really?

Paul: I don't know what their print runs are. In some cases I know what their sales are; there are ways and means of finding out. So that depends how many you print, how many get on the newsstands. You're talking like a few thousand, two or three thousand copies for some of these magazines.

Nell: And, Kate, you bring yours back in, don't you, for recycling? [laughs].

Kate: For resale and recycling, for any that don't sell on the newsstands – I get back. I don't know if you've seen magazines that have the cover page ripped off or the masthead, that's how most of them, how that's proven that they haven't sold. You can either do that, or I actually pay extra to give mine back, as full copy returns. And then I resell them back to readers at lower cost.

Nell: And you pay your own way with the regulars?

Kate: Just, just. Not this week, but maybe next week [laughs].

Nell: Other questions?

Kate: Just on the number of design magazines per capita, I think Australia has the number of magazines in general, the highest per capita ratio. So it's not just design magazines.

Nell: One question that I was wanting to ask - I hope I'm not hogging it: was the idea of publishing plans along with design stories of people's houses. Does that represent a security risk, Karen, for any of your home owners?

Karen: Well you get a lot of home owners that don't want you to say where they are. You can say the suburb. They've got art collections and things like that. And there are people who have said they don't want their home featured for that reason. I think it was you, Paul, that had a repeat problem with plans in case people could walk away, in through the back door, and nick their stuff.

Paul: Yeah, because we publish a lot of commercial things. We do have that problem from time to time.

Nell: So how do you guard against that?

Karen: Well, it's up to the individual. We wouldn't give a street address and the number, but if people are very insecure about that, we can say we will only give the suburb, we won't give a surname because we like the people to be involved in the story, because we think their voice is important. So we do whatever we can to encourage them to be in it, and sometimes they won't, and sometimes we still run the house, and we make that judgement on an individual basis.

Nell: Anyone else have their little question burning away? Yes?

Man 1: Hi. I was just wondering how did you guys end up in design writing and magazines? Had you always thought that's what you wanted to do?

Karen: I actually found out; I don't know how you introduced us, but it was something like.... Three people... who’ve devoted their lives to design. This is all relatively new for me. I used to have a very corporate career, and before that I studied chemistry, so I by no means have devoted myself to the design industry, but I have always loved great design. And ‘Dumbo Feather’ isn't exclusively devoted to interviewing or profiling designers, either. It's got a much broader brief and a broader mission, which is just creative, gutsy individuals.

So while great design is a personal passion of mine, and I think that comes through in ‘Dumbo Feather’, it's by no means my be-all and end-all. I never had a burning desire to start a magazine, either. I had a burning desire to find out what I was passionate about in life, and it just so happened that this was a great forum to be able to explore that.

Paul: I used to work for newspapers, and every now and then, you'd be invited to a kind of seminar or workshop, and you were always asked that question. Someone would say, "How do you become a theatre critic", or "How did you become a theatre critic?" There were never any answers, but it was usually by accident.

Even Robert Hughes, I see in his biography, he became an art critic by accident. He didn’t set out to be one at all. I don’t know – if you haven't read the book, Hughes was a cartoonist. He was doing cartoons for ‘The Bulletin’, and their regular critic committed the ultimate crime: reviewing a show he didn't see. Or even worse, he slagged it off. So Donald Horne, who was the editor, said, "Well, that’s the end of you – out! Now, who can do the art reviews? Hughes, you do cartoons, you studied architecture, you can do it." So that's how Robert Hughes became an art critic.

Harry Kippax, the late Harry Kippax. Served with the Herald for 30 years. He was the classic – one afternoon, Friday afternoon, the editor says, "Come on, we've got to review this show. Who can do it? Who can do it? Right, you? OK, here are two tickets for the show". He was the political reporter or something, and he became a theatre critic. So I think it happens by accident.

In my case, in terms of writing about architecture and design, it really happened because I worked in television. I worked for SBS, the art show that no longer exists. I'd gone in there with a fine arts background, and I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with that. The whole show started because I used to hate ABC art shows. I still do. They sort of managed to be simultaneously elitist, and put down at the same time.

Anyways, so I came up with this idea…. We won’t go into all that…. But I was a bit uncomfortable with the fine arts thing, the connoisseurship thing. And I thought, can we get this more in touch everyday life? So that's where we started thinking about design and architecture. We started doing stories, and that's how I started tentatively writing for magazines, and then got more and more into the area. It wasn't exactly by accident, but sort of semi-accident.

Nell: And Karen, did you devote your life to it?

Karen: Oh, absolutely. No, I worked in fashion in London for many years, and then I grew up. I realised I didn't want to work in fashion anymore, and that coincided with a move to Australia. They were launching ‘Marie Claire Lifestyle’ magazine at the time, and I got a job working on that, and that was fantastic. And then I moved to ‘InsideOut’ after about 18 months.

In a way, the magazine, because it has a broader appeal.... My interest, my hobby is furniture design. That's what I would do on the weekends. My husband's into it. We talk about it all the time. And so, in a way, I kind of dilute my interest to suit the readership of my magazine. If I could do what Kate does and follow my passion, it would probably be something more rarefied. But I do feel very privileged to be able to work in that world where you can cross both.

Nell: If someone here did have a story that they were desperate to tell, desperate to write, would you be open to them coming to you and talking about it?

Karen: Of course, yes.

Nell: You accept freelance stories like that?

Karen: We do, but the trouble is, with a magazine, you end up with something that falls into certain departments and areas. And so, sometimes you get good ideas and you think, "This is great, but where does it fit?" And that can be a problem of the nature of publishing, if you're not completely fluid. But often, if you hear the idea, you find a way of making connections that aren't at first immediately evident, and that can be very rewarding too.

Nell: Paul, would you be open to that sort of idea, someone coming up with a story?

Paul: Yeah, because there's a saying in the Bible, which I can never remember it exactly, which is something along the lines of "Never turn a stranger away, because he may be an angel in disguise”. And in my experience, often, the most interesting people are the most humble, reserved, and shy, and unsure; and a lot of editors aren't, if you'll excuse my presuming.

Perhaps it's because they're really busy, right? They're always busy, but they tend to neglect those people at the front door. And it is hard, sometimes, when your so busy, but I think you have to leave yourself open, for if you don't, you dry up and you just repeat yourself and become formulaic. I think you need to leave that front door open.

Karen: Actually, I'll just tell you a quick story. When we started the magazine, we didn't have a garden writer. And garden writing is bloody hard, because it's a bit like travel writing: it can end up really boring really easily. And this guy came in to see me, and he was terribly good-looking....

[Laughter]

Karen: And he worked in TV, and I thought, "Oh, here's a bit of a TV crumpet. He wants to write because he fancies himself as a writer that's great."

[Laughter]

Karen: So I said to him, "Well then, come up with some ideas and come back to me." And he did, and his ideas were really good. And he has been, for seven years, our garden writer, and he's turned into a very skilled writer. He's still very good-looking.

[Laughter]

Karen: And he's written a book, and he's done a gardening program. And, you're right, it is that thing. You do have to be open to what people can bring you, and not judge too hastily. Let the work speak for itself, really, rather than judge them ahead of time.

Nell: There you go, open doors here.

[Laughter]

Kate: Yeah. I'll often get approached, and someone will write to me and say, "Look, I've done this amazing photographic essay. I think you should run it." And I just go, "You've obviously never read my magazine. We do not have a format that takes photographic essays. And this is related to the person that I'm interviewing, and the chances that you've taken photos of the person that I'm interviewing this month are incredibly unlikely." So make sure you've thought about the publication that you're approaching, and make sure you know their format and what works within their format.

And as Karen said, occasionally you can massage something to fit within your format. But it's almost insulting to get approached and the person's obviously never even picked up your mag. They've just gone through, they've gone to the newsstand, this is what I think they do, and taken down every editor's name, and email address, if they can find it, and done a blanket. And that's just my one piece of advice: don't do it.

[Laughter]

Paul: Well, it's professional writing 01, isn’t it, really? It should be. If you want to do it, you go and do your research. You absolutely do. What sort of magazine is it? What's its pitch, who’s it aimed at? It's just professionalism.

Nell: OK. So if you want to write for any of these publications, do your research. [Laughs] Well, listen, thanks for coming along tonight. And would you please join me in thanking our three guests, Karen McCartney, Paul McGillick, and Kate Bezar.

[Applause]