Graphic Design: Design Change: magazines for the domestic interior, 1890-1930

This article examines the character of magazine publishing for the design of the domestic interior between 1890 and 1930. Its primary focus is on German-language publications that appeared from specialist presses between the height of Jugendstil and early modernism. It suggests that Alexander Koch, the Darmstadt-based publisher, established a paradigm for how the new design could be interpreted for a contemporary readership. From examining the visual strategies employed by Koch and other contemporary magazine publishers, the article traces the signifi cant shift which occurred in the modernist magazine in the 1920s. The latter offered a resistance to the increasingly commodifi ed representation of the interior in consumer interest magazines and attempted to present interiors through techniques that
stressed information above advertising.