The premier issue of Lonny, a new online home decor mag created by former domino staffers, has launched today.
I was eagerly awaiting this new venture, as the magazine aisles leave a lot to be desired these days. Sadly, the act of flipping through the pages of Lonny–similar to paging through online catalogs–does not necessarily excite. What you end up with is some weird limbo-land between the blogosphere and print publications. It’s clunky to page through and backtracking to find a feature you want a repeat look at is cumbersome. The search function only searches a spread at a time, so typing in “Grace Bonney” will only achieve a result if you are already viewing the article about her. The type is too small to read in a regular view, forcing you to zoom in and mouse around to read the content.
Except that the writing itself is a bit lame, so maybe you want to skip that and just look at the pictures.
It’s obvious the people behind this magazine are very image-oriented peeps–there’s no shortage of beautiful compositions in the photography. I just wish there was more captioning going on, so I knew what I was looking at. (Is that the guest bedroom or the master? Do those mini-horses really belong to Eddie Ross?)
Style-wise, I love the features on interior designer Ron Marvin (“Bachelor Pad,” pp. 83-102) and Design*Sponge creator Grace Bonney (pp. 123-138). Also love some of the New York City scenes pictured in several articles. Other than that, I could take it or leave it. Not that there isn’t beauty to behold through the rest of it, there’s just not anything else I’d want to personally duplicate.
A bachelor pad designed by Ron Martin.
Grace Bonney's kitchen and dining spaces.
Subject-wise, it became a bit depressing to read so many articles about unemployed domino alumni.
I think Lonny‘s a valiant effort, and I’d definitely check it out again, but only because there’s nothing going on at the newsstand. I personally would rather see the content in a blog format, just because it’s easier to navigate online. If they’d consider a more manageable format, improved the writing, and embraced the idea of editing 35-page features down to a more palatable dozen or so, they might have something truly amazing on their hands.
I am confused…I subscribed to Domino and cried when it went out,but how do I find Lonny?????????
You can find Lonny Magazine at lonnymag.com–there’s a link in the first sentence that’ll take you right there…
Ack. This book is REALLY hard to read. It seems like the editors just slapped a print mag on the internet with no sense of the medium. I’m not an expert on typeface, but the majority of it appears to be written an a very computer-unfriendly font. And what is the point in putting a vertically oriented page up to read on a horizontally-oriented monitor? You have to either make it really tiny or keep scrolling up and down most awkwardly. I wish they would consider a layout like the one Twist Collective uses.