Ten Things #4: Welcome Home

Ten Things is a collection of magazines, thoughts and ephemera that have been sitting on my desk for a few months while I caught up with deadlines

HomeSapiens is a magazine with a built-in lifespan: six magazines (five issues and one special), each themed around different encounters in people’s homes. The first issue is titled Els Chomedians; the others have equally confusingly pun-based titles. It’s far from perfect, but it is worth tracking down.

A co-creation of editor and marketing professor Massimo Alvito, and art director and avant-garde performer Adele Bacci, the magazine’s basic layout is monochrome and typographical, with plenty of white space.

The homes featured in issue one belong to these people – an interesting mix of subjects. Though its typographic sensibility is a little jumbled in tone, that fits well with the concept of how stylistically and emotionally mixed up people’s homes are.

The magazine’s overarching monochrome, typographic template builds up tension nicely for its sudden use of full-bleed colour photography in the first story.

Though the visuals change each time, the four sections in this issue contain the same narrative structure: they open with a pseudo-mathematical formula representing the house; then subjects are encouraged to complete the phrase “My home is…” in as many different ways as they can; they write/dictate a longer text about the place and their connection to it; they are asked a series of word-association questions (“A place. A smell. A memory.”) and finally are given a fixed-size box in which to handdraw a sketch of their home.

It’s a neat concept, though it lends itself to occasionally pretentious-sounding philosophising. Perhaps it’s an Anglo-Saxon preference, but among the big ideas and phrases such as “My home is an all-in-one, with no beginning and no end”, I’d like to see more prosaic information – how big is it, how many people live there, within what hours is the person there, is it in a rural or urban setting, where are the nearest shops, is it often tidy or chaotic, what is its more-fact-based existence. Put alongside the emotional, personal aspects, such detail would give the reader a stronger picture of a real place being shown.

Otherwise, the danger is that, just as with the often-marvellous Re- magazine, it can occasionally lean too far towards the generic, dreamlike, and abstract, and so lose any sense of direct relationship with the reality of the reader’s life.

In the first piece, each “My home is…” phrase accompanies a photo of a detail from the subject Alessandro Capellaro‘s home. The combination of matt paper and good-quality printing makes the narrow depth of field in these pictures really work well.

One of the magazine’s strengths is in adapting its design to each location featured. Though it sometimes feels a little forced – why black-and-white photos for the last piece, other than variety? – it gives a visceral sense of different kinds of spaces, something that traditional interiors magazines don’t do very well.

Slow Gun is a writer, so the piece about his/her house is entirely typographic, with no pictures at all.

Details from Danielle CalabrittoSabrina Bignami’s house have been recreated with small circles and overlaid on the pictures of her remarkable space.

Tiziana is an undemonstrative accountant; her house is represented in what look almost like cameraphone images in tiny boxes. There’s not much romance or sharpness in what’s featured. Though the piece works well visually in the mix, it’s a shame not to learn more about her and her space.

Commercial driver Daniele Calabritto’s home is shown through dark, inelegant pictures of a crowded space, social realism combined with good cropping. The style may match the space’s feel, and complete the set nicely – however, I’d love to see another photographer respond the other way, and take a beautiful set of pictures as a counterbalance.

And here is where the biggest problem with the magazine lines: the two beautifully shot, gorgeous-looking homes belong to the architects; the writer’s home is show to be creative and quirky in its typographic realisation; while the driver’s and the accountant’s are the two depressing, inelegantly designed pieces about dull-sounding lives. I’d hope for a more nuanced social message in future issues.

However, you do get a nice bookmark inside.

All of which said, HomeSapiens is the kind of publication that reminds me why I love magazines. Like its cousin-in-spirit Apartamento, it’s a quirky, artful look at how people actually engage with the spaces in which they live.

At times it feels like a non-commercial, high-minded art project, but that’s no bad thing per se. It has a clear visual sense of style and imagination, is never less than intriguing, and is a short, but lovely reminder of how the print format still has plenty of creative possibilities to offer.

Pick up a copy if you see one around, and take the time to figure out how it holds together. It’s a neat, limited-run concept, with an intriguing sounding way of gathering new content. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next.