Athens-based graphic design practice Nowhere Studio has designed the first two issues of DOMa magazine, a new international publication that is dedicated to the architectural process.
DOMa magazine is published four times a year, and is probably the only architecture magazine in the world that presents exclusively the creative process behind architectural praxis. It features outstanding architectural works, from their conception to the final result, through archival material and notes prepared by the architects themselves across 24 pages per work.
In this process of revealing their way of thinking and working, the invited architects share drawings, plans, photographs, collages, prototypes and other visual materials from the design process itself — as well as other references that have informed their work such as artworks, found images, texts and other buildings. To present all this unique and often unpublished material in a way that reflects its importance, a large design format was selected, which also allows for versatility, legibility and detail.
The cover contains no text, in order to direct the reader’s attention to the works themselves; even the logo is almost invisible because it is not printed but embossed on the cover’s top left corner. Each issue’s cover depicts the footprints of the buildings presented within, printed in black ink on colored paper, with a different color used for each issue.
The image of the footprint in a way symbolizes the magazine’s concept. Every footprint is a depiction of a building’s base, the surface of the building that touches the ground but is never visible. This is a metaphor for DOMa magazine, since it focuses on the process instead of the result: the architectural design process is never visible to the end user, although it is the base of every building ever designed.
