US magazine Untapped is published by design company Henrybuilt, and is editorially indepedendent; rather than showcasing their project work, it reflects the company’s desire to expand knowledge about improving the built environment.

Editor-in-chief Tiffany Jow developed and launched the magazine in 2023. Previously she was marketing director for Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, wrote for Surface magazine, and worked in the research department at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. She shares her working week and introduces Untapped as its third issue is published.

What are you doing this morning?
I’m still recovering from last week, when we launched our third print edition in New York. We did a pop-up at Casa Magazines on Tuesday, and had a release party at a private loft in Dimes Square the following evening, for which we commissioned a site-specific performance directed by woodworker Nifemi Ogunro with music by designer Gregory Beson. As if two back-to-back programs weren’t stressful enough, our printer delivered the new issue with a missing color, so all of them were unusable. We had less than a week to get everything redone and in hand. Miracles do happen.

Otherwise, I’m doing my usual routine: went for a run, got ready while listening to NPR, made breakfast (black tea and a yogurt parfait, with granola I make myself), and am sitting in luxurious silence, alone. I record what happened the day before in my five-year diary. Then I write three pages in my journal, which Julia Cameron calls “Morning Pages” in her book The Artist’s Way. Sometimes I stare out the window or at the giant unfinished painting of orchids, which I found on the street outside my apartment, that sits on the dining table. Then I check my calendar, answer any pressing emails, pack my bag, and get on the subway to the office.

My commute is short, and I listen only to music on the way. I am very excited about Brandi Carlie’s new record, so I’m listening to that. Also to Stereolab, Elbow, Neil Diamond, Philip Glass, and Arvo Pärt. 

Describe your work environment
Untapped is published by the design company Henrybuilt, and I work out of its two-story showroom in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. It’s a former horse stable, and huge. My desk is upstairs, among about a dozen architects, designers, and others. A picture window nearby looks out onto a cobblestone street, with the East River and Manhattan bridge beyond. 

When I’m not in meetings, I listen to KEXP, the longtime independent radio station in Seattle, which is where I am from. I stream The Morning Show, hosted by John Richards (the best D.J., full stop), or Pacific Notions, a neo-classical show. 

Which magazine do you first remember?
My parents got me a subscription to Highlights when I was a kid. There were games, poems, illustrations, short stories, puzzles—all things I loved. It was less about reading and more about unlocking imagination and creativity. I made the pages in every issue rumpled with use. Its content spoke to the truest parts of myself, made me feel alive and seen and excited about the world. 

Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine? 
The New Yorker. I’ve been reading it—in print, cover to cover—for more than a decade now. I bought a subscription as soon as I could afford it, primarily to improve my vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, which I’m afraid were not very good for a long time. It is a pleasure to read, learning about things as well as how master writers practice their craft. It also makes me laugh, and feel seen and inspired, like Highlights did.

The magazine’s other platforms are good, too. I listen to its podcast (Amanda Petrusich’s interview with Brian Eno is worth a listen). Recently I went to The New Yorker Festival for the first time, to hear Rufus Wainwright and Lucy Dacus talk and perform together. David Remnick and Jon Stewart, along with the other members of boygenius, sat right in front of me. I was enchanted!

What other piece of media would you recommend? 
‘The Interview,’ a podcast and column by The New York Times Magazine. It started as a column called Talk, run by David Marchese, and now you can listen to the conversations and read an edited version in print. It features famous people—my favorite episodes include Tilda Swinton, Lady Gaga, Rick Steves, and Anne Hathaway—talking about deeper, more personal stuff than they typically get asked about. The way it’s packaged is distinct and compelling.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro co-hosts it, but I like David better. He asks some of the best questions, and is so present and honest with his subjects. In his conversation with Ocean Vuong, he cried. 

Describe Untapped in three words.
Intentional. Personal. Useful. 

The magazine is fully funded by the brand Henrybuilt; tell us about them and their relationship with you and the magazine.
I feel incredibly lucky to be running a publication with this rare type of funding model (which other brands ought to take note of). I don’t take a single day for granted.

Untapped is an editorially independent project published by Henrybuilt. It’s a design company that was founded in Seattle in 2001 to create a new standard of quality in areas of the home that are central to everyday living: places like the kitchen, which is usually where it starts, but also the wardrobe, the bathroom, and other high-traffic areas that you use. 

Henrybuilt is also one of a handful of companies in the world that’s focused on developing a system approach to these spaces. And by “system” I mean looking at specific tasks, like serving or cooking or cleaning, and making sure that the design gives those specific tasks a specific place that makes sense for the person using it. The idea is if you have the right tool in the right place, you can use the space without thinking; there’s a kind of flow and ease to it. That frees you up to focus on more important things, like hosting people for a meal or enjoying the act of getting dressed.

Because of that focus, Henrybuilt is very interested in all the nuances of how people live in a home, such as: What makes a home special? What gives it meaning, what does good design feel like and how can it really impact people’s lives? That’s a really big topic. It reaches into psychology, history, physicality, aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, and craft. A typical ad, or a story about a house that has a Henrybuilt kitchen in it could never capture that, which is a shame, because it’s such a core part of Henrybuilt’s DNA. 

Scott Hudson, Henrybuilt’s founder and CEO, asked me if I wanted to start a publication for the company in 2022. I said was only interested in doing it if it was not a glorified catalog (meaning, it would not feature any Henrybuilt projects or products); I wanted to create something useful that fills a void in design media, offering criticism and human-focused, long-form storytelling that isn’t driven by advertisers or news. Scott said that if I could come up with an editorial direction that embodied Henrybuilt’s values, I could do it. 

In my research, I realized that Henrybuilt’s work has looked essentially the same for the past quarter century. It doesn’t so much create new designs as it does iterate on its existing ones, learning from the past and incorporating lessons from previous experience into its tweaks. 

I thought that was a great way to reflect on design more broadly (for folks within the industry and outside it), and that became the focus of Untapped: looking back to look forward. In other words: What do we know, but are not using, that could make our living spaces better? Our stories identify overlooked knowledge for doing so, and contextualize it for today and tomorrow. Indeed, they reflect how Henrybuilt thinks and works. And yet, through our public programming, work with universities, and presence on newsstands throughout the U.S. and U.K., our content has blossomed into something much bigger. 

The magazine looks academic, and it is serious, but it’s not heavy—the articles are accessible even as they address big subjects. Is this a deliberate opposition? 
Yes. The look is the vision of our brilliant graphic designer, Yeliz Secerli. The design reflects Untapped’s ethos. Our stories focus on ideas and take the time  to unpack them (most stories are around 2,000 words), make sense of them, show how they are relevant for readers. We invest heavily in our writers, and having scant images is a way to tell readers to focus on the text. The journal’s design is also an immediate signal: Untapped takes a different approach than other design magazines, which are filled with images. It’s interested in something deeper, bigger, and real.

Other ways the graphic design speaks to our ethos: The table of contents is on the back cover, so you have to flip it over to see what’s inside—literally look back to look forward. Online, our website resembles an index, as our stories, taken together, offer readers a catalog of information. 

There is also an interactive Knowledge Map, where you can view all stories’ Key Ideas, categorized by Topic and Subtopic, and find seminal research on each for further reading. It’s a curated starting point for diving deeper into a given subject, and a way to see how it’s connected within a network of knowledge for making our living spaces better.

I enjoyed your intro to the new issue, about wanting to be useful. Can you enlarge on this please? 
Thank you. I’ve worked in design publishing for nearly two decades, and have experienced first-hand how the need to secure and maintain advertising dollars translates to pay-for-play content. This results in watered-down stories that are mostly for distraction, entertainment, ego, or aspiration, and diminishes editors’ ability to do actual journalism. 

Architecture touches everyone, and yet, is such a closed-off, up-and-away-from-you industry. Design shapes our lives. It’s very important that people understand and recognize how influential, and impactful, the things that they use every day are.

I try to curate our content to speak to that. Our voice is authoritative yet approachable, and often very personal. In our latest print edition, for example, a well-known designer reveals he has autism and makes a case for designing objects that give us energy rather than take it away from us. Two viral millennial vintage-furniture dealers talk to each other about identifying quality in furniture and why it’s worth the price. A beloved Seattle bookstore owner writes about the thrill of his daily morning ritual: making whipped cream. 

If a reader comes away from a story with insights they can apply to their own lives, or going, ‘Huh, I hadn’t thought about that in that way before,’ then it is a success to me. 

Show us one spread that sums up how the magazine works.
This spread, from issue three, features a fold-out image, a few pages into a profile on the artist Jay Stern, of one of his paintings. 

Someone who wasn’t familiar with his work told me that when she opened the image up, she gasped: it came just at the right time in the story. She could fold it back up and continue reading, uninterrupted but enlivened by the memory of the image, which she could think about on her own terms as she read. That’s the type of reading experience we’re looking to create. 

What has publishing the magazine taught you that may be helpful to anyone else planning to launch one?
Focus your publication on something specific that you really, really believe in. It will come through in what you create, draw the right readers and writers and partners, and be the fuel for the days that are trying. 

Also: In a moment of ubiquitous distraction and slop, people are craving the printed written word and quality content. The overwhelming response to Untapped in just three years tells me this every day. Magazines are back, just in a different, niche form. 

What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
On Thursday I am going to the press preview of the Studio Museum in Harlem, which has long been under renovation. Thelma Golden is a hero of mine, and I can’t wait to hear her remarks and reflections. 

untappedjournal.com