Design has been a non-anonymous process for a long time now and today we have at our disposal a large number of established brands, celebrity-statute designers, and hundreds of objects that have turned into “cult” classics in the course of time. A good design makes living environment more beautiful, functional and interesting. It is a part of a large-scale industry, and at the same time it can stand much closer to contemporary art ideas and images. There are various design styles, trends and an infinite number of displays. Essential guidelines in this immense field are the specialized media which should be given the credit for providing information on the latest design news, and for suggesting a better refined and critical perspective on design. Last but not least, such media assist the formation of good taste, however subjective that concept might be. In a couple of subsequent issues we shall introduce several people in charge of some of the most important and influential design and architecture editions in the world.

Marcus Fairs is the creator and the editor-in-chief of Dezeen – one of the most successful online magazines for design. Before starting the magazine he had been editor of the icon magazine for three years and actively worked as a journalist and a critic. He is the author of two books – Twenty – First Century Design and Green Design, as well as of number of publications for Blueprint, the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and Conde Nast Traveller. He was more than good in his job and received the deserved awards Journalist of the Year (2002) and Architectural Journalist of the Year (2004). He often shares his experience and expertise at lectures and conferences all over the world. Marcus Fairs works and lives in London 

MD How did you create Dezeen online magazine?
M.F. I lost my job as editor of icon magazine almost three years ago and I started it as a experiment, to see if I could launch a digital magazine quickly, rather than spend a lot of time and money starting a print magazine. It grew really quickly and took over my life. My timing was very lucky as the internet was just starting to become the key source of information about design.
 
MD What is your system of collecting information? How do you make your selection of themes and projects?
M.F. In the early days I contacted architects and designers and asked them to send me their projects. But now people send things to us, so we have a lot of material to choose from. We also attend a lot of fairs and exhibitions.
The selection process is very unscientific and personal – we just publish things we like, or we think our readers will like, or things that we think are important or relevant.
 
MD Where do you see positive and negative sides of one online magazine compared to a print edition?
M.F. As a journalist who started in print, I find online journalism liberating. It’s much faster, you have a more intimate relationship with your readership and you can track the impact of what you write really easily. You can reach many more people with an online magazine.
The biggest negative is that you are a hostage to technology, which can go wrong and which I don’t really understand, so it’s always a worry. But hopefully we have found some good web developers at last so I can relax a bit.
 
MD How big is Dezeen’s readership?
M.F. We have around half a million unique visitors a month, and over a million visits. Our audience is very international – the USA is our biggest readership, followed by the UK and Japan, and we are popular in almost every country in the world.

MD Tell us about your book Twenty-First Century Design…How long it took for finishing this project? What was the hardest and the most pleasant part? What was the criteria of selecting the works included? 
M.F. It took about a year altogether and it was incredibly hard work. The idea was to select projects that I felt represented broader movements in 21st Century design and which would go on to be considered classics, or were by designers who could be considered greats. Of course when I wrote the book the 21st Century was only a few years old so it was too early to categorise things with any kind of perspective, but I think the book caught the mood of the early part of the century: that designers were rejecting the norms of the 20th Century, abandoning Modernism, exploring pre-industrial themes such as decoration, craft and so on.

MD What does really matter when talking about taste? Is it a native ability or rather needs to be cultivated?
M.F. Ah, that’s a question that others are more qualified to answer… but I think it must be a combination of innate ability - or intuition – combined with the cultivation that comes from spending a lot of time looking at what is going on in the world not just in terms of design but the whole cultural, social and economic sphere. So you develop a sense of what new designs are likely to represent important shifts and how people will react to them. But also taste is so dependent on the credibility of the “tastemaker” – people are influenced by people they respect. I think Dezeen is pretty influential in this respect, because the “tastemakers” get a lot of their info from Dezeen.
 
MD What is your personal term to call a design “good”?
M.F. I’m not very interested in “good” design to be honest. It sounds so dull. I’m more interested in design that is brilliant, shocking, surprising, comforting, amusing and so on. “Good” design shouldn’t be noticed; it should just quietly do its job.
 
MD What would you like seeing more often in design now and in future?
M.F. I would like to see designers working more closely with scientists so they can help forge a better future for the planet. Design has for a long time been a tool to encourage consumption and now, with the environmental problems we face today, it’s time for designers to start undoing the damage they’ve done.
 
MD You graduated in furniture design… Do you like it better writing about and analysing other artist’s work than creating your own one? 
M.F. I was a very bad designer so the world should be grateful I became a journalist and not a designer! Actually since I started Dezeen I would say that I don’t really analyse design much any more – I’m not really a critic now. I’m more an information jockey – I select information about design and send it out to an audience, just as a DJ selects records and plays them to a crowd.
 
MD Design is very flexible term. What is your definition of it?
M.F. The definition of the word design has been stretched so far in recent years that it means many different things. At Dezeen we don’t worry about this and are happy to be able to include almost anything that takes our fancy under the flexible banner of design.