Behind the Scenes of CH+D’s Summer Issue
Author:Lindsey ShookThe Summer Issue is on the stands, and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with everybody.
I’ll be honest, when we decided to take the print magazine quarterly, I thought that after years of cranking out 10-plus issues a year, this would be a piece of cake. I might get to leave my desk for lunch or even take an extended vacation. But as my hardworking team can attest, the reality is that we’ve only added more. More all-day photo shoots, more in-depth stories, more packed-house events, more breaking online content and more concepts that require everyone to think about their jobs a little differently. And although that dream of more downtime hasn’t quite materialized, I’m so challenged and inspired by the work being done—both by artists and designers around the state and by our own team here in the office (including our new creative director, Liddy Walseth, who helped us reimagine the magazine and continues to push us daily with her brilliant ideas)—that I can’t wait to get into work each day.
For this issue, we worked to come up with a new take on a tried-and-true shelter mag topic: color. For each homeowner and designer, color comes with a different definition. Christy Callahan and Max Gough (“Shot in Full Color”) saw bright patterned wallpaper and bold paint choices as something of an exorcism—a way to rid the house of the ghosts of its past.
For Sean Gaston and Jim Jewell, the most powerful color in their design arsenal was white, which they used to make their Palm Springs weekend home (“Palm Springs Eternal”) a bright beacon symbolizing that it’s time to unwind.
There’s also a Los Angeles artist who thinks hot pink is the appropriate homage to Rudolph M. Schindler (“Think Pink”) and a collection of moody florals that wouldn’t look out of place at a wake (“Chintz Noir”), not to mention plenty of pretty outdoor spaces that prove perfect palettes often materialize without any help from Pantone.
Me, I’m trying to break out of my own very personal color box. Danny and I are expecting our first baby in August, and as a protest against pink and blue we are opting not to find out the baby’s sex beforehand—challenging our eager parents to shower us with purely nonproprietary pigments.
Enjoy the issue!
