20 September 2023

Doing it in style: How Effect Magazine has rapidly become one of the leading design publications in the world

From stylish space capsules to mindblowing super yachts and everything inbetween, Effect Magazine has kept its finger on the pulse of design since its launch three years ago. In that time the online publication has seen traffic to its website increase 10-fold each year – remarkable growth driven by consistently compelling content and a brand authenticity that keeps people coming back for more.

“Everyone can get eyeballs to their content if they work in certain ways. The trick is to get the right kind of eyeballs,” says Head of Editorial and Content Peter Martin. “You want to get people who are going to be loyal and stay with you. And I think the way you do that is to constantly try to put excellent content out there.

“The fact that people are coming back time and again is reflected by the figures. We’ve not only grown in traffic, but in return visitors and in the amount of time people spend on each article and how many articles they read after that. So, all of those metrics have improved, and I think you win that by always trying to be as good as you possibly can.

“And the growth has happened organically. We’re not doing any paid advertising for the magazine or any promotion. It shows that if you put really good quality content out there, eventually readers do come.”

Great expectations

Effect Magazine was founded to act as an independent voice within Effetto (formerly The Bruno Effect), the global marketplace for high-end design, furniture and collectibles, launched in 2021 by British entrepreneur Carmine Bruno. Martin describes Effect Magazine and Effetto as “two sides of the same coin”.

“The marketplace is in the cut and thrust of the design industry – the designers, gallerists, and collectors in the everyday currents of the design industry – while the magazine exists in the penumbra above and around it to inspire, seeking to support, seeking to learn and to educate in certain ways.

“The business aspect of it is compelling because we as a magazine can start conversations and relationships in a way that sometimes the marketplace can’t necessarily.

“And we take ourselves very seriously as a magazine. We don’t see ourselves as an in-house magazine – in certain ways we are but I like to think we have transcended that. The aspirations we set for ourselves as a magazine are much higher. We want to be an excellent publication in our own right in terms of the journalists who write for us and in terms of the stories we choose to cover.”

While Effect Magazine is a big asset for the marketplace, the reverse is also true. The hundreds of gallerists, dealers, studios and designers involved with Effetto are a huge knowledge resource that the magazine can tap into and benefit from.

Key to the success of Effect Magazine is keeping up to date with what’s happening in the design industry and being brave enough to cover new trends.

“Like any specialist publication you need to be emersed in the industry. You need to keep your nose sharp and then follow your nose,” says Martin. “I take the view that if I find something interesting, then other people will as well.

“I think it’s very important not to try to follow what other people are doing because then you end up with this kind of homogenised, quite dull content. You need to take risks and go out on a limb sometimes. The worst that can happen is that you can do something which doesn’t quite land correctly or might be a bit idiosyncratic or quirky, but the benefits are that you can really reach for interesting stories and discover interesting talents.”

Being part of the furniture

It’s perhaps unsurprising that a magazine devoted to design would end up producing something that could decorate the top of a coffee table. Dovetailing with the online magazine, is the annual Effect book, a gloriously sumptuous tome featuring articles about design and beautiful photography that goes out to the top interior designers in the world who form the biggest cohort of buyers on the marketplace.

The buzz around the book has been such that Effetto is considering making it more widely available from next year. “A lot of what you’re doing within the design industry is through the soft sell, it’s through perception and it’s through authenticity and a lot of things which you can’t quite put your finger on,” says Martin.

“So, I think one of the reasons why we’ve really reached to do something special is that you can put it out there and you never really know what’s going to come back. And we’ve got incredible feedback.”

The positive reaction to the Effect book underlines the importance of a beautifully crafted print product in a world where so much is consumed online.

“When you are largely in an online world and you are an endeavour doing short form and a quick turnaround, there’s something really nice about the long form and the physical, the analogue,” says Martin.

“The Effect book is a beautiful physical manifestation of what we’re doing digitally every day.

“Print books and print magazines have become a collector’s item in the same way as vinyl records used to be what everyone listens to music on and now people collect them.

“And I think that’s how we see it. It complements what we’re doing. While we’re a digital magazine and we’re a digital online marketplace, we’re dealing in physical analogue products. The book works well with that – it’s something that’s memorable. We really stretch to make something special. It’s a labour of love.”

Such is the work Effect puts into its print product, it’s something that wouldn’t look out of place in an interior design photo shoot. “We get to see quite a lot of interior design image decks and you get a sense for what kind of books they strategically placed in their shots,” say Martin.

“And it’s nice to on the one hand think, we’re going to try to outdo all that, and in another way to think, we’re just going rip up even worrying about that and just do what we think is amazing.”