Spencer Bailey

We're painting.

But I feel like taste is something that you accrue over a lifetime.

And I realized that somehow I had accrued this visual sensibility that

that wasn't something I learned in the English classroom, certainly not, or probably even at Dickinson, but was something that was more deep-rooted.

And I think when you're even at a very young age given a paintbrush or given that tool to make art, it teaches you how to look.

And I know that probably sounds ridiculous because it's like, yeah, kids paint all the time, you know, whatever, finger painting.

But I really think that it instilled in me this internal love of making, you know, who doesn't love beauty?

But, you know, I think thinking about things aesthetic.

And so I was figuring out how to make a magazine and,

as an editor, but also as somebody who was deeply interested in visual culture.

And I think a lot of editors don't think so much in visual culture.

So I was combining these two threads that kind of, in a way, up till then, I hadn't had the platform or ability to merge.

One of your first major editorial moves was reframing Surface from a magazine about the design world into a magazine that looked at the world through the lens of design.

Why was that distinction important to you?

I feel like the design world so often puts itself in this corner where it's just like coffee tables, handbags, and chairs, right?

Wallpaper.

Wallpaper.

I mean, not the magazine.

Yeah, I'm talking about actual wall covering.

I realize that could have sounded like me dissing wallpaper the magazine.