Editorial Guidelines

  • At Design Anthology, our stories are intelligent, observed and human. They’re written by people who’ve been there — who’ve stood in the space, spoken to the maker and noticed what others miss. Readers come to us for authority via experience, not marketing language or storytelling that could be found in a press release. Accordingly, here are our five guiding principles when crafting a story:

    1. Write for the reader: they are intelligent and curious. Respect the time they have given to reading your piece. Focus on the part of the story you’d tell a friend over the phone: the detail that excites you. If you’re not excited, maybe the reader won’t be either.

    2. Set the scene, and describe the physical space first. Paint a clear picture that proves you were a witness, and therefore establishes your credibility. The sound of the workshop, the smell of the room, the texture under your hand. Use specifics. Precise, concrete, observed details offer the biggest payoff.

    3. Keep the story to one big idea. Make it clear what the piece is really about and why it matters now in the first few paragraphs, and then ensure that thread is visible throughout.

    4. Focus on the unique, human elements. Use the juicy quotes a PR rep wouldn’t necessarily approve of. Remove redundancies, platitudes or generic phrases that could apply to any other story.

    5. Ultimately, trust your instinct. Would you enjoy reading this? Did you learn something? Does it make you feel something?

    If you feel concerned about executing any of the above, talk to your editor and rework the brief or word count.

  • Sharing copy
    We adhere to standard journalistic principles and do not share copy, quotes or other materials externally prior to publication, including with subjects or brands.

    Fact checking and corrections
    We undertake rigorous fact checking and in the rare case of a mistake, will publish a correction.

    Conflicts of interest
    If you have a conflict of interest in a story you are working on, financial or otherwise, you must declare it to us at the earliest possible time. Our reader must trust that they are not being misled.

    Real-world reporting
    We expect our writers to visit, see or meet the project, place or subject that you are writing about. If this is not possible, we expect a video tour and phone interview to ensure that we publish stories about the real experience, and not a press release.

    Quotes
    We expect stories to use quotes from real people. These must be gathered via a phone call, a video call or an in-person interview. We do not publish quotes that were gathered via messages or emails.

    Partnerships
    Any editorial material that has been created on behalf of a commercial partner will be always labelled ‘Partnership’. When we tag a story visually as a partnership we use the ‘×’ character instead of ‘x’. The partner brand’s name should appear first. For example: ‘Rimowa × Design Anthology’.

  • Pay attention to the Design Anthology tone. It is informed and literate, not overly scholarly but we don’t publish marketing-speak.

    In order avoid the perception internally or externally that our output is a commodity, we never use the word ‘content’ at Design Anthology. We publish stories, social posts, magazines, etc. Further to this, we broadcast ‘films’ on our YouTube channel and website, rather than ‘videos’, ‘clips’ or similar.

  • Please use ‘Design Anthology’ when referring to our brand (rather than ‘D/A’ or ‘DA’ or ‘d/a’). We always italicise Design Anthology in body copy and never in headlines.

  • Check your work
    Proof-read your work for simple mistakes before filing it, as though it will be published unedited.

    Confirm spellings
    Always double-check spelling of names of people, works, companies, etc. with your sources.

    • Design Anthology uses UK spelling and grammar and the metric system of measurement (e.g. a 200-square-metre home).

    • Refer to the Oxford English Dictionary.

    • Use Oxford commas only if necessary to avoid ambiguity, e.g. ‘gold, black, and red and white’, not ‘gold, black and red and white’

    • Use single quotes throughout, and only use double quotes for quotes within quotes.

    • Italicise foreign words if they aren’t commonly used in English, e.g. verre églomisé, not sushi

    • Italicise names of works, e.g. books, films, works of art

    • Single space after a full stop

    • Use ‘that’ for defining clauses and ‘which’ for non-defining clauses

    • Use last names when referring to people except where it would be unclear

    • Lower-case letters after a colon, except in captions

    • Spaced em dashes in text, unspaced en dashes to indicate ranges, e.g. 45–50 years old

    • No full stops on captions

    • For numbers, use words up to ten and digits afterwards, e.g. nine, ten, 11

    • For time, use 24-hour styling, e.g 08:00 and 24:00

    • For dates, use D MMMM YYYY in body copy, e.g. 24 May 1960. 

    • In systems, processes and filenaming, use ISO formatting: YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 1960-05-24

    • Collaborations are never marked with an ‘x’ character. Always use a symmetrical ‘×’ character, e.g. Tom Fereday × Pitt & Giblin

    • Apostrophes and closing quote marks are curly, never straight, e.g. ’ and never '

  • We use typical English language capitalisation, which means proper nouns, including company or brand names, are strictly in Title Case.

    Other capitalisation examples:

    • we+ → We+ (title case, keep spoken punctuation)

    • DESIGNART → Designart (title case)

    • WhatsApp → WhatsApp (camel case only when there’s one cap in the middle)

    • Studio MK27 → Studio MK27 (initialism)

    • PiN Metal Art → Pin Metal Art (title case)

    • JCK03 → JCK03 (initialism)

    • NASA → NASA (acronym)

    • Kitt.Ta.Khon → Kitt Ta Khon (remove unspoken punctuation)

    • NAZARENO/LICHAUCO → Nazareno/Lichauco (title case, keep punctuation where it separates individual names)

    • DESIGN HOTELS™ → Design Hotels (title case + remove trademark symbol as it is unspoken)

  • Captions should read as teasers, conveying the gist of the story in short form since readers are likely to read the captions before they commit to reading the text.

  • Our photography style is specific and has some general rules:

    • Avoid night shots

    • For interiors or architectural stories, avoid pictures with people in them unless they are pertinent to the story

    • Avoid distorted and overly wide angles

    • Avoid corner angles; we prefer front-on images where possible

    • Avoid more than one image of the same perspective or detail so that each image adds to the story

    • With vertical images, we try to contrast a tight-crop detail next to a wider spatial shot

    • With horizontals, avoid details and aim for wider spatial shots