The long-awaited HGTV Magazine will launch Oct. 4 but you can get a behind-the-scenes look at its creation Saturday night when one of the network’s star designers – Genevieve Gorder – hosts a one-hour special about the publication.
Genevieve – host of Dear Genevieve and a judge on Design Star – promises the new magazine will fill the niche left when Domino and other fantastic shelter magazines ceased publishing.
And Genevieve (shown below taping the special) says the magazine will provide “beautiful, accessible design” with all the tips and tricks to help readers achieve it.
“In the magazine, you really can get the nuts and bolts of what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and how to get it. It’s a resource guide and it’s a behind the scenes story,” Genevieve said. “It’s basically the conversation you don’t have time for on television. It can really unfold and proliferate into the pages of a magazine.”
“HGTV: The Making of Our Magazine” is scheduled to air at 7 p.m. ET/PT this Saturday. The special is documentary style and “captures the energy and excitement” as editors at Hearst Magazines (which is producing the publication) brainstorm ideas, plan photo shoots and interview the network’s biggest starts to create the magazine, HGTV says.
I’m breaking my interview with Genevieve into two parts. I am focusing today on what Genevieve had to say about the magazine and the TV special – and including a number of photos from her show and Design Star.
Stop back tomorrow for Part 2, when Genevieve talks about Design Star and her new love of Twitter.
Question: Genevieve, thanks so much for talking to The Design File. Tell us about the new HGTV Magazine.
Answer: Well, I think the magazine – in my personal, humble opinion – is filling a huge void in the market right now of offering accessible, approachable design to everybody. We have had some amazing magazines that did this awhile ago but when the home market folded, a lot of them disappeared. So that left this vacancy and I feel like what we’re doing is a really natural and a very simple progression of our brand and what we’re already doing. Why shouldn’t we have a magazine?
I’m really excited.
It’s an in-depth look at everything design, at all the design geekiness you can stand. And of course, it’s about our designers, what they do and how they do it. It’s a behind the scenes look at everything – television and design.
Q: So many great shelter magazines have closed. How do you think HGTV Magazine will survive?
A: Throughout this big crash in the home market and our advertising market and our economy in this country in general, the shelter magazines were the first magazines to go. They were supported by the economy and the home market and so they got a double whammy.
What’s different about our magazine is that we have a very powerful brand that’s lasted through this enormous recession because we’re offering exactly what people want at this time – and even in wealthier times. They want to know how to get the beautiful things for their homes, how to afford the beautiful things and do beautiful things in an approachable and accessible way.













