Apartamento magazine founder Omar Sosa speaks about the brand new issue

No magazine gets snapped up and devoured like Apartamento when it arrives into the It’s Nice That studio – there’s something about its size, understated beauty and incomparable wit that makes it irresistable. It states that it’s an “everyday life interiors magazine,” but it’s so much more than that, providing in-depth interviews with some of the coolest people who walk on this earth, with snooping photographs of their dwellings to boot. Now on its 14th edition, I wanted to ask Omar Sosa, the magazine’s much-loved founder, a little about this issue, those in the past, and where Apartamento is headed.

I’ve always wanted to know – how do you commission the spine artwork for each issue?

We usually ask an artist featured in the same issue to come up with a design for our spine. They sometimes adapt existing artwork or make a new one as was the case of the Artist Peter Halley for issue #14.

This is issue number 14 – how has the magazine changed since it started?

Maybe the more evident thing is the page count, we have increased more than 100 pages since we started but we have barely changed the number of stories of each issue, instead we make longer and more in-depth stories.

The portraits of Raymond Pettibon are spectacular. Can you tell us a little about this feature?

The portraits of Raymond Pettibon are taken by the photographer Terry Richardson and Ray was interviewed by Leah Singer. They both did a great job! We chose Leah for the writing for her closest connection with Raymond and Terry as a photographer as he’s a big fan of Raymond and we thought both would make a good mix and it turned out to be.

Do the interviews in Apartamento seek to do something that other publications do not?

I don’t think so. Each publication has its own tone and way of interviewing. In our case it changes depending on the interviewer and interviewee, we have as many voices as collaborators, as we like to curate but not patronise the content or give a unique voice to the magazine.

I’m always struck by the content in Apartamento being so rare, a lot of the people in each issue are not names you read everywhere else and have rarely been featured in other magazines. How do you decide on content?

We have pretty good and tolerant communication between my partners Nacho Alegre and Marco Velardi as well as we rely on our contributors who come up with new fresh stories every issue. We also keep our eyes open to things we like and don’t need to be current or too new, we just like to look at people that do or did things we liked in the past or were part of our world and might not be too exposed lately.

Tell us about Nacho Alegre’s ice feature in this issue

Nacho and I try to come up with a new feature on a simple element on each issue. It’s a way to do something together and collaborate on the magazine.

Do you feel Apartamento is sticking to its byline of Life and Interiors or is it shifting?

I’m sure it’s shifting but I don’t know where it’s going… it’s hard to tell when you are inside.

Finally, how do you celebrate completing an issue?

We like to celebrate making an event with our readers, for this issue we are organising a couple of events that we hope we will be able to reveal very soon.