A Day in New York City With Dwell's Creative Director Suzanne LaGasa

Suzanne LaGasa is the Creative Director at Dwell, where she leads Dwell’s creative team and is responsible for maintaining Dwell’s brand, personality, and point of view with consistency across all content channels and communications. Suzanne’s day involves editorial team production meetings, layout and image selections, and pitch meetings, wrapping up the day with bedtime stories and children’s illustrated books.

5:30am: I always try to wake up before my five-year-old so that I can have a little time for myself. After checking messages I’ll do a ten minute meditation by Tamara Levitt on the Calm app, and on a good day, I’ll fit in a workout.

7:00am: When my daughter wakes up the countdown starts to get out the door on time. It's a topsy-turvy sequence of events that includes hair styling, lunch prep and eggs. I grew up in Brazil, so I also use this time to speak with my daughter in Portuguese even though she only responds in English.

8:00am: Getting out of the door on time is always a minor victory. It’s a short walk to school and back home, where I switch my attention to Dwell. If I’m working from home, I can get started right away.

9:00am: I’ll check Slack for our day-to-day team messages and Asana for design requests. Digital stories and social media requests are very fast paced. When we launched Dwell House, the design team helped create assets for multiple posts on all of our social platforms, so that was an all-hands-on-deck moment. But generally, I’ll check for incoming photoshoot content and look at email for correspondence from freelance illustrators and publishing partners, who help out with tasks such as color retouching and the magazine’s pagination.

10:30am: By mid-morning I like to review design layouts with our Art Director, Derek Eng. We’ll go over different layout options for each story and discuss openers, headline treatment, image selection, and how to best tell the story. When we’re happy with the layout and flow, we’ll share with the photo team to get their perspective before sharing further with the editors. It helps for the design and photo team to be aligned, because there are always different ways to tell a story—to flow through a space, and to reveal the highlights and details.

11:30am: It’s rare to have a day without meetings, although it does happen. Often though, I’ll either have an editorial team production meeting, where we review the status of our digital and print stories, or I’ll meet one-on-one with a colleague to go over marketing or social needs—such as promoting our Dwell 24 emerging designers, or a special feature like Wildlife Week.

12:30pm: Sadly, lunch is usually a speedy affair. Recently though, a colleague and I visited the townhouse showroom of Invisible Collection, which is a French-owned, London-headquartered bespoke furniture company, and we found ourselves daydreaming about leisurely, French working lunches, where we meet colleagues and other industry connections and spend hours at a time in the middle of the day.

1:30pm: If I don’t start working on layouts and design in the morning, then by the afternoon, I usually carve time to do so. For stories with custom shoots or existing photography, the photo team will narrow the image selections for both cover and story. If we’re not photographing a home or story, I’ll read the synopse so that I can determine the best approach.

My background is in book design and I’ve always loved working with illustrators. It’s a treat to work with global talent and commission original work. I tend to like illustrators whose work projects personality, be it a sense of humor, a psychological state, or an aesthetic that keeps the work from looking corporate.

2:30pm: Getting to read each story before creating the layouts is something I appreciate about working at Dwell. I didn’t fully appreciate this earlier in my career, but I learn and grow with these stories, whether it’s from reading about people living in Swedish greenhouses, or about a couple’s storefront renovation in Portugal.

I love that Dwell explores how people experience a space, or how the architecture is shaped by people’s lives. My goal with each layout is to tell a story about both the people and their home, so it’s about the makers, construction and architectural details, and material choices as well.

If I’m done reading, then I can listen to a podcast or music while reviewing the low-res photos selected by the photo team and starting to “play” with the relationships between photos and text, and with pacing, etc. I love losing myself in the flow of a story—ideally, uninterrupted by meetings.

3:30pm: Once a week we’ll have a pitch meeting. I love this meeting! It’s in this meeting that the editors present the wide range of projects that they’re considering for publication. The photo team will usually suggest a few projects proposed by photographers, too. Occasionally, I’ll have a project to pitch as well, but most of the time my role is simply to weigh-in on projects. We review all kinds of homes, hear their backstory, and dream. And we bond as a team when we discuss our different preferences—primary color tiles anyone?

4:30pm: If I’m not working on layouts, I’m usually checking in with someone on the editorial team, so even if I’m working from home, it’s never quiet for long. For example, the section in the magazine called In The Modern World changes thematically with each issue and often requires a lot of preparation and planning. While the theme changes with each issue, we’re consistently wrangling a lot of products and managing either one massive studio shoot, or different shoots in multiple locations, as was the case with our 2022 Dwell24 issue featuring emerging designers.

At the end of the day, I’ll check in with our Visuals Editor, Alex Casto, who is often juggling a dozen photo shoots around the world. To me, our photographers are our superstars. We commission them for their unique perspective and sensibility. It’s fun to work with the photo team to identify the right photographer for each architectural project and it’s especially fun seeing what they come back with. The design direction of each layout always takes into consideration the aesthetic of the photos.

6:00pm: My day usually wraps up at around 6pm, unless it’s two weeks before an issue goes to press. Workflow definitely ramps up the closer we get to printing and shipping an issue, and “ship week” is an especially hyper-focused time spent updating layouts, ensuring that high-res photos look good color-wise, that the headlines are resolved and cohesive, and finalizing an awesome cover. The cover is a story all on its own…

6:30pm: If my daughter is not going to her father’s, I’ll pick her up from school and make dinner while she plays at her art table. We don’t usually go out much during the week. But when we do, it’s usually somewhere around Fort Greene Park or BAM, which are both close.

I’ve loved children’s illustrated books even before I had a child, so picking out a good bedtime story is a treat for both of us. Someday, I’ll muster enough energy to read adult fiction for myself before also falling asleep.