Dwell

BayNewser's parent company, mediabistro.com, has chosen to focus on San Francisco-based Dwell magazine for its latest "So What Do You Do . . ." feature, chatting up the company's president and publisher, Michela O'Connor Abrams, about the unique challenges of her position and field.

Dwell is a home-design magazine that opts to focus on culture and livability in conjunction with style, eschewing "rooms that are insanely perfect" in favor of a design-in-action ethos. Says its Web site: "We think that it's possible to live in a house or apartment by a bold modern architect, to own furniture and products that are exceptionally well designed, and still be a regular human being. We think that good design is an integral part of real life. And that real life has been conspicuous by its absence in most design and architecture magazines."

Abrams has been in her role for seven years, during which, says the mediabistro.com story, the brand has grown from magazine into "a multi-channel content provider, offering everything from home products to pre-fab houses to one the biggest design events in the U.S., Dwell on Design."

Some highlights of the conversation: