The idea of picking up an iPad to commune with nature sounds counterintuitive–until you’ve swiped and tapped through an issue of Nature Conservancy magazine, which mails to the environmental conservation organization’s 650,000 members on a bimonthly basis. “Our digital edition features the same engaging stories and stunning photography as our print magazine, plus exclusive photo galleries, videos, audio commentary, interactive maps, and more,” says creative director Christopher Johnson. “Readers get to experience the places we protect in a whole new way.” The high-tech twist on news from the natural world is a hit with readers. The free Nature Conservancy app, launched last year, has emerged at the top of the iTunes newsstand’s Outdoors and Nature category and is a finalist for best tablet app (interactive single or series) in the Society of Publication Designers annual design competition. Johnson made time to answer our seven questions before heading down to Cipriani Wall Street for tonight’s SPD gala.

What do you consider the most important ingredients in a successful tablet app?
For us, a successful tablet app combines beautiful design, intuitive navigation and engaging interactive features like video, audio and slideshows that allows us to bring readers into our stories in richer, more immersive ways. It’s allowed us to reach a whole new audience of potential supporters with our inspiring stories.

What is your publication design pet peeve?
It has to be design by committee. Inevitably it becomes more about pacifying the group than it does about meeting the original objective.

What has been your best or most memorable design-related encounter?
Years ago, in order to graduate from the design program I attended, students were required to put together a portfolio and go on a mock interview. Our department chair organized interviews with a creative director from a local design firm. That experience had such an impact on me. It made me realize the importance of communicating and connecting with people, that it wasn’t just about the strength of your work. You had to be able to sell your ideas.
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For the last 13 years, Dwell has provided design and architecture insights that are as practical as they are modern. “We remain true to our founding editor’s fruitbowl manifesto,” editor-in-chief Amanda Dameron attested. “It has everything to do with authentic design, as opposed to artificial environment.”

Dameron also said that her team is looking for content that covers fresh topics that readers weren’t expecting, and one of the best ways to distinguish your submission is to get behind a camera. “We put a lot of resources behind how we tell our stories visually. So when we’re reviewing initial ideas, having good pics always helps.”

Get contact info and more in How To Pitch: Dwell.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

– Nick Braun

Design was in the spotlight last night at the National Magazine Awards gala, where Milton Glaser and Walter Bernard were presented with the creative excellence award “for their unique and enduring contributions to American journalism.” The two honorees were introduced by journalist and playwright Michael Kramer, and then the audience was treated to a video of them being interviewed by The New Yorker‘s Ken Auletta.

Meanwhile, Time, the magazine that Bernard redesigned back in 1977 (and then led as art director for three years), emerged victorious in the design category, besting fellow finalists Bon Appétit, BULLETT, Details, and New York, which won for magazine of the year and best magazine section. Chris Johns left the Marriott Marquis laden with elephants–the coveted yet unwieldy Alexander Calder stabile pachyderm (pictured)–as National Geographic won for photography; general excellence in the news, sports, and entertainment category; tablet magazine; and multimedia. W trounced the other nominated portfolios in the feature photography category with Steven Klein‘s Mosstastic “Good Kate, Bad Kate” from the March 2012 issue. Other victories of note: Gael Towey and Pilar Guzmán‘s reliably stunning Martha Stewart Living took home the Elllie for best lifestyle magazine, The Atlantic won for best website, and the election-rocking video ‘Full Secret Video of Private Romney Fundraiser’ earned Mother Jones a best video nod–well over 47% of the audience seemed happy about that decision.

Mere months stand between you and Dwell on Design, a veritable feast of modern design in the form of thousands of products, oodles of presentations, modern home tours, and demonstrations galore. This year’s ideas- and inspiration-fest takes place June 21-23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the highlights in store for the eighth Dwell on Design is a keynote address by architect and product designer Michael Graves (have you tried his tweezers?), who will share his insights on universal design and design’s direct influence on quality of life, and a series of panels–featuring speakers from organizations such as the Getty Conservation Institute, MOCA, LACMA, and Architecture for Humanity–tackling issues in the areas of design innovation, sustainable design, and the business of design. This year’s show also features the first Dwell on Design artist-in-residence, Tanya Aguiñiga. The Los Angeles-based furniture designer, craftsperson, and community activist will create a living exhibition of upcycled furnishings that after being displayed on the show floor will be donated to local shelters.

Now approaching 50, Rolling Stone still rocks, and the storied bimonthly is in want of design assistance. The search is on for a crackerjack freelance designer to complete design and production work on front and back pages and a range of editorial design assignments, on a part-time basis. Bring your “expertise in typography and sophisticated design sensibility,” ability to make “a variety of record and movie review pages visually fresh and lively,” and pop culture passion. Got CS5 prowess, problem-solving skills, and a knack for working collaboratively? That’s music to their ears.

Learn more about and apply for this freelance designer, Rolling Stone job or view all of the current Mediabistro design, art, and photo jobs.

Magazines gusty enough to enlist chairs as cover models are far too rare these days, and so it is with pleasure that we tell you about a brand new shelter magazine: Departures Home & Design. The stand-alone publication debuts just in time for ICFF and NYCxDESIGN with a May issue (pictured) fronted by Dror Benshetrit‘s Peacock chair, the feat of felt plumage he pulled off in 2009 for Cappellini.

This is the first brand extension for Departures, the magazine that mails to holders of platinum and centurion American Express cards, and comes packaged with the May issue of the flagship publication. “We’ve wanted to do a real home and design magazine that’s published for true luxurists, whose interests are global and whose style is not built solely around name-brand designers but created organically through their own sense of self, their particular passions and desires,” says Departures editor-in-chief Richard Story, who may have coined the term “luxurists.” Inside, alongside ads by the likes of B&B Italia, Roche Bobois, and Baccarat are features such as “The Master of Accumulation,” a look into the private quarters of W alum-turned-Barneys creative director Dennis Freedman; a celebration of midcentury Honolulu; and a feature on the Persian gardens of L.A.’s Nazarian family.

Two of of the seven 2013 Time 100 covers, which feature portraits by Mark Seliger.

Today Time revealed its annual selection of the 100 most influential people in the world, and while we remain suspicious of any list that includes both Christina Aguilera and Elena Kagan, it’s difficult not to enjoy the logistical wonder that is the Time 100 issue. On newsstands tomorrow, the massive editorial effort commissions a diverse group of notable figures—many of them Time 100 alumna—to write a paragraph or two about the chosen influencers. And so this year we get Richard “I know a thing or two about building spaceships” Branson on SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, Claire Danes‘s clear-eyed look at the uniquely vanity-free and shameless Lena Dunham, and Michael Bloomberg‘s cliché-ridden paen to Jay-Z, who emerges as a 21st century Gatsby that gets the girl–she also made the Time 100–and the American Dream.

Art and design stars that made it onto this year’s Time 100 include Apple’s Jony Ive, Michael Kors, who joins the likes of Uniqlo honcho Tadashi Yanai and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg in the “Titans” category; artist Ed Ruscha, who Richard Lacayo likens here to “a SoCal Magritte;” 2012 Pritzker laureate Wang Shu; and Jenna Lyons, executive creative director of J. Crew. “She has made fashion relatable,” writes fashion designer Prabal Gurung of Lyons. “Being fashionable doesn’t mean being trendy; it means having a sense of style. Jenna has made J. Crew more than a brand or a company–it’s a philosophy that believes in style.”

Creative director Richard Turley and his crack/dream team, including design director Cynthia Hoffman and graphic director Jennifer Daniel, are behind the sight for sore eyes that is Bloomberg Businessweek. Smart, inventive, and with a stream of bold, gutsy, stop-’em-in-their-tracks-at-the-newsstand covers and artfully integrated infographics, the book buzzes with jazzy layers–a syncopation of pictures, display typography, charts, captioning, illustration–that Turley has likened to “graffiti-ing the pages.” This week’s cover is a standout, using René Magritte‘s famous 1964 self-portrait, “The Son of Man,” to tackle the topic of Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn and his recently aborted battle with Apple. However, when we consulted the credits to see who was responsible for the surreal photo-illustration (bowler hat’s off to Justin Metz), the surrealism continued, with a shout-out to…Henri Matisse? The Treachery of Images, indeed.

“Tall buildings are all about statistics. There are entire websites devoted to how to measure the height, which building has the highest square-footage of hospitality space versus residential space; there are many, many categories and there are lots of high-rise aficionados that keep track of those things. There’s a guy in my gym that knows more about the stats of tall buildings than I do. He’ll ask me questions when I’m on the treadmill like, ‘Is the Sears Tower 1,700 feet, or do they count the…?’ and then he’ll rattle back.”

-Architect Jeanne Gang, interviewed by Michael Bullock in the latest issue of PIN–UP

• Elsewhere in museum thievery news, a disgruntled former employee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art who we’ve identified to be Gerald Jones–and who insists to the New York Post that he is not disgruntled but a whistleblower (someone’s been watching Enlightened!)–is speaking out about the museum’s tactics for getting visitors to pay the suggested $25 admission fee. “I arranged for security officers to forcibly remove the museum visitors who demanded entry without paying,” he told the Post.

• How has technology reshaped contemporary life and what does it mean for photography? Curator Christopher Y. Lew considers “Swiping at Pictures” in an online-only essay that accompanies Aperture‘s boldly redesigned spring 2013 issue.

• Fashion powerhouses such as Donna Karan, Michael Kors, and Zac Posen are serious about philanthrophy. Gotham goes inside the minds of “6 Designers Who Give Big.”

• The selection of a new pope prompted Norma Kamali to consider how much the Catholic church influenced her career in fashion. “The tapestries and brocades, the candles, and the bar reliefs, and sculptures, and the holy water. Every one of my senses was a part of the experience,” she wrote of her childhood churchgoing in a recent “Note from Norma.”

• And speaking of fashion influences and pyramid schemes, Vince Camuto has ripped off Valentino’s wildly successful rockstud heel. Camuto’s “Mikhal” model is priced at $118, while the Italian original goes for around $950.