The Studio Team

Every journal has a room where it gets made. Ours is a borrowed studio with one long worktable, a shelf of guidebooks, a box of paint charts and a kettle that never quite cools down. Three of us share that table. We write under pen names so the articles can speak for themselves, and we split the subjects according to what each of us actually lives with.

Ysmay — rooms, light and upkeep

Ysmay looks after the home side of the journal: lighting, tiles, paint, windows, plumbing and the jobs that tend to be put off until something drips. Her rule is to describe a project the way it really goes, including the mess, the waiting and the moment you wish you had measured twice. Her recent work includes our layered plan for living room lighting.

Thorwald — trips, screens and match days

Thorwald covers travel, sport and everything that happens in front of a screen. He is the one who reads timetables for fun, tests picture settings on more than one television and keeps a running list of places worth the journey. He wrote our piece on TV settings for match day.

Ambrus — habits, health and handy kit

Ambrus writes the healthy-living pieces and the practical tips, along with the occasional gadget. He is careful by temperament: his drafts always say where a general idea ends and a conversation with a GP or pharmacist should begin. He has no medical training and never pretends otherwise.

How the table works

Nobody publishes alone. Each draft is passed across the table to one of the others, who reads it as a stranger would and marks every step that is vague, every claim that needs a source and every sentence that sounds like a brochure. Then it goes back for another pass. It is slower than writing straight to the page, but it catches most of the problems before readers do.

We also share a few habits:

• We describe what is general and point out what depends on local rules.
• We avoid figures we cannot stand behind.
• We keep publication dates visible so readers can judge how fresh a piece is.
• We change an article when a reader shows us something better.

Say hello

If you have a question for one of us, or a subject you think belongs on the table, send it through the Drop a Postcard page and mention who it is for. Notes land in a shared inbox, and the right person will pick it up.