Artful, sometimes esoteric design mags are a welcome counterpoint to the tropes of traditional print media.

They’re interior design magazines—sort of. It’s hard to know exactly what to call them, those perfect-bound, occasionally weird, often wonderful publications like Apartamento, Cabana, Pin-Up and Hole & Corner that cover the more esoteric corners of architecture and design.

Each title has its own universe: Pin-Up is academic and comic, Hole & Corner is rootsy and earnest—but perhaps none exemplifies the genre’s appeal better than Apartamento. Founded in 2008 out of a Barcelona bedroom by Nacho Alegre and Omar Sosa, the “everyday life interiors” magazine was conceived as an antidote to the high-gloss world of shelter publishing.