[12][13] In 2012, Surface magazine was acquired by Eric Crown, co-founder and current chairman emeritus of the Arizona-based company Insight Enterprises.
[15] Contributing editors who joined during Bailey's first year included Valerie Steele, the director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology; Bettina Korek, an arts advocate, writer, and the founder of ForYourArt; and architect and designer David Rockwell.
In the June/July 2016 issue, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair criticized the media for its failure to have real-time fact checking and to point out lies stated by presidential candidate Donald Trump.
These new columns include Detail, which looks at garment and textile detail; Taste, in which a thought leader shares a current personal interest; How It's Made, intended to replace the yearly issue of the same name; Executive, in which an executive discusses the convergence of business and creativity; and Dialogue, a conversation between two creatives.
Surface Studios, before even creating a logo or media kit, has already secured more than $3 Million in contracts including a custom publication for the second-largest real-estate project in the United States, Brickell City Centre.
The first partnership was the first its kind between a media company and an accredited university, the challenge invited students from Penn to respond to a brief for architectural and design solutions for a mobile medical testing unit for COVID-19.