"Make" is touted as the magazine that provides "technology on your time" and "Craft" is "transforming traditional crafts." They don't disappoint.
Make and Craft Magazines
For the Thomas Edison in everyone, Make Magazine is devoted to fun, DIY inspiration, and discovery. It is positively loaded with exciting projects that help make the most of technology at home and away. Turn a page, and there’s more—and it’s not filler. Celebrate the independent ability to tweak, hack and bend technology.
Craft Magazine is dedicated to the renaissance occurring within the world of crafts. It too is devoted to fun and is packed with electrifying projects that use unconventional, unexpected and renegade techniques, materials, and tools. Celebrate the resourceful spirits highlighted who undertake amazing projects within their homes and communities.
Both magazines are published quarterly by O’Reilly Media. Retail price is $14.99 per issue.
The Publishers
O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, concentrating on technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption. O’Reilly Media is an active participant in the technology community, and the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
Make Magazine Sampler
A typical issue of Make will include things like a comic-book style print, articles like “How to Remake Your Own Hollywood Movie,” reviews of other edgy products such as “The Star-Wars Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy,” and an interview or two with authors like Martin Gardner, creator of the “Entertaining Math Puzzles” book series.
Every issue comes with what is entitled a “MakeShift Dilemma.” Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to decide what to do next. For example’s sake, say you’ve recently purchased a small cabin that’s situated among trees in wilderness. The cabin has running water and electricity but no landline phone, and your nearest neighbors are a quarter of a mile away. You smell electrical burning while in an isolated room and heat on the nearest wall… What do you do?
Craft Magazine Sampler
The average issue of Craft will also include a comic strip, articles in the vein of “How to Make a Wine Sleeve with an Old Shirt,” and events like “Pimp Your Book Cart” Photo Contest. (Yes, they mean library book carts.) Consider age-old questions with other crafters, such as, “Why do we make gifts for others and open ourselves up to the perils of opinion?”
The Review
It is a little difficult to give full justice to these two magazines in a review without sounding like a babbling lush. They’re really that good.
Make and Craft are completely different from all the other magazines in their genre. They don’t have the usual craft ideas or typical DIY ideas. They are unique, packed with ideas and information, and are trendy and timely without being presumptuous. They are fresh without being rude.
Even the ads grab their due attention. If magazines can be at all judged by their sponsors, the “Go to Geek College” advertisement featured in Make and Craft sums them up very well. Be what you are, do what you’re good at, and tell everyone about it. While you’re at it, tell everyone to check these publications out.
