Brian Sawyer

The Arrival of Craft:

A while back, I announced my excitement about the coming of Craft magazine, and now I’m even more excited to announce the actual arrival of the premiere issue. If you haven’t heard of it yet, see if this doesn’t pique your interest:

Craft is the first project-based magazine dedicated to the renaissance that is occurring within the world of crafts. Celebrating the DIY spirit, Craft’s goal is to unite, inspire, inform and entertain a growing community of highly imaginative people who are transforming traditional art and crafts with unconventional, unexpected and even renegade techniques, materials and tools; resourceful spirits who undertake amazing crafting projects in their homes and communities. We call them “Makers.”

I was lucky enough to have a sneak peak of the whole thing a little over a month ago and was blown away. On a recent visit to the inner sanctum of the Make/Craft headquarters in Sebastopol, California, I was treated to a view of the almost-complete magazine, laid out on a wall:

I found so many great projects I’d like to start that it’s hard to determine which to do first and impossible to do justice with a summary here. Check out the TOC for yourself.

As the Cambridge ambassador for our primarily California-based magazine, I recently received a hot-off-the-presses box and had the pleasure of distributing it around the office, where all copies were snatched up quickly:

The general consensus seems to be that this something new and unique, not just for our publishing company (though it’s certainly one of the furthest reaches we’ve made beyond our bread-and-butter technical market), but for the larger publishing community and craft world as well. To see for yourself, get a copy of Volume 01 now, or take my word for it and subscribe. In the meantime, the constantly updated Craft blog will give you a good idea of what to expect in the printed version of the magazine.

Because I’m an O’Reilly employee and contributor to the magazine, I know I’m biased, but how often do I plug anything from the company I work for on this personal blog? This product is really something special and it resonates with me on a more personal level than anything else we’ve done as a company, which is why I’ve worked so hard to edge my way into it (my work has been, and remains, primarily in the Hacks series of books). As a writer, editor, and craft enthusiast, this thing pushes all my buttons. In the former of these roles, I’m proud to be a part of it, and in the latter, I’ll anxiously look forward to each issue.

Further Disclosure

It should be noted that the interest in my household for this magazine, both professional and personal, is not limited to me. My wife has an article in the first issue:

Here are a few pictures of the completed projects in her how-to:

And she and I each have articles lined up for inclusion in Volume 02, so stay tuned!