Fill/Stroke.com
The blog’s one year anniversary just passed and I missed it. July 9th is when our first post hit this site. Which makes it over 2 years since our little ‘magazine’ formed.
Just to keep you updated: Issue 1 has been scaled back to only include the interviews we did. We’ll be releasing it in the next few months, and then start publishing issues in the shorter format.
Our first issue was, at one point, over 500 pages of content and ideas. I’m not going to lie: We tried to do too much with not enough time to give it the attention it needed to be done right.
So that overwhelming need for perfection that is deep-set in the 3 of us has led to delays, changes, and at this point, the continuation of our work not coming to fruition in print form.
We’re still working on it when we can, but we are a deeply active bunch and keep finding ourselves drawn into various other endeavors. But, this WILL happen or I will get a Papyrus tattoo on my face that says “I <3 Comic Sans”
Thank you for reading this past year, we’ll keep sharing.
No comments. Posted by md in f/s community, issue 1 on 24 July 2009.
Are you wondering whats been up with the site? Whats going on with the magazine?
Well, Mr. Tanner Woodford is graduating from ASU in the next few days and we’ve all been busy with new post graduate jobs and stuff.
We started the magazine 2 years ago next month. (We’re planning an article: “Things that have happened in the time it took us to finish this first damn issue”)
Just wanted to let everyone know we’re still going to get this thing done and we appreciate your support and coming back to the site!
Wim Crouwel is exactly 55 years older than me.
Of course we have to post when Experimental Jetset does anything. Because it seems that anything they do is worth talking about. In this case, they updated their site. It’s great and simple and I’m really digging the archive section.
The cool thing for me though, was looking at the Wim Crouwel invitation they did, and seeing that me and Crouwel were both born on the same day.
Now if I ever run into him, I totally have my icebreaker.
UPDATE:
Adria got an email a few days ago from Experimental Jetset and told me about it after I’d posted this.
We’ve been working on this magazine on and off (mostly off) since July of 07. The next thing you know, the interview Experimental Jetset did in January 08 is a year old and we are still an unpublished magazine website. They said great things and understandably didn’t want to keep them hidden for much longer. (Hence the Feature Image)
So, they ended up posting their responses. You can read them here.
Other published responses include Eric Karjaluoto’s at ideasonideas
1 comment. Posted by md in featured, issue 1, portfolio on 1 January 2009.
One of the themes with our questionnaire, and generally in our lives as designers for all of us working on the magazine, is the detestable practice of plagiarism in the design community. We got a lot of varied responses to one of our questions about the industry view of imitation vs inspiration, and how it’s perceived/handled outside of the academic environment.
To me the majority were like “yeah, it sucks, but you can’t really do anything about it”
I guess that’s how I saw it playing out in school as well. Some of the most ardent style-chasers and idea-copiers had their transgressions ignored, in the face of the overwhelming evidence and transparency of what was being done.
As some who always tries to do something differently I found it frustrating when people who were just mimicking better designers were able to get the same attention, critiquing seriousness, and often better grades. I guess my frustration lies in the fact that the thoughts I was always running into were the same:
“Is no one going to say anything about this!” “Am I the only one that can see that’s a complete Rand knockoff!?” “I mentioned my idea and 10 minutes later you just HAPPEN to change what you’re doing!?” “The teacher has to notice, they’ll say something, point them towards something else right? NO!? What is going on!” “She clearly stole that idea!” “Her boyfriend made that., why is that okay!?” “If this is how its going to be, maybe I should just drop out and try to be a zoologist like I wanted to be in 4th grade.”
Oh, sorry, maybe I’m still a little bitter about things.
Anyway, what I was getting at, was the idea that certain things like plagiarism, unoriginality, or the idea of just telling someone when a project isn’t working, or someones already done it, always seemed to be the ignored elephant in the room. At least in my interactions with Professors, they always just assumed the person had done it unintentionally, mistaking imitation for accidentally overly-similar inspiration.
3 comments. Posted by md in issue 1, rant on 23 December 2008.
So, its the end of 2008, almost. We started collecting information, interviews, ideas, content for this magazine back in June of 2007. A year a half! But with school, jobs, life, we got behind.
But, we totally love this thing, as much as its broken and a collection of grand ideas and content. We don’t want to rush it, or fake it. We refuse to release it except in the best possible way (you know…except for money) and so we are declaring Fill/Stroke vaporware* for 2008, with the promise that it will happen in 2009.
The way its looking now, its going to be big. Book-like. People have said “Break it up into several issues!” and we said “No.” That simple.
We will give you a great magazine, whether you want it or not.
Keep reading the blog though! This is easier to keep up and we hope it has similar insight and intrigue as the magazine will upon completion.
Thanks everyone, and an early “Happy Holidays” to you all.
*Vaporware is a somewhat derogatory term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having exceeded the period of development time that was initially expected.
No comments. Posted by md in featured, issue 1 on 1 December 2008.
So, we realize we’ve been delayed over and over again with the actual publication part of our efforts as Fill/Stroke. We realize that, and it bugs the shit out of us. We hope you are still finding some real value in the rest of our efforts, such as here, on the blog. We’d like to extend some more resources for taking part of the Fill/Stroke community. We love design, and a lot of other things that comingle and interact with that general field, and we love sharing it. I’m sure you’ve seen our side tumblelogs, which are links we tag specifically so that we can share them with you.
If you’d like to follow our linking habits more, please check out our delicious.com accounts, join our networks here:
http://delicious.com/tannerwoodford
http://delicious.com/SomebodysOatmeal
On top of that, I talked Adria and Tanner into starting twitter accounts, which I’m sure they will find to be as addicting as I do, and we’d love to interact with you there too. If you want to comment directly about fill/stroke, just type #fill/stroke and we’ll see it on the search page:
http://twitter.com/tannerwoodford
http://twitter.com/bowlofoatmeal
And, don’t forget about our myspace and facebook pages!
Thanks for still checking in everyone!
(added a little page-link on the left nav so you don’t have to search for this post if you want the information later!)
No comments. Posted by md in f/s community, issue 1 on 11 October 2008.
Muxtape is back, with a new focus
Muxtape, the ridiculously simple playlist hosting service, mysteriously disappeared a couple of weeks ago, citing “a problem with the RIAA”. Read more. →
No comments. Posted by tanner in experimentation, innovation, interwebs, issue 1, music on 29 September 2008.
Ian Stevenson is an awesome London based illustrator. His work and vision make me smile. When we asked Ian if he always wanted to be a designer for Issue One he had a great response.
No comments. Posted by adria in featured, issue 1 on 23 September 2008.
Roughly two hundred pages of soon-to-be designed content. Getting to this point has been much more cumbersome than we originally anticipated, what with: near deportation, fifty percent face paralysis, family sickness and nuptials. The summer has been tough, to say the least.
Even so, we’re still on track for a fall release. Pictures of the progress after the jump, including shots of our new editor.
1 comment. Posted by Fill/Stroke in featured, issue 1 on 10 August 2008.
Ed Fella is an inspiring designer, vernacular artist and educator based in central California. Inspired by his innovative body of work, we kindly asked him to contribute his responses to the Fill/Stroke issue 1 questionnaire.
“Don’t buy into the big status commodity culture that designers generally aspire to: food, dress, cars, lifestyle. Live modestly when faced with lots of money that you have to say no to.”
Read more. →
No comments. Posted by Fill/Stroke in featured, issue 1, profile on 20 July 2008.
