InDesigner: Make: Magazine

Flip through the pages of Make: magazine and enter a world of gadgets, gizmos, and other Rube Goldbergian contraptions created by a cadre of mad geniuses. While the concepts behind these DIY tech projects boggle the mind, the instructions for making them are clear, thanks to thoughtful and precise layouts designed in InDesign.

Make: describes itself as “a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.” Content is supplied by readers—referred to as “makers” in the magazine’s jargon—who have developed innovative ways of using readily available components. For example, projects may include a lounge chair connected by zip ties or an interactive messenger bag powered by a microcontroller purchased on the Internet. There are plenty of robotic things, too.

The magazine’s design mission is to not only translate these projects for print publication but to educate readers as well. “I like to show off what you can build, make it interesting, then let you dive into the copy and learn how to make it with clear steps,” says Creative Director Jason Babler. Design elements typically include detailed illustrations, exploded diagrams, project sketches, parts lists, numbered steps, and creative photography of both people and things. “The Editorial department (and this covers Photography, Design, Video, and our Make: Labs) is really a creative

mainspring for the company that actually echoes the relationships we cultivate with our makers,” Babler says. “Most of our makers are not writers, so we work with their project notes and manuscripts and help organize the build so that it makes sense for our readers.” Deciphering the project and interpreting it as an editorial product involve the entire staff. Babler says, “When we come across a project, or a maker that we find interesting, we think ‘What can we do for that maker?’ Is the project great, should it be online or in the magazine? Is the project actually a product that we can help the maker bring to market? Where does this maker fit into a larger community, and how can we help him or her get more knowledgeable about their craft? By asking these questions, our entire company has remained true to our vision of helping make more makers. I like to think the world is better off with more makers.” As might be expected from a magazine that targets a tech-savvy audience, Make: appears in print, online, and on the iPad. For ease of output, the parent company Maker Media subscribes to the Creative Cloud and keeps current with every release. Currently the magazine is produced with InDesign CC 2014. Make: uses the Digital Publishing Suite for iPad distribution. Babler investigated iPad publishing platforms a couple of years ago and liked what he saw in DPS, but the magazine wasn’t ready to take the leap—a delay that turned out to be fortuitous. Make: uses the Digital Publishing Suite for iPad distribution. Babler investigated iPad publishing platforms a couple of years ago and liked what he saw in DPS, but the magazine wasn’t ready to take the leap—a delay that turned out to be fortuitous. By the time Make: was ready for the iPad, DPS tools had matured. “The integration has gotten so much better than even two years ago, but I’d love to see more tools and previews be available from within InDesign when working on our iPad version,” Babler says. “That said, Adobe DPS is the best off-the-shelf software solution that also leaves me with the most amount of interactivity I crave.” Babler would also like to see more flexibility for moving content across media platforms. “We are looking into workflows that export our content out of ID and into a usable format for our CMS,” he says. “It’s not a perfect solution yet, so good old cut-and-paste is sometimes faster than heavy-duty scripting workflows.” The iPad edition was introduced with the first issue of 2014 to coincide with a redesign of the print publication, which changed from its smaller book-size format to conventional magazine size as well as increased its publishing schedule from four to six times a year. Babler says the new design has been well received. “We decided that as making has gone more mainstream, we wanted our magazine to reflect the changing maker movement,” he says. Features about technologies and profiles of makers provide bulk, but the step-by-step projects form the backbone of the magazine. “There is always the need to clearly show complicated step-by-step shots, but we want to have a little fun along the way,” Babler says. “It’s a balancing act. Making is messy, and we try to make sure we don’t get too ‘clean’ and antiseptic. Some of our projects are silly, without practical use, but actually contain huge learning opportunities within. We love those projects, and we like to get you excited to make something as irrelevant and awesome as, say, an automatic dog-ball launcher.” The journey from maker to magazine can be arduous, but the goal is clear. “It’s a process, no doubt about it, because we hang our hat on printed projects that work, no matter how complicated,” Babler says. “It’s ambitious content, but we love it.”