If there is a utopic, sun dappled wonderland for nerds—the kind of place abundant with old circuit boards and sympathy for anachronistic societies—it would probably feature lots of free copies of Make magazine.

Make: technology on your time, published quarterly by O’Reilly Media (of Tim O’Reilly, champion of the open source movement and all forms of tech related publishing), offers instructions, tips, and inspiration for DIY hard and software projects. The most recent edition (Vol. 10, ‘Home Electronics’) features such compelling projects as: a Solar-Powered Bike GPS made of fully recycled parts, Mini High-Powered Laser made from an old DVD burner, a Tabletop Biosphere (sorry- ‘Shrimp Support Module’), and, phenomenally, a Brain Wave Machine (pp. 134,140, 110 and 88, respectively).

Technically, it’s not a design rag. But, as we know from previous posts, DIY has been experiencing a recent valorization on the design scene, and, really, what creative maker—from illustrator to web designer—can resist the temptation of solving ‘multiple global problems at once when you make your own sandals from an old tire’ (p. 40)? The themes, language and materials (OK, not the tires, but the rest) reference a community that spends most of its time working with computer technology, and so might have equal interest in how to use Google’s new free drawing tool SketchUp, as in how to make their own Desktop Paper Caddy out of wondermaterial ABS* (pp. 123 and 101). If, like O’Reilly himself claims in his piece ‘News from the Future’ (p. 13), hardware is the new software when it comes to innovation—largely because prototype production is easier and cheaper than ever before—then the projects featured in Make might not simply be for weekend hobbyists and inventive shop guys. Pulling your creativity into a third dimension is a good way to stretch yourself beyond the boundaries of the computer screen.

Plus, by not being a typical ‘design’ magazine, Make avoids the inadvertent language of insider style snobbery that permeates other such publications. Shawn Connally’s right-on editorial note addresses this very issue, pointing out that the secret to Make’s success is that it celebrates the triumphs (and missteps) of ordinary folk—‘backyard hacks and garage-grown innovations’—not the elegant foibles of design celebrities and creative superstars.

This great advice is carried throughout the issue. For example, in ‘Fail Early! Fail Often!’ (p. 34), Tom Jennings offers a mental toolkit for dealing productively with the inevitable onslaught of failure that comes with tackling any new task. Starting with the wise advise, ‘You may think that in order to look cool to your peers, you must never look foolish. Abandon this,’ he goes on to offer such tools as ‘The Dorkifier,’ ‘The Perspective Rotator,’ and the ‘The Autopsy Kit’ to help cull meaning from honest failure.

That Connally’s editorial about the ordinary guy comes off as sincere proves another great point about the mag: it doesn’t just front inclusiveness by playing the nerd card, it actually delivers clear, witty, non-jargony instructional writing to a presumedly intelligent audience. In doing so it manages to also avoid the dark, rarely mentioned underside of geekdom: reverse, tech-head snobbery.

So celebrate your inner nerd with a copy of the most recent Make. I have, and I’m not even a designer—though four years of social purgatory in the high school marching band certainly make me a nerd. You can check out the Make website, blog, or podcast if you can’t get to a bookstore—you can even attend the next Maker Faire (O! the knowing nerdiness of ye olde English spelling!) on Oct 20 & 21 in Austin, Texas.

Finally, if you’re still unconvinced about the allure of a tool called ‘The Dorkifier,’ check out this and never look back.

* acrylonitrile butadiene styrene

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.