Make Again

Author

Dale Dougherty
January 24, 2025

This is not about politics, parties or presidents. It’s about making and just making. I’m glad to celebrate what makers do for over twenty years. We salute those people who keep their head down and their hands occupied, who get things done — hobbyists, upstarts, tinkerers, inventors, builders, amateurs of all stripes, as well as students learning to experiment and explore. Having a project keeps us sane. Be sure to tell other people about your projects. You just might inspire another person to make. Let’s make again together in 2025.

Table of Contents

Our 20th Anniversary Issue is on the way

I couldn’t be more proud to announce the new issue of Make: Magazine, our 20th anniversary issue. Subscribers should see it next month. The cover is extra special in several ways. One is the illustration by Rob Nathan (see below). The other is that we worked with our printer to embellish the cover to make it pop.

But we are also celebrating more than the launch of a magazine in 2005. The magazine along with Maker Faire, which started the following year in 2006, were the catalysts for the maker movement. I had decided we’d call readers of Make: magazine makers and used the word in the first Welcome, stating that Makers were different than users of technology. Makers were people with know-how who get technology to do what they wanted it do, even if the manufacturer of the technology never intended anyone to do it. One of our early slogans was “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.”

I did a group interview with the team that produced the first issue of Make: and it was enjoyable thinking back on how we started with a few ideas and organize a team to create a new kind of magazine that has found a loyal audience of people like you.

The new issue is also future-facing with Matt Stultz and others reviewing what’s new in laser cutters and more about digital fabrication.

Illustration by Rob Nathan

Rob Nathan did our cover illustration and he’s one of our favorite illustrators. We asked him to come up with something in the style of Rube Goldberg and he developed a Paper Airplane Launcher using the letters for the word “Maker". It’s a tribute to the wacky and wonderful contraptions by makers that we’ve featured in the magazine.

Rob first sent us a series of rough sketches like the one below:

He continued working on it, adding on and taking away until we were all satisfied. It’s fun looking at the details closely:

We might have overworked Rob. He sent us a photo of himself falling asleep at his keyboard and drooling.

Rob Nathan after work

Then Rob told us: “I simulated the drool by pouring some rubber cement on my desk which is not a great thing to dump on your self-annealing cutting mat. You learn something every day.” That’s the maker spirit. Thanks also to Juliann Brown, our exceptional art director, who also worked hard on this cover as well as the entire magazine.

The First Four Projects

We featured four large projects in our first issue of Make: magazine and they set the tone for what kinds of projects we wanted to cover in future issues. Check out these projects as I believe they are still interesting.

  1. Cris Benton’s Kite Aerial Photography (on the cover) (Online)

  2. $14 Video Camera Stabilizer by Johnny Lee (Online)

  3. All-in-One Network Cable by Michael Ossmann (Online)

  4. Magnetic Stripe Reader by Billy Hoffman

All but the last project are linked online but Mag Stripe Reader will be up on on makezine.com soon.

Wearable Electronics (Second Edition)

Kate Hartman is a creative technologist and an Associate Professor at OCAD University in Toronto and Founding Director of the Social Body Lab. Kate updated Wearable Electronics with key components now readily accessible to makers, including specialized microcontrollers, sensors, and power supplies. New galleries feature more than 75 inventions by artists and researchers to showcase wearables in action, as well as inspire the next wave of innovation. Kate also explains how to set up your own wearable-electronics studio with the essential materials and tools so makers can focus on making.

Editor Kevin Toyama said that “Kate did a facelift on the whole book (rather than adding a bunch of new chapters).” I plan to do a Fireside Chat with Kate Hartman next month.

Maker Faires in Early 2025

Here’s a listing of Maker Faires scheduled between February and April this year.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - [email protected].