Martha Rotter's Blog

It’s an inter­est­ing phe­nomenon we’re start­ing to see in a lot of tech and cre­at­ive circles: what can you build in a weekend?

Char­ity event 24theWeb cre­ates web­sites for char­it­ies who can’t afford them in 24 hours.

Star­tup­Week­end gets developers and design­ers together for a week­end to share ideas, build tech­no­logy and launch start-ups.

Ireland’s 24 Hour Uni­ver­sal Design Chal­lenge cre­ates inclus­ive design solu­tions to pro­duce usable envir­on­ments, build­ings and products.

And now in magazines as well, we’re see­ing some really fas­cin­at­ing exper­i­ments in “what can we pub­lish, given a finite amount of time?”

LONGSHOT

Long­shot has now cre­ated two issues of its 48-hour magazine. The second issue, pub­lished in July 2011 was cre­ated between noon July 29th, 2011 and noon July 31st, 2011. Its theme was “Debt”, and you can read a web ver­sion here: http://two.longshotmag.com/ or order from MagCloud if you want a print copy.

The Atlantic has a great art­icle about the meth­ods and tools Long­shot used to cre­ate their magazine so fast: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/the-almost-free-toolkit-we-use-to-make-longshot-magazine/242750/. In the art­icle, Alexis Mad­rigal (who is both a founder of Long­shot & a senior editor at The Atlantic) describes how they worked with thou­sands of people around the world who con­trib­uted con­tent and man­aged things with free tools like Google Docs and Google Forms, raised money via Kick­starter, and pos­ted updates to fans via Twit­ter, Tumblr and Google+.

Com­bin­ing con­tent from thou­sands of con­trib­ut­ors, par­ing it down to the best of the best, edit­ing and lay­ing it out is no small feat. Doing it in a week­end is quite impress­ive. Unless you want to do it in a day…

24HOUR MAGAZINE

If 48 hours just seems a little too laid back for you, 24HourMagazine was con­cep­tu­al­ized, pro­duced and prin­ted all in a single day with the motto, “1 day. 1 magazine. Start to fin­ish. Scratch to print.”

Founders Tuffer Har­ris and Sam Mulkay, along with volun­teers, cre­ated 24HourMagazine in a 24 hour period includ­ing top­ics on fash­ion, design, music, and life­style. The endeav­our res­ul­ted in a 47-page magazine with no advert­ise­ments using a sys­tem called Issuu. Dur­ing the short pro­ject, they allowed view­ers to check in on pro­gress via photo and video feeds as well as blog and Twit­ter updates.

Unfor­tu­nately it looks like the web­site is no longer act­ive. How­ever, Cool Hunt­ing has some screen shots of what the com­pleted magazine looked like, and it’s quite beau­ti­ful indeed: http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/24-hour-magazin.php.

16HOURS

“Okay,” you’re think­ing. “Now this is just get­ting ridicu­lous.”  Fear not: 16HOURS is not what you might expect given the above magazines. 16 Hours, as the web­site states, “is the time dif­fer­ence between Cal­gary, Canada and Sydney, Aus­tralia”, which is where the two design­ing founders of the magazine live.

16HOURS cur­rently has three issues avail­able, and their web­site men­tions that they’ll be open to accept Ins­tagram sub­mis­sions for their next issue start­ing Feb­ru­ary 16th. So it seems the next issue could be just around the corner. Fol­low them on Twit­ter to stay up-to-date.

Like Long­shot, you can pur­chase 16HOURS print or digital edi­tions on the MagCloud site. Issues include con­tent from artists all over the world and based on the pre­views on the site and on MagCloud, they are beau­ti­fully designed.

WHAT’S THE POINT?

We often argue that we need more time, that we don’t have enough time, that our work would have been bet­ter if we had more time. But there is a need for dead­lines, and restric­tions have their place. Hav­ing unlim­ited resources, budget, and time may sound like a dream pro­ject, but with no goal post it can be tough to focus. Con­straints force us to focus on the goal. The tougher the restric­tions, the more cre­at­ive we have to be.


Here’s an exer­cise to demon­strate the power of con­straints:

1. Pick one task you need to do this week: a blog post, a chapter of a book, some­thing you’re cook­ing, some pho­tos you have to edit, some­thing that requires more cre­ativ­ity or thought than “drop­ping off the recyc­ling” or “buy­ing gro­cer­ies.” (On the other hand, if you needed to save time, you could try order­ing gro­cer­ies online instead and see how it works out for you!)
2. For whatever activ­ity you choose, guess­tim­ate how long it will take you. Give your­self half of that time to fin­ish it. Impossible? See what happens. 
3. Pick another task & give your­self 25% of the time you think you need to fin­ish it. I take no respons­ib­il­ity, how­ever,  if you attempt to cook a chicken in 30 minutes and make your­self sick.

One way this some­times works for me is that I just get it done. An art­icle I think will take me 5–6 hours and I only have 2? It’s got to be more focused, so I spend more time up front out­lining what I need to write. Whereas usu­ally when I have more time, I go slowly, let­ting any semi-related thought into an early draft, only to be edited out later.

Another thing that hap­pens is that I don’t get it all done. I sat down to edit all ten bil­lion of my pho­tos from India tonight, and I only made it through 3 days of the trip. Oh well. But still: I made it through three days & I can share those with friends & fam­ily, versus before when I was wait­ing until I happened to have a spare eight hours. A spare eight hours does not acci­dent­ally hap­pen, at least not to me. So now, instead of end­lessly post­pon­ing a task & feel­ing guilty about it, I have some amount of pro­gress, how­ever small. A dent is a dent.

SUMMARY

Web­sites can be designed & built in 24 hours. Design chal­lenges to improve cit­ies can be attacked in a week­end. A magazine can be pro­duced in 48 hours or on oppos­ite sides of the world. Whatever con­straints are facing you are offer­ing focus. Instead of assum­ing they’re hinder­ing you, remem­ber they’re there to help you progress.