Uniform Studio Blog
Martha McQuade has such a lovely new online space called MWM Workbook that I thoroughly enjoyed browsing today and I believe that you'll find inspiration from this as well. Martha is the designer behind UNIFORM Studio in Minneapolis where she creates ethically made clothing and accessories. From her bio, "Trained as an architect, Martha McQuade lives and works in Minneapolis, MN where she teaches architecture, designs clothing, makes buildings, takes photographs, writes about process + design, and is always looking for phenomena + beauty."
Her new website, MWM Workbook, will function as both a portfolio and a blog where she'll write once weekly on topics like design, process and inspiration. It also has slideshows featuring photographic studies, her studio space, previous collections, and a sketchbook gallery along with other bits of her work life such as news where she'll post about upcoming collections, shop updates and shows.
I love the new format and think that it's refreshing to see a site that is a bit of a website and blog combined, it's innovative and starting to pop up around the web as some artists aren't interested in the daily exercise of blogging and would rather have a simple space to show up once weekly to update -- it's more dynamic than a static website but less hectic than maintaining a daily blog (Martha's site is by Cargo Collective.)
Let's face it, with the speed of the web these days a full-time artist or designer who is unable to blog for several days in a row often leaves fans feeling a bit neglected and this can cause guilt. It's true, they can start to miss you and wonder what's wrong and often this can be hard for creatives to manage -- the constant interaction with their fans and need to post, post, post! The inspiration they draw from having fans is a blessing but so often it can be the same joy that ends up depleting them of their creative energy because it's so much work to maintain a daily blog. The MWM Workbook format is a lot less pressure but also very creative and can still be subscribed to via RSS so Martha's fans always know when she's posted something new. Lovely work, Martha.
What do you think of this format? Any thoughts come to mind? Would you try it?
(images: martha mcquade/uniform studio)