Publishing Plan

As The Design Shrink, I thought it possible to assist my fellow designers through storytelling. By telling my personal experiences of fighting my way through an unforgiving profession, I sought to ease others minds and help them realize that criticism of their work shouldn’t be taken as a slight against them personally.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much interest in publishing articles of this style. I looked through multiple magazines in an effort to find one that might be a possible fit for my writing, but sadly I couldn’t find any.

How Magazine is dedicated to the graphic design industry, but most of the published articles focus on interviewing specific designers. My writing focuses only on my own design experience which doesn’t seem to be what they are looking for. On the How Magazine website they write “writers must exhibit a thorough knowledge of their subject matter, as well as the ability to incorporate the character of the creative(s) about whom the article is written.” While I have a thorough knowledge of the subject matter, I only incorporate my own character the articles I have written.

After discovering that How Magazine wouldn’t be a good fit, I tried Graphic Design USA. Graphic Design USA is a similar publication to How Magazine with a few extras. They do seem to have a few articles posted that are editorial in style rather than only interviews, but again I was forced to conclude that the pieces I have written as The Design Shrink might become redundant and might not be a writing success.

After looking through more publications focused on graphic design, I came to the same conclusion. I am forced to conclude that while I enjoy writing as The Design Shrink, the focus I have created for the persona is not one that would garner many readers. 

Thinking as a designer and always coming up with new ideas, the only viable option I have thought of for The Design Shrink stories is to convert them into a comic strip. Unfortunately, converting the stories to a comic strip would mean paring down the writing that I took so much care to create. I might in the future create an interactive comic strip to portray the stories I have told as The Design Shrink, but for now sadly, The Design Shrink must be retired.