Two magazines make it up as they go along

Someone you know is a hacker. Maybe even you are.

Perhaps you're thinking, ''Me? Break into the Pentagon's website and put Dilbert's head on Rumsfeld's portrait? I would never!" but there's more to hacking than that -- it's anything that uses items in ways they weren't necessarily intended.

Most of us do it without even thinking: giving an old T-shirt new life as an eye-catching pillowcase, turning a pair of blown-out '70s loudspeakers into end tables, or using a microwave to thaw a seriously overchilled bottle of white wine. While these are basic examples, the differences between them and, say, growing a sod-covered couch in your backyard or making a pint-sized robot out of an old computer mouse are only matters of degree and desire -- and having the right guide.

''It starts with a simple instinct of 'I wish my thing would do that,' " says Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make magazine, which caters to readers unsatisfied with what comes off the shelf. ''Technology is a part of our lives, and getting control of it is something that a lot of people out there want to do."

For Shoshana Berger, editor in chief of ReadyMade, her magazine's mission is similarly empowering but has a deeper message too. ''We live in a disposable culture, and we've become accustomed to the idea that it's OK to just use things and throw them away," Berger says, speaking by telephone from ReadyMade's Berkeley, Calif., office. ''ReadyMade is about retooling the imagination to see every object as a thing of value that should be given new utility when it's lost its original utility."

That ''new utility" can be pretty much anything, from transforming old LP covers into photo frames to harvesting the benefits of a Los Angeles city law that declares all fruit hanging over sidewalks to be public property. There are also things you can buy, such as an inexpensive gramophone that records on old CDs using a sewing needle, and there are cool people like Stuart Grannen, who runs a Chicago salvage shop. It's all fair game to ReadyMade.

Neither magazine has a monopoly on project-oriented journalism, of course, a publishing category that has enjoyed a long and rich history in America. From the prewar issues of Popular Science telling readers how to resurface their driveways using surplus molasses to Martha Stewart's post-incarceration tips on making unforgettable holiday candles, we are what we make.

Or were. Circulation at the bellwether Popular Mechanics topped out in 1976 at just over 1.7 million, and since then its readership has dropped by 30 percent. While the magazine is far from moribund -- that still leaves 1.2 million faithful, after all -- had its numbers kept up with population growth, it'd be clocking a million more issues a year. That says a lot about the state of do-it-yourself culture in the United States.

So where are all the make-do, can-do people? It's anyone's guess, and everyone's got one. Some say they're gone -- blame television, the loss of shop classes in high school, the decreased need for skilled craftsmen in US industry, or even new-style Legos (once they were freeform, now you get a kit). Certainly many were drawn away by specialty publications such as Fine Woodworking that have flourished since the '70s, the computer magazines that took off in the '80s, or the nest-is-best titles that began to clot newstands in the '90s.

To judge from the experience of Make and ReadyMade, though, the wide-ranging think-for-yourselfers are still out there.

''My friends are the kind of people who drag stuff in off the street and, you know, turn broken blenders into lamps," says Berger, 36, who started her magazine in 2001 with its publisher and CEO, Grace Hawthorne, also 36. ''I saw an audience for this kind of information and there was nothing on the newsstand that spoke to us."

After four years, ReadyMade prints 130,000 copies, a mere speck in the publishing firmament but it's pretty good for an independent bimonthly that puts much of its faith on word of mouth and the Internet (readymademag.com) to find new readers. It's also become a success by steering a course between the advertiser-friendly latest-brightest-newest mode and the fusty craft titles.

''Learning how to hand-stamp your holiday paper was not the project we were interested in," Berger says with a laugh.

So ReadyMade gives readers tips on hot-rodding generic Ikea furniture, re-covering banged-up kitchen countertops, and transforming consumer dross into hipster gold. How else can you describe a table lamp made from the cylindrical plastic case that packs of 100 CDs come in? For $12 in parts and one recycled throwaway, you get a mood lamp that lets you express yourself.

''The beauty of ReadyMade is that the emphasis is really more on creativity and design rather than strictly on craftsmanship," says Ashley Smith, 26, who's been reading it ever since she came across a copy two years ago. Her Central Square apartment features a microscopic office inspired by the magazine's ''small space solutions" issue, and if the built-in desk isn't up to heirloom standards, so be it. ''The point is I made it, and it works just fine for me."

A similar no-nonsense drive animates the people behind Make, who work in an industry well served by publications that each effectively deny the existence of anything outside their own specialty.

''Most technology magazines are platform oriented -- here's a PC or a Mac -- or they're product oriented -- this is what you can do with a certain program," says Dougherty, 50. ''There wasn't anything that looked across all the things that we own and use and trying to put them together."

That thought led to Dougherty's getting the green light in 2004 from his employer, O'Reilly Media of Sebastopol, Calif., to create what would become Make. The company, founded in Cambridge in 1984, started as a technical-writing company but soon moved into publishing. That one of their popular titles is ''PC Annoyances" goes a long way toward illustrating their practical yet irreverent approach. Nothing is sacred and no hand too powerful to be given a nice swift chomp should it deserve it. In short, a good place to start a magazine like Make.

Some of the magazine's charms include its chunky build (based on Popular Science's 1959 trim size) and broad view of what constitutes technology. It can be an ancient water filter in Nicaragua carved from porous volcanic rock, a shoulder bag made from the remains of a discarded wetsuit, or -- what the heck -- an entire PC gaming system jammed inside the case of a defunct Atari.

As with ReadyMade, function trumps perfection every time, and humor is a big part of the equation. ''Perform an alien mouse autopsy" is step two for building the robot computer mouse, for example.

''We generally like to have a couple of projects that can be made in a matter of minutes," says Mark Frauenfelder, 44, Make's editor in chief. ''Then we move up to ones that could take a month or more. We even occasionally write about projects that probably no one would ever be able to make normally, something 'alpha makers' put together. It's a way to appreciate what's possible by an individual."

Instructions vary between industrially precise and gearhead relaxed -- things like ''Dremel out the marked area." This little five-word sentence assumes not only that you have or can borrow a Dremel (for the totally uninitiated, it's a general-purpose motorized hand tool), but that you know what attachment to use to cut through heavy plastic and how not to zip off a fingertip while using it. Make gives you the knowledge to explore new things but also the freedom to make mistakes and to learn.

It seems to be working, as Make's paid circulation is 65,000 after just three issues (number four hits the stands soon). And they've done it by staying away from traditional publishing come-ons such as direct mail, and instead connecting to potential readers through their website (makezine.com) and at technical conferences.

What neither publication seems worried about is advertising, the first thing startups usually work on developing. ''We're pretty strategic about who we take," says Berger, the reverse of what one might expect. She's particularly happy with ReadyMade's smaller ads, most of them for outfits that look like they're run out of someone's studio apartment. Meanwhile, at $15 for each quarterly issue, Make is banking on a Japanese concept of book/magazine, according to Frauenfelder: high cover price, lots of content. And what ads they get are just going to have to get used to Make's DIY mission.

''What we're saying is, when you buy this technology, you own it, and it's your right and almost your duty to go in there and modify it," says Frauenfelder. When it's pointed out that the back cover of their latest issue sports a big ad for a home-entertainment system that looks eminently hackable, he doesn't blink. ''In a way, I think that these device manufacturers are secretly rooting for us. The engineers who design this stuff, a lot of those people are the ones who write projects for us."

Leighton Klein can be reached at lklein@globe.com.