Make:

About Make:

Make: is the magazine that named the maker movement. Founded in 2005 by Dale Dougherty at O'Reilly Media, it was conceived as a quarterly publication celebrating do-it-yourself culture — electronics, robotics, woodworking, metalworking, 3D printing, crafts, and every hands-on pursuit in between. Dougherty originally envisioned it as "Martha Stewart for geeks," a magazine of project "recipes" with ingredients lists for homemade creations. From that modest quarterly grew one of the most influential cultural movements of the 21st century: Maker Faire, makerspaces, and a global community of people who build things. Published quarterly by Make: Community, LLC and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the magazine continues to document the maker world it helped create.

History and Founding

In 2004, Dale Dougherty — then at O'Reilly Media — leaned over during a cab ride and suggested to Tim O'Reilly that they start a quarterly publication that would be like "Martha Stewart for geeks," complete with "recipes" for homemade projects and techie ingredients lists. O'Reilly immediately agreed. Dougherty had considered calling the magazine "Hack," but his children didn't get the name; instead he chose "Make:," a word anyone could understand. The first issue was published in January 2005 as a quarterly inside O'Reilly Media.

The timing was fortuitous. The mid-2000s saw an explosion of accessible technology — Arduino microcontrollers, inexpensive 3D printers, open-source software, and online communities — that lowered the barriers to building things. Make: gave this scattered energy a name, a meeting place, and a shared identity. The magazine's project-based format, with step-by-step instructions and parts lists, made ambitious builds approachable for beginners while still engaging experienced makers.

Editorial Focus and Audience

Make: covers maker projects across an extraordinarily wide range: electronics, robotics, 3D printing, woodworking, metalworking, crafts, drones, wearables, home automation, and more. Each issue features buildable projects with detailed instructions, alongside profiles of makers, explorations of tools and techniques, and coverage of the maker community. The editorial voice is encouraging and practical — the magazine assumes its readers own a soldering iron and want to use it.

The audience spans hobbyists, educators, students, engineers, artists, and entrepreneurs — anyone drawn to learning by doing. The magazine has been particularly influential in education, championing hands-on STEM learning and inspiring makerspaces in schools and libraries across the country.

Maker Faire

Dougherty quickly realized that a magazine was a one-way medium, and that makers wanted to show their work in person. In 2006, he rented the San Mateo Event Center and held the first Maker Faire — billed as the world's largest show-and-tell — drawing around 20,000 to 22,000 attendees. There were fire-breathing sculptures, homemade electric vehicles, Tesla coils, DIY workshops, and competitions. The Faire was an immediate success, and within a decade the format had been licensed to nearly 200 cities across more than 40 countries, drawing roughly 1.5 million attendees a year at its peak.

The flagship events — the Bay Area Maker Faire and the World Maker Faire in New York — packed in well over 150,000 attendees at their peak. In 2014, the movement reached the White House, when President Obama hosted a Maker Faire on the South Lawn. Maker Faire became the real product of the maker movement: the magazine sold subscriptions, but the Faire built the community.

Maker Media and the 2019 Shutdown

In 2013, Make: spun out of O'Reilly to become Maker Media, an independent company, and raised venture funding — a reported $10 million — to scale its events and education programs. The company expanded aggressively, growing Maker Faire into a global licensed-events business and launching education initiatives. But the economics of events and print proved punishing: in June 2019, Maker Media halted operations and laid off its staff.

The shutdown was a shock to the maker community, but it was not the end. Dougherty restructured the assets as Make: Community, LLC, and the magazine resumed publication. Maker Faire Bay Area returned, and the magazine continued its quarterly cadence. The episode became a cautionary tale about venture-scale growth applied to community-scale culture — but also a testament to the resilience of the movement the magazine had built.

The Maker Movement

Make: didn't just cover the maker movement; it named it and gave it institutional form. The movement's ethos — that making things is a fundamental human activity, that tools should be accessible, that knowledge should be shared — drew on older traditions of DIY, craft, and hacker culture, but the magazine synthesized them into a coherent identity. The Maker Education Initiative, a nonprofit spin-off, brought maker activities to schools and communities through workshops and programs.

The movement's influence extended into manufacturing (the "maker" framing of 3D printing and desktop fabrication), education (makerspaces in thousands of schools and libraries), and entrepreneurship (a generation of hardware startups). Critics argued the magazine's vision was too narrow — too focused on certain demographics and on commercializable making — but few dispute its role in making "making" a mainstream cultural category.

Print Editions and Frequency

Make: is published quarterly, a cadence it has maintained since its 2005 debut. The print magazine remains the flagship product: each issue is built around buildable projects, with the photography, diagrams, and instructions that make complex builds reproducible. The quarterly rhythm suits the content — projects take time to build, and the magazine's issues are designed to be kept and referenced rather than discarded.

Through the Maker Media years and the transition to Make: Community, the print magazine continued without interruption, a remarkable achievement given the company's 2019 shutdown. The magazine's survival reflects the loyalty of its subscriber base and the distinctiveness of its content: no other publication does what Make: does.

Digital Presence

Makezine.com is the digital home of the brand, publishing projects, news, and community content between print issues. The site hosts an extensive archive of build instructions, extending the magazine's project library far beyond what print can hold. The brand also maintains a strong presence at maker events and in educational channels, and its books and special issues collect projects by theme.

The digital operation complements rather than replaces the print magazine: the web is for discovery and community, while the quarterly issues remain the definitive, curated project collections. Maker Faire's online presence and the magazine's site together form the movement's central digital infrastructure.

Education and Community Programs

From its early years, Make: championed learning by doing in education. The magazine was a founding sponsor of the Maker Education Initiative in 2012, which supported bringing maker activities to schools and communities through workshops, the Maker Corps, and maker-focused service programs. Makerspaces — community workshops with shared tools — proliferated in schools, libraries, and neighborhoods, many of them directly inspired by the magazine and Maker Faire.

The company also ran programs bringing thousands of students to Maker Faire events each year, and its Young Makers programs gave young builders a platform to exhibit their work. The educational legacy of the maker movement — hands-on STEM learning as a complement to classroom instruction — is one of Make:'s most enduring contributions.

Legacy and Influence

Twenty years after its first issue, Make: remains the defining publication of a movement it created. The magazine proved that a print quarterly could catalyze a global culture — and that the culture could outlive the company that commercialized it. The maker movement's vocabulary, values, and institutions all trace back to Dougherty's 2005 bet that adults wanted to rediscover hobbies and passion projects.

In an age of digital abstraction, Make: insists on the physical: on soldering irons and sawdust, on the satisfaction of building something with your hands. That insistence — and the community it built — is the magazine's lasting achievement.

How to Read and Subscribe

Make: is available by quarterly subscription in print, with digital access through makezine.com. The website offers free project content alongside subscriber material, and back issues remain available for builders seeking specific projects. Maker Faire events, including the flagship Bay Area Faire, continue to bring the magazine's community together in person.

For anyone who builds, fixes, tinkers, or wants to learn, Make: remains the essential publication — the magazine that turned a solitary hobby into a shared movement.