Stranded takes off

A few months ago, when a volcano erupted and I was stuck in Dublin, I said this:

This is an open call to designers, writers, photographers, illustrators, art directors and anyone else who is stranded by the ash cloud, and would like something to do.

If there’s one thing my ol’ ma taught me, it’s that when life gives you volcanoes, make magazines. And so we shall.

I’m nothing if not a man of my word, thus Stranded magazine is now on sale. The concept, commissioning and editing are all me; the design is all Matt McArthur, who was stranded in New York. We’ve yet to meet or even speak on the phone, but we worked together marvellously thanks to the wonders of modern gin communication.

As for the words and images.. they’re courtesy of more than fifty fantastically talented people I’ve never met, all of whom were similarly stuck and mercifully, I presume, as bored as I was in trying not to spend any money while stuck somewhere unexpected. They fulfilled commissions, they answered surveys, they ordered cocktails and they took photographs of their temporary beds. In a few cases, they caught their flights before they could complete their briefs – and I’ve included some of those too.

What we’ve made of it all is an 88-page souvenir of a moment in time when a non-life-threatening crisis hit the world, one for which nobody was to blame, and nobody knew how long it would last. People scrambled to find alternative routes home, any way, any how, or tried to make the best of wherever fate had placed them. It was a moment of unplanned disruption, never to be repeated in quite the same way.

The perfect subject for a magazine, in fact.

The print edition is on sale now, and ships worldwide. It costs $18.95+shipping – which is the base price charged by MagCloud (including a discount for being a charity mag and including their ad on the back page – much appreciated guys) plus $5 on top, all of which goes directly to the PayPal account of the International Rescue Committee, to help those more permanently stranded around the world. A digital edition is in the works, though it’s primarily been designed for paper and ink.

We’re inordinately proud of the whole thing, so why not pick up a copy or two? (Twenty or more gets a 25% discount, you know)

And please help us spread the word. We want to raise as much money as we can for the IRC – and hey, it’s a great magazine too. Everyone should own a copy, in case of eruptions.

Questions? Ask me here.