A Community Art Gallery, Delivered to Your Mailbox

On three issues, fifty-five artists, and the zine that reminded me why I do any of this.

I love doing things with people. I don’t love being the center of attention, though. I never have. But I’m good at building the room. It’s what I did at Amazon, AIGA, with Bordo Bello, with every conference and workshop I’ve run. It’s what I still do at work: build spaces where people can see their own creativity and expertise clearly, maybe for the first time.

Last year, a collage class cracked that open again. I’m not a painter or a drawer; I’m a designer. I find pieces and bring them together: repetition, balance, contrast, white space, hierarchy. The class wasn’t the point, though. Somewhere in the cutting and gluing, I noticed what I actually missed: making things with people, not near them.

So I wondered … what if I went back to my design roots, made a magazine, and asked people to make it with me?

I ended up living out that idea in five stages, without quite planning to. Years ago I picked up a framework from Daniel Stillman called the 5 Es: Entice, Enter, Engage, Exit, Extend. It’s a resource I use frequently to guide the work I create through experiences and community building.

Entice: Come Make Something With Me

Three issues seemed right, although I didn’t know if anyone would say yes. I just figured I know enough people like me; I can probably get 5. That’s enough. Ha. But three issues is also enough to see a pattern, not enough to become a second job. Beginning, middle, end. I paid for the printing myself, so nobody’s “yes” came with a price tag. And I didn’t want it to be overly precious, or too disposable either. But I wanted an object that asks you to sit with it. Paper ephemera is delicious. Tactile. It creates memory.

A Moment’s Notice was born from that, and from a few loves I’ve carried for years: high school literary magazines, where every kid got a page, and people kept them for decades. The weird local alt papers that were always the real heartbeat of a place. A stack of magazines I return to for different reasons: NYT Sunday’s typography, PRINT’s reverence for craft, FLOW’s vulnerable stories on paper that’s genuinely delicious. And the People’s Design Archive, where founder Louise Sandhaus said it better than I ever could: “anyone can contribute to preserving graphic design history.”

Enter: Here We Are, This Is Happening

The first theme wasn’t really a theme. It was just here we are, this is happening. People sent more than I expected, in more forms than I’d imagined: poems, collage, a short film, a grandmother’s handwriting found in a drawer. A friend helped me lay it out. I put in a piece of my own, “Sigh,” a small collage about getting my confidence back. I wasn’t going to ask for people’s vulnerability without offering mine. I’m not above the work. I’m a worker among workers.

Engage: Going Deeper

For the second issue, I tried the opposite of a theme, on the theory that an open door is easier to walk through than one with instructions on it. In hindsight, I think it did the opposite, because I experienced a harder recruitment cycle and a smaller stack of submissions. “No theme” is actually a harder brief. People need something to see themselves in.

I was also tired. New job, new year, less of me to give. My own piece, “Not Nice, Nostalgia,” was about the version of me who got called “too much” as a kid and learned to shrink. A discovery, not a plan. I wasn’t sure I’d keep going.

I kept going because I said I would. Three issues was a promise, to myself, to my friends, to everyone following along. I stopped chasing an exact schedule and just kept the communication steady. Life goes on life-ing.

For the third, I asked. Four theme options on Substack, five votes, three for Journey. Tiny sample. Enough signal.

Something changed this issue. Almost nobody sent a single image. People sent sequences: multiple journal pages, sketches saved since high school, day-into-night photo pairs, a map of every person who’d ever handed someone a song. The work got layered because the prompt asked for layers.

My own piece, “Letting Go,” was the hardest to put in. The first was a reflection; I can share that. The second, a discovery, okay, a bit tougher emotionally, but I really liked it. This one… though… was a journey through the grief I was living through as I made it. That’s the one that made me nervous; I wasn’t scared to showcase anyone else’s work. I’ll stand behind their courage every time. I waver in my own, though.

The best surprise, through all of it, was the artist statements. The paragraph next to each piece that answers why. Like a museum gallery tag. Without it, a piece is just a piece. With it, you get the reason it exists. I never edited anyone’s work. I designed around it and tried to imitate an art gallery, in print. Many people came back for more than one issue.

That’s the part I can’t take credit for and love the most: you build the container, and people fill it in ways you couldn’t have engineered.

Nothing about this was totally figured out, and I mean that as a compliment to how it turned out. I couldn’t plan a page count. I didn’t know what was coming until it arrived: every issue built from whatever showed up, like cooking with what was in the kitchen instead of a recipe. Uncomfortable at first, but this was a practice in flow and trust.

I got what I wanted out of it, reconnecting with friends, seeing their creativity and a tangible artifact. I used to design in the physical form. Now much of what I do is an experience. An event ends when the room empties. A workshop fades into a slide deck nobody reopens.

This doesn’t and won’t. It’ll sit on a shelf, a desk, a drawer, get picked back up, get handed to someone else. It will wait, patiently, to be enjoyed.

Exit: Complete, Not Finished

Three issues were always the shape, and I’m honoring it by putting the zine down. Not because it’s finished. Because it’s complete for now.

Extend: Different Object, Same Instinct

Next up in the community experiment is a cookbook. Not just recipes: the story behind each one, mandatory this time. Two or three dishes per person, and what they mean. Same idea, but a different expression and a peek at what they cherish with food.

So here’s the invitation, back to you.

Pick something worth building, something you can actually commit to. Ask five people, or five hundred. Find every barrier between them and a yes, and remove it. Guide them once they’re in. Remind them, gently, when they forget. Then get out of the way.

What would you make with others, if you just asked?

PS: If you are curious about the actual issues of A Moment’s Notice, here they are to enjoy, digitally, until the next print run. :)

Issue 001: Open Issue 002: No Theme Issue 003: Journey