The Garmentor

Back in August, I blogged about a new project I was working on called The Garmentor. It took a little longer to launch than I had anticipated, but it is finally live for all to read and enjoy.

To quote the site:

The Garmentor is a weekly fashion magazine for guys that features buying guides, trend tracking, and style tips geared specifically towards today’s busy, tech-savvy men who need to get advice and make a purchase, all in one stop.

I’m a fashion buff, always interested in the latest trends and the coolest new designers, and I figured that it was about time someone created a sleek, online fashion manual for men. I love what they do over at Uncrate, but because they cover such a wide range of topics, men’s fashion never receives the attention I think it deserves.

My goal for The Garmentor is simple: to find and share the greatest men’s fashion products in a way that is accessible and fun to consume. I wanted the clothes to be the star of the magazine, so I ultimately went with a very clean design that features a white background, black text, and lots of Helvetica. I’m a perfectionist and, therefore, never quite satisfied with my work, but I think that the design will serve its purpose as The Garmentor grows into the mature publication that I hope it will become.

One of the greatest lessons I learned while creating The Garmentor is the importance of having a specific objective and never losing sight of it along the way. It is very easy to forget your original intentions when you spend weeks working on a project like The Garmentor. Oftentimes, I had to take a break and remind myself exactly what I was trying to achieve. It’s probably a good idea to write down your objective and tape it to the wall so you never lose focus and try to do too much or accomplish more than you realistically can.

Perhaps in the future I will share some of the scrapped designs for The Garmentor, but for now I fear that some will look better than the finished product. I had to throw out a great deal of ideas because they simply didn’t work for a commercial website that was going to need specific ad placements. This brings me to another lesson I learned: know your design restrictions before you start working. This is an obvious one, but it’s easy to get excited and start working on a design before you establish its requirements. I’ve also had to accept that advertisements will uglify a design, no matter how hard I try to counter it. And so it is.

I’d really appreciate it if you guys could pass The Garmentor along to your friends, family, and anyone else that you think might like it. A great deal of time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears (yes, really, tears) went into launching The Garmentor and it’d be really gratifying to reach the large audience that I think is out there for a publication like this one. Thanks, and enjoy. :)

New Digs & A New Project

Two weeks ago tomorrow, I flew to San Francisco with my mother, neither of us having ever stepped foot in the City by the Bay. We landed in the morning, looked at three apartments by sun down, and the following day I was signing a lease.

The Road to San Francisco

I studied film at the University of Michigan, and for a long time it was my plan to move to Los Angeles. No explanation needed. Having visited the city often, however, I decided that the sprawling urban metropolis that is L.A. wasn’t for me. The city where you need a car wasn’t going to accommodate my desire to sell my own.

I next turned my attention towards the Big Apple. I had visited dozens of times and knew that I loved it, plus I already had a few friends living there (always a bonus when moving somewhere new). Long story short, I thought I had secured an apartment, then BAM! It was a scam. I only lost $50, so I was more relieved than disappointed. However, it forced me to take a step back and reassess my direction.

Somewhere in between getting scammed and signing the lease for my new apartment on Nob Hill, I decided that San Francisco was where I belonged. Big city: check. Temperate climate: check. Public transportation: check. Can I sell my car? Check. Friendly people: check. Check, check, check.

It had everything I was looking for, including a thriving tech industry, whose ranks I have chosen to join. I truly loved my film studies, but the Web is why I wake up in the morning, and Web design is most definitely my passion. My Dad always says, “Do what you love and the money will come,” so I am doing just that.

Here are a couple shots of my new place, where I’ll be taking over the online world of men’s fashion with my new project. (More on that below.) I make the move on September 4th. Can’t wait to finish setting things up.

New Project: The Garmentor

Having redesigned my personal site with much success–Jeff Croft called it “gorgeous” and Shaun Inman, master of minimalism in design, acknowledged “the minimalism and attention to typographic detail throughout”–I decided that it was time to begin a new project.

With age comes a sense of who you are, not only as a person, but also as a designer, and with the latest redesign of this website I felt that I had begun to hone my signature aesthetic. The Garmentor is not only the latest fruit of my passion, but another chance for me to excercise and establish my personal style as a Web designer.

The Garmentor, which will be published at TheGarmentor.com, is my attempt to remedy the lackluster state of men’s fashion on the Web.

Let’s face it. When it comes to fashion, men get screwed left and right. Men’s departments are a fraction of the size of those for the ladies, and the selection often leaves much to be desired. In catalogs, the first 90 pages are reserved for women and the last 10 (including the back cover, if we’re lucky) are for men. And while you’d expect the Internet, with its innate democratic values, to be a haven for men’s fashion, this isn’t the case. To this day, I haven’t come across a blog or online publication about men’s fashion that gives me what I’m looking for: content that is visually interesting, easily digestable, fun, and useful.

Uncrate does an okay job; however, their focus is too wide to do men’s fashion any real justice. To give credit where it’s due, Men.Style.com has some great content, including their “Hotlists” in which users can rate lists of, say, denim or aviators. Still, the website is cluttered, difficult to use, and too often comes off as just a money-grubbing extension of GQ and Details.

With The Garmentor, I want to fix everything that’s wrong with both of these websites, and others like them. I want users to have a visually arresting experience. I want to tell stories. I want to collaborate with other artists. I want visitors to come back not just for the content, but for the design. So far, I am on track to accomplish all of this.

I am working feverishly, spending many nights at the computer ’til 4, 5, and 6 AM. However, there is still much to be done. (There is always more to be done.)

My grandfather always says, “If you’re going to do it, do it right,” and I’m living by that motto with this project. It will launch when it launches, and when it does I will be the first to let all of you know.