If you’re not a subscriber to Do Books’ newsletter, do yourself a favour and sign up now. It’s always inspiring and one of the few newsletters I read in its entirety.
Today’s newsletter arrived titled: ‘Fax Club’.
As someone who has a special place in their heart for old technologies, especially old analogue technologies, my interest was piqued. I had a past fax project and I wondered…
What might this Fax Club be?
Opening with the words:
Sometimes, the ideas we dismiss as foolish are the very ones that make us unforgettable.
The newsletter then introduced Fax Club – a small, but high engagement club open to just 100 people. They say, “Great minds think alike.” I loved the overlap, between Fax Club and Facsimile, a newsletter I published a decade ago.
An infrequent ‘periodical’ it was published to a small, but highly dedicated readership, numbering single figures. Here’s how I pitched it at the time:
Facsimile is a ‘cumbersome periodical’, requiring effort to acquire. Access to a fax machine is essential for reading. By putting barriers in the way of the reader – and purposefully rendering it difficult to acquire - Facsimile encourages engagement by its audience.
Facsimile features idiosyncratic content, loosely focused around the field of communication design, and is published quarterly to a small, but dedicated readership.
The model I adopted for Facsimile intentionally contrasted with the prevailing trend at the time, where large readership numbers were telegraphed as social proof that a publication was ‘worth reading’, for example:
Join 35,864+ subscribers and enter your email below.
I wanted to do something different (I even went so far as to buy fax machines for a small group of readers). My approach – intentionally absurd – emphasised the tight-knit audience and celebrated close connections with individual audience members:
Join four subscribers – including Mr Bingo – and enter your fax number below.
Facsimile ran for a total of eight issues, for two full years, and its readership never exceeded 10. The whole point, which I’m returning to a decade later, was:
- quality over quantity; and
- remarkability.
Put another way, as Marty Neumeier writes: “When everyone zigs, zag.”
I’ve always admired David Hieatt’s thinking. I’m a proud owner of Hiut Denim beautifully tailored jeans (which are about to go into Hiut for some much-needed repairs). I also have many of Do’s books (my first, Do Purpose, is currently next in line for a reread).
So, Facsimile and Fax Club were, until today: “Friends that hadn’t met yet.” So: Facsimile, meet Fax Club and Fax Club, meet Facsimile.
