Quite FRAAI

An initative originated somewhere in 2007, FRAAI magazine is an online magazine providing the world with creative inspiration. All you need to pay are your monthly electricity and internet bills, since FRAAI is 100% free.

Published four times a year, each quarterly issue has its own theme. All the contents you find inside FRAAI is focussed around this theme. Every issue starts off with a few dozen pages of inspiration. New spreads are added each week until the next quarter brings a new issue.

FRAAI magazine is published on environmentally friendly, 917 x 600 pixels of html-coded paper, with small traces of non-hazardous CSS, PHP and Javascript.

FRAAI magazine is currently offline due to funding being spent on other initiatives.

Fraai’s Favourites

With the publication of the first issue we started off with numerous “Fraai’s Favourites;” a selection of most-liked artist in various fields. Next to that we sported the “Creative Columns;” one-page humorous stories on everything vaguely coherent to design.

Also included were more elaborate articles on new activities in the design community, keeping readers up-to-date with the latest news.

Illustration and Interactivity

With time came more stylized pages, utilizing special layout tweeks offering strict guidelines, yet a lot of creative freedom.

With the coming of our second issue we incorporated more interactive features, such as this fully functional pong game. Controlled by the movement of your mouse, the objective was to beat the computer, which would ultimately result in a statement related to the adjacent article.

In adding more functionality and creativity, we included embedded videos into designed pages, showcasing an artist’s work. The resulting lay out made the poster image of the video a part of the layout.

The continuation of the magazine saw the addition of a lot of under-the-hood improvements, making publication more low-maintenance and much faster.

The Last Issue

In the third and last issue we increased the bite-sized effect of pages by adding shorter columns, serving food for thought.

To this day we receive collaborative requests of a myriad of artists and designers who wish to be featured in our magazine.

However, due to other primary activities of the FRAAI Team, the magazine is currently on hiatus, awaiting its revision in the future and taken offline for the time being.

The FRAAI Team

FRAAI is a collaboration by: Guus Baggermans, Brian Garret Schuur, David Menting and Jan van der Asdonk.

Stats

completed in: hopefully never, though currently on hiatus
time spent on project: many nighttime hours since Novemeber 2007
stakeholder: the FRAAI Team
links: account at Coroflot, pool at Flickr, published at the Colophon Symposium 2009, blogged at Customer Media, Rubiqube, and Scrnmgs