The State of Grain & Gram

We’ve been a little quiet lately here at Grain & Gram, but that isn’t from a lack of purpose.

It’s hard work crafting each article, and a large amount of care is put into the photography, design, and writing of each piece. Multiple shoots, hours of footage, pouring over edits, getting a grasp and understanding of each person and what makes them unique and valuable in covering, finding our voice among that story, all while figuring out how to let each gentleman shine: it’s a rigorous process. It is equal parts organic and brute force of will.

When starting Grain & Gram, we were all well aware how much less frequent our offerings would be in relation to most other online blogs and publications, and we were (and still are) okay with that. We knew this would mean a small collection, but we also knew it would help us to maintain a crafted and quality collection, without filler or fluff.

At the end of the day, all three of us at Grain & Gram pour most of our free time into being a quality husband, dedicated friends, a new father, attentive boyfriends, jugglers of clients, dedicated workers, makers in our own right, settling in to cross-country relocations, and all that real life stuff that makes day-to-day life fantastic and full.

While we love telling stories and introducing new pieces, Grain & Gram is not something that is going to push out new features on anything that could be considered a consistent schedule, and we don’t have plans for it becoming that in the near future. When we come across guys who’s stories we want to tell, we will get them up as quickly as possible. There are hundreds of other high-quality blogs and publications that will have the time, ability, and resources to push content out for you to read every day or every week. We aren’t trying to be that, nor are we trying to say we’re better or worse than those blogs: we’re just saying we’re not them. We have a high standard for ourselves and in following the Golden Triangle of Design, we’ve chosen quality (a high level of storytelling, photography, and video) and price (we don’t make money on this), so the speed of our offerings is going to be the sacrificed variable.

And to explicitly answer the RSS question: we’re not going to offer RSS versions of any of our content: EVER. It’s just not how we’ve chosen to display our offerings. It’s okay for others, but extremely wrong for our visual language.

So that’s the state of the Grain & Gram union. We hope that this better helps you understand who we are, why we do the things we do, and when we do them. We’ll continue to let you know through the blog, Twitter, and Facebook when new features are pushed out, so feel free to passively follow us in any of those three locations. We won’t miss any of those channels.

Thanks for reading, and know that we—and the gentlemen we write about—appreciate you and the time you invest in stopping by.

Jason Gregory: The Gallery

When we visit with the amazing guys we post about, be that for a Feature or a Conversation, we are always left with far too many photos to use, and while we’d love to post everything we take, that just creates too hectic of a read. We want to create a focused and enjoyable experience.

We’ve debated on how to handle this additional content, and we’ve arrived on what we think is a good solution; one that allows for the photos to be viewed in their intended format and allows readers to see more of our features in a related—but separate—experience.

From here out, we’ll be delivering a supplemental gallery for each of our features. For upcoming features, each gallery will release a week after it’s debut. Additionally, we’re slowly comb through the past features to release new galleries every other week.

We’re pleased to announce the first such gallery: Jason Gregory: The Gallery.

Jason Gregory, Designer

Grain & Gram is proud to launch our newest Feature interview. It has been a calculated and deliberate effort, and we are honored to bring you Jason Gregory, the designer of Makr Carry Goods.

Slow Rollers

Hi from Grain & Gram.
It has been a while, for sure.
But we still love you.

We just wanted to send out a quick update to let everyone know that there are new features and conversations on the way.

We’ve given ourselves a high standard and it’s been a challenge — albeit, a worthwhile one — in gathering the kind of people we would want to read about, and then getting the scheduling and timing in place that allows us to do what we want to do, and do it properly.

Along with bringing you some glorious new reading material, we have a few other ideas that are in the works. We’re not close enough to really talk about anything, we just wanted to tease you and hopefully justify the reason for being so slow on the release schedule.

We’re grateful for your patience, and we’re grateful for your readership. As always, we can be contacted most easily by email.

Five Questions: Ben Runkle

It feels fantastic to present our third installment of Five Questions with a Craftsman with self-made butcher Ben Runkle.

An Understanding

We received an email a few weeks back, and with the launch of The Exchange and the conversation with Roy Slaper, we failed to post this little gem. To say “Mr. Orsini gets it” is an understatement:

“Hello guys, hope all is well. Your website has inspired me a lot, even reflecting changes in the way I live. For example, I am a graphic designer, but always admired my dad as a woodworker. Seeing the dedication of simple men out there through your website, and reading their amazing stories of passion and love for what they do, has inspired me to take my admiration for my father to the next level. I have enrolled in basic woodworking classes and have begun drafting some ideas utilizing my design background and sense of aesthetics.”

The man is now living it. We should all be so bold.

Introducing: Roy Slaper + The Exchange

After some internal refinement to our approach we’ve decided to re-adjust some things on the website from an organizational standpoint.

For a long time, we’ve wanted to expand the level and type of content that’s posted here. We love interviews and talking with the gentlemen that are featured in those interviews, but we’ve longed for a place to showcase and discuss thoughts and ideas, rather than specific people. So, with some restructuring and movement, we are launching The Exchange.

The Exchange, from here forward, will house all of our non-feature entries. The aim is to give ourselves the room and freedom to start delivering content outside of the straight interview/profile form factor.

So, with that said, we’re moving the Five Questions pieces into The Exchange and giving you a long form conversation with the wonderful Roy Slaper to kick off the launch.

Enjoy!

Interview on Grain & Gram

Russia’s FURFUR recently asked us a few question about Grain & Gram, old girlfriends, getting drunk and first cars. It’s always great to be on the other side of the fence, answering questions. Albeit fully in Russian — we don’t speak a lick of it — their website is fantastic on the eyes.

Thanks to the fine crew over there.