The Name Of A Thing

This is my all time favorite magazine. It was well made, well written, had some ads but not intrusive, useful information, wonderfully inspiring (but not annoying) pictures, and it covered both growing and cooking food. I have every copy they ever printed of it. Sadly, they stopped publishing it. Perhaps it was just a year before it's time?

Cook's Illustrated uses almost identical format and paper and also has very high quality content. I always wish for more photographs though. Everything is tested out very well (their trademark, practically) and it treats the reader like an intelligent and curious being who loves cooking not just because home cooking is better for you but because it's fun, it's science, and it's gorgeous.

What neither of those magazines have is a more thorough coverage of the topics that generally interest people who cook and garden. They are often also interested in canning, preserving, sewing, household management, politics, the environment, family, community, and levity. "Household" magazine also lacked levity. Sadly, most publications don't take irreverence as seriously as they take Paris Hilton. However, this ad came from a magazine I love from the early thirties (and it was published all the way through the forties as well) and it had recipes, household hints which featured the constant theme of how to make things last, how to make food and money go further, and how to be more efficient.

It also included a very embarrassing racist cartoon series that it shocks me to see. Not something I tolerate at all in my life.

If you take these three magazines and give it an edgy urban sensibility and some irreverence, you will get the essence of what I want to publish.

Coming up with a name is quite a process. What's in a name? I'm not going to trot out Shakespeare. I promise. Names are important. Anyone in marketing can tell you that. It's a miracle that I, a marketing flop, also know it. I always have. Names are the essence of a thing. It's not always easy to catch that in a phrase, in a breath, in a word.

My publication will be about Urban Homesteading. I can't seem to come up with a better word for what it will encompass. Here's what urban homesteading means to me in plain words:

growing
building
fixing
cooking
preserving
making
learning
thinking
changing
brewing

I have come up with a list of possible names:

Urban Homesteading
Journal of Urban Homesteading
Urban Homesteader's Companion
Modern Homestead

Of course, I could use "Dustpan Alley" as the title. But, on a newsstand that will mean nothing to almost all people.

I've looked up variations of "Urban Homesteading" in the United States copyright library and it seems fine but I don't know how deep a search I need to do. Any ideas on how to make sure a name isn't taken?

Everyone knows about Path To Freedom, right?

And Homegrown Evolution, the writers that recently released a book called "The Urban Homestead"

Interesting that their book title didn't show up in the copyright library search.

Name ideas? I'm going to brainstorm some more and will hopefully return with more ideas. This is one of the hardest parts of the project.

I like this: "Urban Homesteading...civil disobedience you can eat"