Vitals
I live in Toronto and read a lot. I write, edit, and make websites for fun and profit.
Likes: magazines, progressive politics, non-profit media, contemporary art, bread, typography, css, Instapaper, sustainability, colourful 19th century robber-barons, microbreweries.
Dislikes: talking on the phone, standing on escalators.
Contact
Ways to find me, in descending order of usefulness:
- gfscott at gmail
- 416-889-9708 (text message)
- @gfscott
- 416-889-9708 (phone call)
- Google+
- Github
- @gfscott on Instagram
- Flickr
- Username squats or fully deprecated: Wordpress.com, Skype username: gfscott, Blekko, Tumblr, About.me, Posterous, Shortmail, Protocol.by,
LinkedIn,Hunch,Quora,Foursquare
Work
I’m currently a freelance editor, writer, and web designer (see below) with a focus on magazines and non-profits.
From August 2008 to December 2011, I edited This Magazine, Canada’s premier magazine of progressive politics, culture, and ideas. Named small Magazine of the Year by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors two years running, five-time gold winner in the small-circ category of the Canadian Newsstand Awards, and called “the best Canadian magazine you’ve never read” by the United Church Observer. I received an honourable mention from the Professional Writers' Association of Canada in their 2011 Editor of the Year Awards.
Before that, I was an associate editor at Canadian Business magazine, Assistant Editor of Precedent, and a freelance writer with contributions to Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail, U of T Magazine, and more.
Here are a few somewhat representative clippings from the last few years:
- Profile of NDP MP Megan Leslie (This 45th Anniversary Issue)
- The myth of peak masculinity (This Blog)
- How Canada's new copyright law threatens to make culture criminals of us all (This)
- After eight years of senseless death, it's time to leave Afghanistan (This)
- The virtual search for the perfect roommate (U of T Magazine)
- House work (Precedent)
- Wheels for an hour (Canadian Business)
- Games get down to business (Globe and Mail)
- When stun guns go bad (Maclean’s)
Design
Increasingly people want websites instead of magazine articles, and I can live with that. I specialize in built-to-order Wordpress sites.
- This.org — Second redesign of This Magazine’s website. Bespoke HTML5 Wordpress theme.
- Ski Canada Magazine — Redesign of Canada’s largest ski title, including bespoke Wordpress template.
- HowLongHasRobFordBeenMayor.com — A single-serving site to count the days of Toronto's current mayor.
- WebEditors.org — A single-serving site/e-handout I made with Megan McChesney for our June 2010 presentation to MagNet.
- Department of Culture — A blog for a coalition of arts workers formed in response to Canada's 2008 federal election (of which I was a founding member). A bespoke Wordpress theme, made with HTML5 Boilerplate.
- Tiny Alligator Music — Website for Toronto composer Caitlin Smith.
- Alison Garwood-Jones — Wordpress-based portfolio for Toronto freelancer.
Code
Lately I've been teaching myself PHP and Javascript, in order to have more control over my web design. I am obviously a mere script kiddie, so these are strictly experiments.
- Huge on Facebook — A jQuery plugin to display the number of Facebook Likes for a given batch of links.
Presentations
I’ve made a few presentations recently on magazine-related topics.
- I spoke on a panel of editors on Thursday, June 9, 2011, discussing what we look for from freelance writers.
- I made a presentation on “Geeky Tools for Busy Editors” to the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors on May 5, 2011. See also CSME’s original event listing, and co-presenter Steve Prentice’s notes.
- For MagNet 2010, I made a presentation on recommended reading for web editors with Megan McChesney.
Friends
Wonderful people, in no particular order:
Miscellaneous
Maybe of interest, maybe not.
- Evan Hansen, editor of Wired.com spoke at MagNet in June 2011. I liveblogged it, because why not.
- For the last few years I’ve acted as a judge for the National Magazine Awards, for categories like Science, Technology and the Environment, and Still-Life Photography.
- I bundled together all the Nieman Lab’s predictions for 2012 into one big chunk of future-of-news reading for instapaper or e-bookage or sundry other what-have-you uses.