Fight.Boredom's Terrible Twos

Another year of Fight.Boredom.

Cloudjammer’s humble online webzine has continued to serve the studio both as a creative vocal outlet and marketing tool. New clients have come into the fold after visiting the zine and the traffic to the site has surprised and delighted everyone involved in making each issue a reality. As of this writing, an average of more than 1,600 unique visitors grace Fight.Boredom each month – almost 20,000 total visitors between May 2003 and May 2004 – their numbers continuing to rise!

Indeed, hot topics covered on Fight.Boredom drew volumes of traffic we had never before seen. Our design critiques of Reebok’s Terrible Terry Tate online film campaign (issue 2003.08) and Honda UK’s award winning commercial “The Cog” (issue 2003.07) have together brought more than 3,000 unique visitors to Fight.Boredom.

Fight.Boredom also welcomed guest writers into the fold for the first time in 2003. Matt Francis, CEO of InterScape, Inc, criticized our local chamber of commerce (issue 2003.06) and Will Homiller, of Troutman Sander’s, discussed the love/hate relationship the Atlanta Braves have with success (issue 2003.10).

But for the most part, we stuck to our guns and wrote about what we know. Or at least what we think we know. And the feedback has been encouraging. Our critique “Visual Communication of Grief” (issue 2003.02), regarding the manner by which editorial cartoonists respond to tragedy, specifically the Columbia disaster and 9/11, earned us some of the most considerate and rewarding feedback we’ve ever received. Critique “The Department of Homeland Panic” (issue 2003.04) proved our sometimes irreverent, and always dry, senses of humor were not isolated ones. And our opinion “What’s Missing from the Antiwar Argument” (issue 2003.04) earned us some very aggressive, though not mean-spirited, responses.

But not every topic we’ve covered was a hit. Or even tolerated, for that matter. Our 2003.08 issue, with its opinion article regarding homosexual clergy and a review of Bravo’s "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” actually earned us our first hate mail. Hate mail! I guess this means we’ve made it. Boojah!

What does 2004-2005 hold for our favorite online medium? Changes are in development to expand Fight.Boredom. We’re not going to give it all away here – the upgrades will be phased in one at a time over several months – but we can say this: You’ll have more reason than ever to keep visiting.

We’ll see you there. fb