TL;DR, we’re over here now:
Dear loyal Pentagraph subscriber. It is with a heavy heart that I write this letter. For, come sundown, we are going to disable the Pentagraph newsletter.
Our halo mission before we even came up with the name Pentagraph was to build a future-proof media company that might harness emerging tools to elevate deep storytelling on the Internet. It was a wide-ranging target that would subsequently take us down many a rabbit hole.
A year and a half ago, the need for a name became pressing. We were accepted to an accelerator called Seed Club and planned to launch our first project. So we created a Google sheet and started jamming on options. I just found that spreadsheet. 435 ideas! We narrowed it down to 5. I wrote them on a piece of paper and carried them around with me on a trip to New York.
Pentagraph was the finalist. There was a whole rule of fives, mystical, timeless quality to the name. But also, by design, it was conveniently opaque. Aka we had a lot of figuring out to do.
On the other side of the clarity spectrum was Lore Machine. To avoid getting our software mixed up with our services, we started using Lore Machine for our agency work. It stuck. Everyone just remembered it. As time rolled on, and capital was accrued, and clients lined up, and press opportunities presented themselves, we needed to consolidate. It was just getting too confusing. So we killed our darling.
Lore Machine still aims at being a media company from the year 3049. But the vision’s gained a lot more focus. And I quote:
Lore Machine is an all-in-one AI system that makes visual storytelling turn-key. We are on a mission to help screenwriters, podcasters and authors transform their textual stories into multimedia experiences. To accomplish our mission, we are building four interoperable tools and one special projects studio.
If that sounds like your type of thing, we’re over here now.
If you need a little more convincing, here’s an ad from the 1970s or thereabouts.
Goodbye, and hopefully hello!