Make a 12 Page "Zine"
cartoon by artist - Ad Reinhardt
What's a zine?
"A zine is a handmade magazine or mini-comic about anything you can imagine: favorite bands, personal stories, subcultures, or collections. They contain diary entries, rants, interviews, and stories. They can be by one person or many, found in stores, traded at comic conventions, exchanged with friends, or given away for free. Zines are not a new idea: they’ve been around for years under various names (chapbooks, flyer's, pamphlets). People with independent ideas have been getting their word out since before there were printing presses."
-from the description of the book Whatcha Mean, What's a Zine? The Art of Making Zines and Mini-Comics
"A zine (pronounced “zeen,” like “magazine”) is a self-published, small circulation, non-commercial booklet or magazine, usually produced by one person or a few individuals. Zines come in all shapes, sizes, topics, and formats. Most zines are photocopied, but they can also be printed offset, like a magazine or newspaper. Zines range from handwritten and sloppy to cut-and-paste (text pasted on top of background images) to artsy with handmade touches to produced on a computer with a professional looking layout. Zines may incorporate screen printing, linoleum cuts, and hand-stitched bindings. Most zines have print runs of a couple dozen to a few hundred copies.
In a zine, you might find typos, improper grammar, and brilliant or radical or just plain honest ideas that you don’t normally see in Time, Newsweek, or People. A zine can be about whatever subject its creator decides upon, or it may contain a variety of subjects and writing styles within the same issue. Zines can include personal essays, political discussions, fiction, craft or do-it-yourself advice, articles about music or movies, comics, poetry, reviews – anything under the sun, really. Zines are personal and idiosyncratic. The best thing about zines is this: There are no rules."
-from Undergroundpress.org
ZINE PROJECT DETAILS
You are to create a 12 page zine of your own design. The idea is to use this medium as a means of self expression. Your zine can be about anything you desire. Text and Images can be used in combination you may desire. It may even be devoid of text all together. You should consider the layout of your zine, how the narrative or action of turning its pages progresses from start to finish. Feel free to appropriate images and/or text if need be. Experiment with composition and materials. Perhaps print on colored papers, or use a heavier card stock for the cover page. Printing may be done fully in black and white, full color of a combination of the two. The creative choices are all up to you. This zine should express something about you. You will not be graded on the quality of your writing or even your artistic ability. Zine's tend to each have their own unique character, the character of its creator. Let your style come through. Have fun with it. Feel free to take chances.
[Note: The zines to be completed should be from 8.5" x 11" paper folded in half. A single, half folded sheet of paper makes 4 pages. In booklet and zine making, pages are always in denominations of 4. So, two sheets of paper folded and bound together would be 8 pages, three sheets folded and bound together makes 12 pages. We are making 12 page zines, so we are talking about three sheets of 8.5" x 11" paper, folded in half, creating a booklet that measures 8.5" x 5.5". Each sheet printed double sided These could be smaller in size as long as they maintain being a minimum of 12 pages.]
1- Come up with a concept, an idea for what your zine will be or about.
2- Collect any text and/or images, art you may need for the layout of the zine.
3- Begin the layout of the zine pages and the cover. This may be done with a physical master copy or if you are more comfortable mocking it up digitally (Photoshop and InDesign are both great options and available on library computers). If manually mocking up your layouts with a master copy, you will most likely be using glue sticks and tape to secure your images and text to the paper.
4- Scan your master copy if you are using one and print out your designs. Remember to print double sided and keep in mind the collating of the pages. The video directly below will explain the double sided page layout for a 12 page zine. Pay Attention or your pages will be out of order. If you did digital layouts in InDesign you should be able to print double sided prints and the program will have figured out the page order automatically. There is another video link below explaining the use of InDesign for booklet layout. You may need to adjust for number of pages.
5- Print your zine. You are welcome to print this on a large photo copier or even your home inkjet printer. There are numerous online tutorial videos available explaining how to print double sided on your home printer. If that is your choice, you may want to look up the model of your printer and search for double sided printing options or what they also call duplex printing. You also have the option to take your zine or your files to the campus copy center or even to a FedEx Office for printing. Feel free to have someone assist you if you are uncertain how to print in booklet form.
6- You MUST print at least 3 COPIES of your whole zine. Feel free to print as many more as you may like. Perhaps you print enough for everyone in the class. Or you may want to pass some out to your friends. Its up to you, but you need at least 3 copies for this project.
7- Once you have all your pages printed and you put them in the proper order, you may now fold the booklets and bind them. If having your booklets printed professionally, they may very well be able to staple bind them automatically. If not, you have two options. You may use a booklet stapler or a long arm stapler for stapling directly on the fold of the zine. I will provide a booklet stapler at the beginning of our second class, the day the zines are due. If you wanted to try another binding option, you may attempt a saddle stitch. Using a needle and thread. A link below will show you how.
DUE DATE:
Do to the very short nature of this class, the project is due a week from our first meeting. That means it is due at the beginning of our second class session.
Video Tutorials
how to make a zine from nicki sabalu on Vimeo.
Cut & Paste from Melissa Campbell on Vimeo.
Article on the History of Artist Books of the 60's and 70's:
Artists Books As Alternative Space by Martha Wilson, 1978
Great Books on Zines:
Stolen Sharpie Revolution 2
Whatcha Mean, What's a Zine - The Art of Making Zines and Mini-Comics
Online Community for Zine Makers and Zine Readers:
We Make Zines
Local Zine Library:
Inside Emergency Arts Center on Fremont
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