Category: Mailart

There are as many ways to create, modify & embellish a single-sheet zine as there are artists.

How to Create a Single-Sheet Zine

Here’s a very simple way to create one:

1. Take any white sheet of paper.  Pull one out of your desktop printer, or rip one out of a notebook.  (Think of the lines as pinstripes!)

2. Fold the paper in half.  Most people fold it so it becomes a four-page zine, with each page being 8.5″ tall and 5.5″ wide, but anything’s possible. (Here’s a sample you can download and print: Free Zine #1.)

3. Write and draw (and create other art) on each page, until it’s full.  (Alternative: Create your zine, digitally, and then print it.)

4. Flatten the sheet so you can photocopy (or scan) it.

5. Print copies, two-sided (back to back), and fold them.  (Optional: Embellish by hand.)

Next, Share Your Zines!

Mail copies of your zines, sell them (at your site or Etsy, for example) or give them to others, sharing your ideas and artwork!

(If you live in a city, especially one with a student neighborhood, go hand some zines out and watch people blink in amazement.  They’re used to advertising flyers, etc., not actual gifts of art & inspiration.)

If you want to make and share zines, this is a great start, and one of the simplest ways to make your own zines.

Want to see a more complex zine? Print (free) the 24-Hour Zine Thing zine.

Single-sheet zines can be easy or complex.  In my earlier article, Single-sheet Zine Design – Basics, I showed one of the simpler ways to create a zine.

Now, let’s talk about a more complex approach… that still uses a single sheet of paper.

But first, a little history:

In 1977, I published my first zine. It was one piece of paper, photocopied, folded, and sent out with someone’s name & address written on the outside, with a stamp.

In time, I graduated to two or three sheets of paper, and I started embellishing my zines with rubber stamps and glitter. Each one was hand-decorated.

Then, I began experimenting with artistamps (faux postage that I created for my imaginary country) and other forms of mailart.

Since then, I’ve tried nearly every possible zine format, from paper to fabric to zines-on-CDs to… well, lots of stuff.

So, if you have a question about zines, I can probably answer it or point you in the direction of someone else who can.

From what I’ve seen, the majority of people who swap or sell zines take a bunch of letter-sized printed pages (8 1/2″ x 11″) and fold them in half. Each sheet of paper is four pages of the zine.

Here’s how a single-sheet zine would look:

See? This can be really easy!

You can print a free zine — a variation of the single-page zine — at Free Zine #1.  (Warning: I wrote that around 2002, and included several topics that were popular/trendy at the time.  If the mention of Feng Shui offends you, skip that link.)

Zine sizes can vary.

An average zine (major oxymoron!) is five to 15 sheets of paper, meaning 20 to 60 pages. Those are the ones you’ll see at art- and zine-related shops, where you can purchase zines.

However, most zines are at the small end of that figure.  Many of them are just a sheet or two of paper, printed (and sometimes cut) and folded/stapled to make a zine.

Once you’ve made a few classic, single-sheet zines, you may want to try something more complex.

The Classic, 16-Page Zine from a Single, Legal-Sized Sheet of Paper

If you’re a purist or on a strict budget, you may love this: It’s a 16-page zine created with one sheet of legal-sized paper, period.

I don’t count the cover as a “page” when I number my zine pages, so my own version of this is 12 pages plus an outside cover & inside covers. Here’s how it fits on the paper:

Cut on the solid lines and fold on the dotted lines.

Staple in the center. One staple is usually enough.

One stamp on the envelope is enough to mail one of these zines.  (You can tuck them in with bill payments, notes to friends, birthday and holiday greeting cards, and so on.)

You can also scan your zine, uncut, and put it online so others can print their own copy, cut & assemble it. Easy!

This zine won’t hold much info unless you write small enough for a magnifying glass, or you find clever ways to expand the available space, such as adding fold-out pages & stuff.

However, this 16-pages-from-one-sheet-of-legal-paper is generally regarded as the classic zine, if we’re talking all kinds of zines, including poetry, fanzines, perzines (personal zines), and so on.

Zines Know No Limits!

There are many other ways to make zines. Look at books about making handmade books, for the best inspiration.

The concept is the same, but zines are usually smaller & more informal, that’s all.

If you want to create a zine that’s a work of art, that’s fine.

If you want to get wild & crazy with design, have fun with it!

Remember that a zine can be one piece of paper, b&w, printed on both sides, and folded in half. That’s a four-page zine.  I have several in my collection, and I think some of the simpler ones are better than a few larger ones I’ve seen.

So, put your art & soul into your zine, and don’t worry about the size or technical stuff.  I love almost every zine I see; size and expertise often have nothing to do with how enthusiastic I am about a zine.

What to Do with Zines

If you’ve wanted to create a zine for fun, just do it!

Give them to friends.  Sell them (at your website or Etsy, for example).  Hand them out on the street or at school.

Or, you can join a zine swap or launch your own, on- or offline.  They can be tremendous.

In addition, if you swap, you’ll receive fabulous zines that you might never see if you hadn’t swapped.

You can approach local artsy stores, gaming stores, etc., to consign (or outright sell) your zines

To learn more about zines (and download some freebies) at this website, see my articles with the Zines tag.

Zine-related links (at other people’s websites – they open in a new window)

• Zines101.pdf – Some basics and suggestions, not just about art zines.
• Wikipedia: Zines – So much information, it’ll make your eyes glaze over or your pulse race… or both.
• Zine Resources – from Underground Press.  Useful & worth bookmarking or sharing.

I published my first zine in 1977. It was one piece of paper, printed on one or two sides, folded, stamped, and sent out with someone’s name & address written on the outside.

In time, I graduated to two or three sheets of paper, and I started rubber stamping & glittering my zines. Yes, each one was hand-decorated.

Since then, I’ve explored nearly every possible variation on the zine theme: Color and b&w; on 8 1/2″ x 17″ paper, and on a single 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet, folded in half; and so on.

From what I’ve seen, the majority of people who create homegrown zines use letter-sized printed pages (8 1/2″ x 11″) and fold them in half. Each sheet of paper is four pages of the zine.

An average zine (and believe me, that’s an oxymoron!) is five to 15 sheets of paper, meaning 20 to 60 pages.

In swaps, most zines are at the small end of that figure.

In fact, plenty of them are just a sheet or two of paper.  They’re printed or photocopied (and sometimes cut).  Then they’re folded, and usually stapled to make a zine.

The classic zine design is funky. If you’re a purist, you’ll love this. If you’re on a budget, you’ll also love this: It’s a 16-page zine created with one sheet of legal-sized paper, period.

I don’t count the cover as a “page” when I number my zine pages, so my own version of this is 12 pages plus an outside cover & inside covers. Here’s how it fits on the paper:

Cut on the solid lines and fold on the dotted lines.

Staple in the center. One staple is usually enough.

One stamp on the envelope is enough to mail one of these zines. You can tuck them in with your bill payments, with your notes to friends, with your swaps, with your orders to catalogues, and so on!

You can also scan your zine, uncut, and put it online so others can print their own copy, cut & assemble it. Easy!

But, it won’t hold much info unless you write small enough for a magnifying glass, or you find clever ways to expand the available space, such as adding fold-out pages & stuff.

That said, the 16-pages-from-one-sheet-of-legal-paper is regarded as a classic zine, if we’re talking about all kinds of zines, including poetry, fanzines, and so on.

Oh, sure, there are other ways to make zines. Look at books about making handmade books, for the best inspiration.

The concept is the same, but zines are usually smaller & more informal, that’s all.

If you want to create a zine that’s a work of art, that’s fine. If you want to get wild & crazy with design, that’s fine too.

However, keep in mind that a zine can be one piece of paper, b&w, printed on both sides, and folded in half. And that’s a four-page zine.

Some of these single-page zines are still in my collection.  By contrast, I haven’t kept some larger zines, though they were lovely to look at and filled with wonderful sentiments.

So, put your art & soul into your zine, and don’t worry about the size or technical stuff.

I love almost every zine I see.  Size, expertise, and visual quality often have nothing to do with how enthusiastic I am about a zine!

What I’m saying is: If you’ve wanted to create a zine for fun, or just to see what it’s like to make one, just do it!

The bonus is, if you swap your zines with others, you’ll receive fabulous zines in return, which you might never see if you hadn’t swapped.

For years, I was the list moderator for the botmzines group/list at Yahoo!Groups, I decided to throw together some pages about zines.

For starters, the “botmzines” name came from the group that inspired it, the Book Of The Month list… BOTM. So, although botmzines swaps aren’t on any specific calendar, the group started with that name and so it remains.

With that bit of trivia out of the way, let’s discuss zines!

Schedules

First of all, if you want something that is published on time, and is proofread, has high-quality graphics and writing, and generally sticks to the theme it had when you subscribed to it… subscribe to a magazine. You know, like Time, or Newsweek.

Zines are published on whim. Oh, sure, some people manage to write right-brained zines on a left-brained schedule. My hat is off to them. I have no idea how they manage it.

For fun, not profit

Zines are labors of love. We don’t make money on them, or if we manage to show a profit on one issue, we go crazy writing & re-writing the next issue, including color pages or something, and–bingo–we’re back in the red again. In other words, zines are not a way to make a living. Or even pick up some extra spending money. For most of us, zines cost money to produce but we love ’em anyway.

Zines are fun in a way that can’t be put into words. If you’re driven to create them, you’ll get a sense of satisfaction (and some angst) when you complete one and it’s in the mail to others.

Receiving a zine can be… well, I hate to say ‘better than chocolate’ because that’s such a cliche, and very personal.

That said, when a zine is cool, there aren’t enough superlatives for it. When a zine is weird, it’s truly out there… and usually fascinating, as well.

It’s often a love/hate thing.

There are almost NO generalities that can be made about zines, so let me tell you about my own eccentricities:

They make me crazy, but I love them anyway. And I love having zines to swap so I can get others’ zines.

My zines are published at odd times, vaguely quarterly. They bear a variety of names, also whim-based. They may be half-pages (printed on 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper, folded in half), or bigger, or even smaller. Some have cardstock covers, but most are all on the same kind of paper (and color) that came out of the photocopy machine.

Most of my zines are b&w. Most of them are loosely related to art, especially paper arts. Most are a mix of printed text, scribbled-in notes, and my own graphics.

Generally, after six months or so, I lose track of when people’s subscriptions started, so I close down new orders for awhile, and send out more than the subscription’s worth of copies (meaning that early subscribers can end up with two or more times the number of issues that they ordered). And then I start up again.

(Yes, that’s embarrassing. It’s also not unusual among people who create art zines.)

Generally, I make zines when I receive someone else’s zine and my batteries get recharged.

Why people create zines

From the classic guide to zine-making, Zine Scene: The Do It Yourself Guide to Zines, by Francesca Lia Block & Hillary Carlip:

“Tell your story… your obsessions, your fears, your dreams, in words and pics, because it is powerful, because it kicks, to express and connect, even if it’s not always pretty, cool, or slick.”

Also from Hillary Carlip, “Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.”

Worried about how it will look? Here’s another quote from Zine Scene:

“Who knows what Baroque pearls and sizzling diamonds of content lie buried in the impossibly small print, or floppity-sloppity-scrawly handwriting of a rough-to-read zine?”

In other words, say whatever you want to, and don’t worry about how it looks.

Or… go crazy with how it looks and forget about saying anything overtly pithy.

Either one works–or both!

Recommended reading, online

There’s so much good zine info online, I’m not sure why I even create webpages about them. Seriously. The same people who compulsively make zines, keep rolling along with enthusiasm and tell you all about them, online.

• Zine Book, be sure to click on “What’s a Zine?” to start, but this website has massive amounts of very useful information.
• alt.zines DMZ, more info from the wild & generic zine scene.
• At zinebook.com, Global Mail’s “How to Make a Zine” gets very technical.
• Action Girl Newsletter: DIY Zine Guide.

My favorite resources & inspirations, offline

• Others’ zines. Plain & simple. Get your hands on as many as you can. The easiest way is to swap! You can swap through the botmzines list at Yahoo!Groups, linked above.
• The Garage, Issue No. 2, published by Diane Moline. As far as I know, Diane makes her zines in very small numbers, and only for swaps. I’m thrilled to own two copies of The Garage.
• Dog Eared Magazine, Issue Five, about Zines. For more info, see dogearedmagazine.com
• Zine Scene: The Do It Yourself Guide to Zines, a book by Francesca Lia Block and Hillary Carlip. It’s considered a classic. When I checked in mid-2006, it had been out of print for awhile.  If you see a copy, old or new, snag it if you’re serious about zines.