Tag: Zines

How to create zines, especially art zines, by Aisling D’Art. Back in the late 20th century, she was among the leading art journaling zine creators. She knows the basics and the flourishes!

Zine Layouts

Here’s what you need to know about zine layouts…

Zine sizes

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 is five to 15 sheets of paper, meaning 20 to 60 pages. (But really, there are no “average” zines. Each is unique, as it should be! )

starIn swaps, most zines are at the small end of that figure… five or so sheets of paper, and often less.

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. That makes them four pages… depending upon how they’re cut and folded, of course.

The single-sheet zine layout

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 just one sheet of legal-sized paper. (Yes, just one. Really!)

Note: 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 legal-sized (8.5″ x 14″) sheet of paper:

Zine layout from a single sheet of legal paper

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

Staple in the center. One staple is usually enough.

How to swap, mail, and share zines

If you’re mailing one of those single-sheet zines, one stamp on the envelope is usually enough to mail one of them.

Where to send your zines – You can tuck them in with your bill payments, with your notes to friends, with your other swaps, and so on!

Swaps by mail – Tell your friends what you’re doing. Ask if they’d like to play, too. Or organize a swap on social media, on your website, in a forum, etc. Learn more about zine swaps here.

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

But keep in mind, if it’s a zine like the single-sheet (8.5″ x 11″) zine shown above… Well, it won’t hold much info unless you write VERY small, 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.

Taking zines to the next level… or not!

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

Here’s a favorite:

Handmade Books - Alisa Golden
Click on cover to see it at Amazon.com

The general concept is the same as zines, but zines are usually smaller & more informal than handmade books, 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.

Many of these single-page zines are still in my collection.

Whatever the zine, make it yours!

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

smiling flowerI 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.

two parallel lines

My zine history

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.

Late in 2024, as I’m updating this post, I still love zines, and plan to make more of them in the coming months. Yaaayyy for zines!
More zine information

If you have questions or answers, post a comment below.

Zine Basics

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.

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.