Nobody is going to give you permission to make a zine. That is the entire point of the format. You pick a thing you care about, you put it on paper, you staple it, you hand it to people. Here is how to actually do it.
Pick a topic smaller than you think
The best zines are narrow. Not music - the lost venues of your home town. Not food - every chip shop on one bus route. Not fashion - what people actually wear to the school run.
Narrow is not limiting. Narrow is what makes a stranger pick it up and think: finally, someone said it.
Decide the page count before you write
Eight pages. Sixteen if you are feeling ambitious. A zine that is finished beats a zine that is perfect, and a short zine gets finished.
Fold a single A4 sheet into eighths and you have your first dummy. Number the little pages. That is your whole structure, decided in two minutes.
Lay it out with whatever you have
Word works. Canva works. A glue stick and a photocopier works and is arguably more in the spirit of the thing.
Keep type big enough to read. Leave more empty space than feels comfortable. One idea per page is a good rule for a first issue.
Print twenty copies
Not two hundred. Twenty. Your office printer, a copy shop, or a riso studio if you want the good ink. Twenty copies is enough to learn everything the format has to teach you.
Give half away. Sell the rest for the price of a coffee. You are not building a business. You are proving to yourself that you can finish a thing.
Get it into hands
Leave copies in the café, the barber, the record shop. Ask first, obviously. Post one to a friend in another city. Trade with another zine maker - the scene runs on trades.
Then make issue two. The second one is where it gets good.
A zine is the smallest possible act of publishing, and that is exactly why it matters. Fold the paper. Staple the thing. We made one too - you can see ours below.
// keep going
- · What is a zine? /offline-notes/what-is-a-zine
- · Risograph printing explained /offline-notes/risograph-printing-explained
- · Read Zine 01 /zine
// more offline notes
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