Make azinetonight.
One sheet. Three folds. One cut. Eight pages you made yourself, done before dessert. What a zine is, who made them matter, and a playground to build one in the browser before you build one for real.
What is a zine?
Why bother?
Four reasons, drawn badly on purpose. Hover each one.
A zine is done in an evening. Most creative projects never get to the part where they exist. This one does, by bedtime.
Photos on a phone are a feed. The same photos folded into eight pages become a thing you can hand to someone at a table.
A zine wants to be handed over, swapped, mailed, left somewhere. It is the friendliest possible way to say here is what I have been looking at.
No platform, no algorithm, no terms of service. Paper does not get deplatformed. Fifty years on, a zine still reads exactly the way it was made.
Four zines that mattered
Real covers, taped up. Each links to where you can read or buy the real thing. Hover to tilt.
The lineage
Eight people and scenes who did it without permission. The thread runs in date order.
Treated the envelope as the gallery. The zine's cousin, posted one at a time. estate
Cheap, offset, unprecious. The book itself is the artwork. overview
Are, bure, boke: rough, blurred, out of focus, as a stance. Aperture
Self-published manga, saddle-stitched. The largest self-publishing economy on earth. history
Flyers for Black Flag. Ink drawing plus text that argues with the image. Printed Matter
Skate and punk-show photography as a public diary kept for decades. overview
Photocopies taped to the wall before the gallery prints existed. publications
Today's makers
Working photo-zine makers, reviewed by Ted Forbes. Hover a print for their words.
The one-sheet eight-pager
- 1 Lay the sheet flat, landscape.
- 2 Fold in half, short edge to short edge. Crease hard with a fingernail.
- 3 Fold in half again the same way. A tall quarter.
- 4 Fold once the other way. Now it is an eighth.
- 5 Unfold flat. You have eight panels and a grid of creases.
- 6 Fold in half the long way and cut along the centre crease through the two middle panels only.
- 7 Open, refold the long way, push both ends toward the middle. The slit opens into a diamond.
- 8 Keep pushing, wrap it round, press flat. Eight pages.
The fold family
Five more ways to turn paper into a book. Hover a card to run its three moves.
Quarter-fold mini
The fastest possible first zine. Any medium.
French fold folio
One strong image, or a poem that unfolds itself.
Accordion
Nothing is cut, so one image can run across every panel.
Saddle stitch
The doujinshi standard. For when a zine outgrows one sheet.
Stab binding
No spine crease, so full-bleed photographs stay whole.
Six ways to fill a page
Live thumbnails, the photos keep changing. Click one to try it in the playground.
Try it now, zero effort
Tap or drag anything from the tray onto a page.Now fold it for real
Your zine from the playground, imposed the way it prints. Click the sheet to fold it.
- Open the and print it at 100%, landscape, one side.
- No printer? Fold a blank sheet and draw or glue straight onto the panels. The layout is the map.
- Fold in half, in half, in half. Unfold.
- One cut, middle two panels, along the centre crease.
- Push the ends in, wrap it round, press flat.
- Write your name on the back. Give it to someone.
Photocopy shop: print at 100%, never fit-to-page, or the panels drift off the creases. Make one clean master, then copy the copy and push the contrast. Bold type and hand lettering survive; fine serifs turn to mush. 80 to 90gsm folds cleanly through three folds.
Threads to pull
Everything this guide leans on, pinned up. Pull any thread and fall down the rabbit hole.
Watch first
Austin Kleon, a zine from one sheetthe fold on page 6, on camera
Greg Kletsel, Start to Finishidea, thumbnail, make, produce, distribute
Ted Forbes, Art of the Photo Zinewhere page 5's makers come from
Brooklyn Museum, Zines as Visibility
Paye Twin, The ZINE Documentary
Read free
Buy, support, visit
Tools for the next one
- Zine Prep, free browser imposition
- pdfimpose.it, imposition for PDFs
- Carolyn Yoo, how to riso a zine
- RISOTTO print templates
- Icon, photo zine layout guide
- Keri Smith's fold diagram
ONE
Now mail one to someone.
Every fold here was checked on paper. Still: fold a blank dummy first.