Creating My Own Zine
For a while now I have really wanted to create my own ‘Zine’. For those of you who are not familiar with the term (as I had not been for a shockingly long time considering I am interested in photography), a Zine is essentially a small magazine - see what they did there? - that is self-published and on a topic that the author is interested in. I have loved the idea of creating my own photography Zine ever since learning about the medium. Like photography prints, they are a tangible product that you can hold, that you can see in different lights and that provides a feel and texture to images. Unlike a single sheet print however, a Zine can compile a collection of photographs, much like a photo album, that encompasses a theme or showcases a specific collection. Up until now, I haven’t had a single body or collection of work that I have been proud enough to showcase, or that I thought would be of any interest to a potential customer willing to part with their hard earned money to buy.
In this article, I’ll describe the process I went through in creating my own Zine, the decisions I had to make and some reflections on my experience creating my very first Zine.
Choosing a Theme
Once I had established that I wanted to create and print my own Zine all by myself - or at least without the help of any third-parties, professional printing studios or graphic designers, the first decision I needed to make was choosing a theme for my Zine.
In my opinion, a Zine should have a consistent theme throughout; a topic that the creator is trying to convey or showcase. Since none of my current photographic work had such a theme (though it is something I am looking to try incorporate more in my photography) the closest thing I had to a single body of work are photographs from my travels.
I have several collections of photographs from trips that I am proud of; New York, Lisbon and New Zealand to name a few, but none of these match my current artistic style, something I was keen to showcase in anything new I produced. In my view, all the photos I had amassed on past trips composed more of a family album with the odd artistic photo here or there, rather than anything more widely appealing. However, after a recent trip to the beautiful city of Budapest, I finally felt I had a collection of photographs that I would be happy to compile in the form of a Zine, a collection I am both proud of and believe may be of interest to a wider audience.
The Subject
Known as the "Queen of the Danube", Budapest has a unique blend of old-world charm and modern energy, making it a fantastic destination for street photography. Budapest is host to numerous architectural landmarks, such as the iconic Parliament building and the ornate St. Stephen's Basilica, which make make for fantastic subjects for abstract photos. Two of my personal favourite things in the city to photograph were the views from the Fisherman's Bastion at sunset, and the Central Market Hall with its mixture of vibrant produce stalls and dimmer, more contrasting stairwells and hallways. Budapest made for an incredible and memorable shooting location and is a destination I would recommend for anyone to visit given the opportunity, whether they enjoy photography or not.
Designing the Zine
Now that I had the the theme (and therefore the photographs), I had to design my Zine. A lot of my decision making in this stage of the process was dictated by the fact that I’d be designing, printing and binding the Zine at home. This did impact the number of photos I chose and subsequently the number of pages required, the stock of the paper, the size and dimensions of the Zine etc. There were also some limiting factors in the tools I had available to me - at the time of writing this, I was not using any Adobe products such as InDesign or Adober Acrobat for designing and formatting the Zine (I used Pixelmator and printed exported JPEGs using the Canon Professional print software packaged with my Canon Prograf Pro-300 inkjet printer). To help with image ordering and for some advice on the sorts of paper that were appropriate for Zines, I turned to Google and found the following blog article by Luke Brennan that I found incredibly helpful: https://lukebrennan.co.uk/how-to-make-a-photography-zine-from-home/ . As for the design however, I took inspiration from elsewhere.
One advantage of creating a Zine is that it is (or can be) self-published, so you can go crazy with layouts and the look. Designing my own Zine was one of the most satisfying aspects of this project for me. While printing and watching the photos come to life is definitely a special feeling, choosing fonts, creating a layout and organising the photos was definitely a highlight.
I knew I wanted the Zine to match the style of my website and blog, and so the fonts for headings and paragraphs were already chosen.
On my first go at designing the Zine, I had my images in a centre-locked position on the page in either portrait or landscape orientation. While clean and simple, this layout for a lack of a better term was a bit boring and uninspired. After taking inspiration from several YouTube videos of other photographers’ Zines as well as examples from Pinterest and Instagram, I decided for my layout I wanted the photos to float about the pages, in a more sporadic fashion, with images never appearing in the same position on any of the pages. Like the images I chose for the Zine, I wanted the layout to have a certain simplicity and randomness to it, as if the images had been scattered on the pages of the Zine like Polaroids thrown on a table top, switching up the pairings of images up to ensure the combinations on the two-page spread never looked too similar or awkward together.
Printing
The most exciting bit - once I had the photos, the layout, fonts and text set, I was ready to print! As my partner Vicky and I invested in a professional grade photo printer (a Canon Prograf Pro-300) to produce the work I sell through my print shop at home, I already knew I wanted to print the pages of the Zine myself. I did some research on what paper seemed most appropriate to use and while I am still not 100% settled on the paper and would like to try some others in the future, I went for a 130gsm A4 matte paper from Paperbox that seemed to fit the bill nicely. What I liked most about this paper was the texture and thickness, which seemed just right for the number of pages I intended on printing (7 A4 pages folded to create an A5 booklet).
When shopping for paper, from my experience trialing a few other matte sheets (including a Canon matte double-sided 170gsm paper that proved too thick) I would recommend something within the range of 130-150gsm, especially if you are going beyond 5 sheets of A4 paper. Though it depends entirely on the images to be printed, a textured paper worked nicely with my analogue style collection of images.
As I was printing without the help of any software that automatically printed the pages in the required order for producing a ‘booklet’ (a feature I know is available in InDesign/Adobe Acrobat), there was some difficulty in keeping track of which sides to print and in what order the format each double-page spread. Unfortunately, this is something that will simply require some thought and attention and may result in some pages needing to be re-printed if any errors occur.
Binding the Zine
Now that all the pages in the Zine have been printed, I had to decide on a way to bind the 7 sheets of A4 pages to create the final product. Looking at examples online, many Zines used simple staples, which though would be the most straightforward and easy method (bar purchasing a stapler long enough to staple in the middle of an A4 page), I decided didn’t give the high quality finish I wanted to the Zine. Many examples I found showed a simple stitch binding method that seemed straightforward and looked great. For this, I enlisted the help of my partner Vicky, who is much better with crafts than I am, as she regularly sews, knits and crochets - though I imagine the steps are ones that anyone can follow with the right tools.
With the pages stitched and bound, the final product is ready and I couldn’t be happier with the results. Though creating the Zine has been a relatively large amount of work, firstly to curate the images, then to design, print and finally to hand-bind, it has all been incredibly satisfying and is something I would highly recommend for all photographers to try at some time. Obviously, not everyone will have a professional printer at home, or may not necessarily have the skills to design the layout themselves, though it is a process you can speak with local businesses such as graphic designers and printers to help achieve and is well worth doing at some point in your photography journey.
The ‘Budapest’ Zine is now available to purchase from my print shop for £15 and each one will be printed to order in-house and hand-bound by us before shipping to you. I can’t wait for you to see the final product and hope you like it as much as I have enjoyed designing and creating it. Some of the photographs contained within the Zine will also be available as A4 and A3 fine art prints, also available in the shop.
