How To Make A Zine!

Or more accurately, how I make my zines. There are a bazillion and one ways to go about throwing your own rag together, some modern folk even do them all online I'm told (witches I believe).

I tried to upload these before, several at a time and it was taking so long I was imagining my grandchildren looking puzzled at the 'loading' screen on my mac. But I was on the Loserdom website and loved the video's of how the zine was printed and put together and that. So I decided to just accept that i would have to go through the boring (and very long) process of uploading each picture individually.

I took these pictures a couple of months ago when I was putting together Pepper Morrison 6 and 7 (which I did in ONE night, thank you very much). Putting a zine together isn't amazingly difficult no matter what way you approach it. But there are some annoying things that you find ways around, like gluing things down and then realising you've gotten the order of the stories wrong or how to lay the pages out to avoid fucking up when stapling them. That's the worst, when you finish stapling and still have one page left, which means that one of the 50 zines you just stapled together is missing pages (grrrr).

There are some things you just learn as time goes by, like how to get the maths right. Basically, when you fold a page it turns into four pages. I put five A4 pages in my zine. That means that there are 18 pages of content plus the front and back cover. Every page you add gives you another four pages.

Thats the boring part there. So, on to me actually putting the zine together! (The slightly less boring part...)

My messy desk. Try to have a clear space to work or else you'll just end up annoying yourself.

So as if by magic, clean(ish) desk!

Here's most of the stuff I need to put the zines together. You can't see my stanley knife or my blu-tack there, but they're pretty important. Also, normal pritt stick is way better for sticking paper then the silver stuff, but the silver stuff is less messy.

Get your plain pages and fold them in half into a little mock up of the zine.

I started with the cover. I had drawn it out in one of my sketch pads.

Cut it out. Now, I realised that the drawing was actually slightly too small for the cover (which is why it's good to never draw directly onto the thing).

I cut it a bit before I stuck it down so it filled the space up a bit better. You won't be able to see where the paper's been cut once it's been photocopied.

Then I got the rest of my pictures ready but cutting them out. This picture's a little blurry...



Ah, that one's a little better. Note that I'm getting a message on my phone i.e I am super cool and popular.

This was a short comic that I originally drew all four frames of on one big piece of paper so that I could try and make the figures look remotely similar.

So I cut all of them out, and had my printouts of the writing near by, and so I was ready to start putting the fucker together.

Meet your best friend in the whole world. Blu-tack. Fucking vital bit of kit there. Note how well used mine is. It's barely sticky at all at this stage, it's more like mala then blu tack.

Take a fucking tiny amount of it and put it in each corner. This is a technique I learned when I studied fashion design, to stop our designs sliding about when we were tracing them.

Stick the pages down in the right order to have a look at the layout and see if you need to make any changes.

Stick the back cover on. Same with the page cuts, the printer won't really pick up any colour changes. Well subtle colour changes. It will pick up dark colours. Obviously.

At this point I realised I didn't like the order of the stories and had to un-blu-tack everything. Note blurry picture due to general frustration.

To relax I took a picture of my Lord Kitchener poster.

And with a new sense of tranquility I took a break and drew on one of my teeny little canvasses. It looked quite nice, and I subsequently sold it at the fair. Thanks Lord Kitchener!

And on with the show. I didn't have a cover drawn for one of the zines, (as I said at the start I was putting two together) but I did have a vague idea for it.

Which turned into this.

Then the tedious typography which I hate and am really shit at. It was really late at this point too, so i didn't give a shit that the letters were touching. In fact if anyone asks they were meant to be like that...

I cut out the various parts of the cover and glued them in the right place.

And there they are. Two finished zines.

And there I am. Fucking exhausted.

I stack them like this on the windowsill to make sure they don't pritt stick themselves together. Note THE FUCKING SUNLIGHT. I literally worked all night to do them. Fuck sake.

Took relaxing picture of sexy lady drawing and crawled into bed to DIE.



Several days later I went and got them photocopied. Tablecloth care of Mum. This is what fifty copies of five zines look like unstapled.

And again for emphasis...

Now, I sort of fucked up the pictures here. I meant to take one of my long armed stapler and I didn't. And I meant to show how I lay out the pages, but I've only half of them here. Basically I do them in a semi circle starting with the first page (front and back cover) at my left and the last page (centre spread) at my right. It's the easiest way I've found to do it.

First fifty done!

250 done. Fucking hell, stapling these took several hours, but mighty satisfying! I kind of fucked up how I laid them out as well. The order there from left to right is number 2, 6, 3 and 4 and the bottom row is 7 and 5. I was mildly delirious at this point...

And there you go. That's how you make a zine.