If you’ve ever flicked through a copy of The Simple Things and thought that we must have a lot of fun making an independent magazine, you’d be absolutely right. Here’s how you can have a slice of the fun yourself by creating a ‘mini’ magazine of your very own.
A ‘zine’ (pronounced ‘zeen’) is a magazine in a very small format that you can unfold to photocopy and then distribute within your community, whether that’s your church, school or a gang of your friends. They began back in the 1930s when people produced their own science fiction fanzines (or ‘zines’, for short) to share with other fans. They’ve had many resurgences over the years, with political zines being published in the 1960s and cultural ones during the punk era of the 80s. Whatever your interest, there will have been a zine for it at some point and if not - you can make your own! Here’s how:
1. Decide on a theme for your zine. It could be for a local community group, it could be self-published poetry, or just something very niche… recipes for brownies? Portraits of your neighbourhood’s cats? An illustration of the life cycle of a hawk moth? It’s all up to you. You’ll want to give it a name, too.
2. Decide whether you need to assemble a team of mates to help or if this is a solo project, and then get people on board or simply stock up on coffee and good biscuits before going it alone.
3. Make your original zine. There are several formats you can use but the easiest is the eight-page zine. You can search instructions on how to do the folds for an eight-page zine online. There are several on YouTube or try ‘How To Make a Zine’ on Mymodernet.com. Make the folds first and number the pages, then you can flatten it out again to write or draw on each page. You will need to make one snip between pages 3 and 8 or 4 and 7.
4. Design your cover on page one and your back cover on page eight, then fill the remaining pages with your content. Don’t forget you can stick in photos and blocks of text, use calligraphy or other images. It just needs to be clear enough to read when photocopied.
5. Unfold and flatten out your zine, photocopy as many copies as you need and then fold them all in the same way as you folded and snipped your original.
6. Sell, give away or foist your indie zine upon friends, family and unsuspecting locals.
If you’re already feeling inspired, don’t miss our My Living feature in the September issue, which is all about producers of indie mags. And if you’re looking for more indie mags to read yourself, you can always find plenty of them on our sister site Pics & Ink where you can buy mags on every subject imaginable, from adventure and travel to food and drink to film and music. Head to picsandink.com to have a browse.
