A few months back, I was showing my kids how to make mini zines after a friend posted one he made to the socials.
Matt Hall had made a handful of copies of one he created that feature his photography and art. He then placed them in some of the Little Free Libraries around Ironwood. My daughter was excited for the hunt to find a zine.
The zine making I showed my kids is the simple little process of folding and cutting a standard sheet of paper to make an 8-page booklet. See the graphic in the aside and find more info from this tutorial at 42nd Street (where I stole the graphic from). You can read their post if you want to know more about how to do it, I’m not going to write you a full tutorial.
It’s a fun little project and not just for kids. It’s a good way to get ideas out of your head physically in our current digital age plus it makes a cute little thing to look at and share.
I won’t get into the full history of zines, here’s a pretty good blog post I found on it if you want to learn more. But zines have been around since the 1930s or earlier and have been a way people has self-published and shared their independent ideas. Often, they have been associated with counter-culture movements as the only way for people to spread this information. In the 70s and 80s you could probably find many on the punk scene, art, music, and social issues around cities.
Below is the zine I made for my son, who is autistic and has a fascination with all types of keys. Just a little artistic fun with some pens, some old keys, and a scanner.
So, if you, in the words of Harvey Danger, “wanna publish zines and rage against machines,” put your ideas out there and create something fun for yourself or for others to see.
