Make a zine with me!

Don’t have time to write or draw a comic? But still want to tell a story or express yourself in a creative way? Make a zine!

What is a Zine?

The word zine has come to represent a range of small-batch, DIY, “magazine-like” publications in terms of form and content.  

Zines are self made short-form magazine, where you can share your personal experience or thoughts in 8 small pages!

Great thing about zines is that they’re whatever you want them to be. You can make them digitally or on paper. It could be a silly doodle or a professional piece of art - all kinds of zines have a place in the world!

How do I make a zine?

Making a zine is pretty easy! All you need is:

1. One sheet of paper (A4 works!)
2. Pencil
3. A pair of scissors.

Now, follow these steps to create a little zine booklet for yourself:

Now that you have zine booklet, you can unfold and draw your zine on the sheet. When you’re done, you can fold it back into a booklet. That’s it - your zine is ready!

If you want to mass-produce your zines: write and draw into the zine at step 1 of the picture, and print copies of it. Then you can fold each of them up in a booklet like shown above.

What do I make a zine ABOUT?

Short answer is … make it about whatever you want to express and share.

Long answer…

You can create a zine for:

1. Personal reflection: share an experience and your thoughts
2. Fiction: sketch out a scene or a short conversation between characters
3. Social commentary: draw attention to an issue to call for action
4. Newsletter: create a short-form newsletter or magazine about things that excite you

Few days ago, I made my first ever zine! Here’s the concept I had for it:

I went on my first international trip to Singapore and took a lot of pictures in hopes to make wallpapers or maybe even a montage video out of it. But sadly, my phone broke soon after coming back home (before I could backup my pictures). I did had a few pictures from what I shared with a few close friends and family, so I decided to use those pictures to document my trip in a zine!

Because I wanted to add pictures, I decided to create a digital zine on Procreate. Check it out here:

Download the full zine here: Singapore Zine

Another example: Julia Evans makes amazing programming zines. I purchased one of her zine called “How Containers Works!” - it was educational and fun to read. If you’re interested, you can checkout her website for various free and paid zines about many programming topics: https://wizardzines.com/

(I swear this is not sponsored, I just talk like that!)

Thank you for reading this article! If you liked reading this or felt inspired to make something, I would love to hear your thoughts.