The Biggest Mistakes I Made With My Zine

And I'm not even finished yet!

I’m deep in the throes of my first handmade zine in nearly three decades, but even with as many years of art and design experience, some things don’t come easy.

I could’ve quickly built this zine in a digital program in a few days, but I wanted to challenge myself to make it old-school style with paper, glue, tape, and an excessive amount of scanned, copied, and printed pages.

Maybe I’m weird, but I want the tactile response of PVA glue between my fingers, the paint on my skin, and the inaccuracy of misaligned bits of paper that give the zine that handmade feel, but with that comes a small mountain of mistakes.

Though I’m going to share the mistakes with you, if you plan on making your own handmade zine, I hope you still experience some of this yourself because it will help you make a better publication. Not because we learn from them but because we feel them, and there’s something satisfying about that.

Mistakes I made

These are in no particular order, and now that I look at the list, a lot of them happen in my head. Perhaps a mistake I’m making right now is assuming you will think the same way I did about these things. If you do, then here’s your battle plan, but if I’m the only psycho in this space, just pat me on the head and move onto the more tangible bits.

Halfway finished zine, old school style

» Relying on Public Services

My first idea when creating this zine was to make the entire thing at my local library. Part of the reason for that decision was that my printer died on me and I didn’t have a way to print out pages. However, the public system is absolutely not equipped to do that type of printing I needed to make this project come together.

Also, with all the paint mess I’ve made, I know the librarians would not be happy with me at all.

Copying pages and printing out from my computer would have been easy to do there, but the full-on assault I have going on in the studio would never fly at the local library.

» Thinking I Could Finish Quickly

In my prime as an art director, I could easily knock out between 10-15 magazine pages per day, but that’s with the benefit of design tools like Adobe InDesign and PhotoShop.

Handmade, paste-up design takes significantly longer. During my stretches of this project, I would often move between the computer to mock up the design strictly for print sizing, run from the studio to the printer inside the house, come back out to cut the bits apart, and glue them to the myriad of different pages. The cover alone took me two hours to get right, and it was one of the least complicated pages.

This will take time; a lot of time.

» Overthinking the Subject

I had an idea and it was good.

Then I had a different idea, similar but tweaked. It was good.

Then I had another interpretation of that idea. Still good, but now I’m confused.

Finally after getting my head out of my ass, I came to an idea that made sense and I moved forward. All these ideas were valid, and each one would have worked, but I got caught up in thinking too much, which kept me from moving forward.

» Not Having a Clear Vision

All that above said, if I had spent a little more time thinking about what might make the content more seamless and true to what I wanted to project, I could have saved a lot of time.

Spending time in the beginning to visualize the content and the process would have helped speed me along. As I said in an earlier post about making zines, think small and execute big.

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» Study Others!

I cannot stress this enough. If you’re new to zine making, go look at what other people are doing. Your public library may have a zine section, or find a local indie bookstore or record shop and see if they sell zines. Attend zine fests if you have any near you and buy a few. The more exposure you have to the types of zines you wish to make, the better your chances of starting on a strong foot for your first effort.

Although I have some zines in my possession and live down the street from a book store that carries zines, I did none of the above. I tried to raw dog my way into this process of making one totally by hand without any research, and it hurt me. For the first couple of days, I was in 2-steps-forward-1-step-back mode.

» Using Wet Things That Don’t Dry Quickly

I have these fantastic paint markers from KRINK that I love using together, and they work fantastic on canvas or watercolor paper, but plain copy paper—not so much.

They’re still great, but they run, bleed, and stay wet for a ridiculous amount of time. A good portion of my delay was watching paint dry. Will I use them again in the future? Oh, you betcha, but I’ll make sure to give myself more lead time.

» Ran Out of Materials

In the culinary world, there’s a concept called mise en place, which means everything in its place. If you’re making anything by hand, it’s a good idea to have all your materials ready before you start so that you don’t have to run out to the office supply store halfway (more than once).

Who would do that? I mean, I would never do that… 👉 👈

» Letting Art Get In the Way

This may ruffle some feathers, but a zine is NOT an art project. It may have art elements, but a zine is a design project first, and should be treated as such.

Although part of my layout depends a lot on artistic instinct, I’m thinking like a designer most of the time while building these pages. That said, at one point, I let my impulsive artist thoughts take over and I made a mark (with the aforementioned KRINK markers) on a spread that made no sense. And because it didn’t dry quickly, it took me a full day to figure out how to fix it enough to make it look less bad.

The better idea would have been to stick with the plan, and if I had an impulse to make an art mark, pause and visualize it first. I could also Take a photo of the work, print that photo out, and make the mark on the test print to see if it makes sense before commiting to the bit.

» Wearing Gloves

This is a personal preference, and if you don’t like getting your hands covered in glue, tape, and paint, then use gloves. However, I found out pretty quickly that they get in the way more than they help.

Because I couldn’t feel my way through things as well with a latex barrier (I see you making condom jokes in your head), I was messier than I would have been if I used my hands.

Plus, gloves are wasteful, and I was going through too many, so I stopped. Last thing I need is someone calling me out because a sea lion choked on a nitrile glove.

» Not Documenting the Process

I should have taken more video and pictures. Yes, that slows down the process, but since this was my first time making one by hand in decades, it would have been nice to have more documentation of the process. \

I got caught up in the mentality of thinking I would share it all with others, but then second guessing myself thinking nobody would care. Instead, I should have considered my own interests first and filmed it all.

» Giving Myself Absurd Deadlines

Nobody cares about your self-imposed deadlines!

I told myself I wanted to get this done by a certain time, and when I crossed that deadline because of all the things mentioned above, I got disheartened and it took me out of the flow. I have been talking about this zine for weeks, and I began imagining other zinesters on Substack reading my posts and them thinking it was taking me too long, and I should shut up and get to work!

Except none of that happens. People are too busy caught in their own business to worry about mine. So, instead of worrying about some arbitrary self-imposed deadline, I need to focus on making the best zine I can.

It will come when it comes… which means I should have it out next week.

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Links

• Page Against the Machine is a local bookstore in Long Beach, CA, and the name should tell you that they maintain a firm stance of resistance toward all the baddies we’re dealing with lately. Buy from your local bookstore first, but if you don’t have one, PATM is an excellent choice for your banned books and anarchist propaganda. They also have a bunch of zines and are always looking for new talent.

• Glen Martin Taylor
  uses the Japanese art of Kintsugi to mend porcelain in disturbingly creative ways.

• Bobby Lee (aka Bobby Hundreds), co-founder of The Hundreds streetwear brand, stepped down from his role as creative director to take a job with The Mouse. Either the deal was too good to pass up to give up on his dream, or the streetwear scene isn’t fun anymore for him… or both. Either way, this is HUGE news.

• Ali Gallop is the punk rock Dan Mace. No, fuck that; he’s the punk rock Casey Neistat, and if you don’t know who he is, then you better ask somebody. Or watch this video because…What if?

• Toombes is an independent online art magazine that showcases the work of some interesting people a few times a month. I especially enjoyed the conversation with Adi Dick.