Looking into the state of physical print in the 21st century for contextual studies, I have looked into the specific self-publication of zines.
Self-publishing printed media is a culture itself. The culture of fanzines has been around since the 1930s. Besides fanzines, news zines and personal zines are staple genres. Truthfully, there is no hard rule on what content a zine should hold.
People may think of use of photocopiers when they think ‘zine’ and saddle stitch binding (using a stapler) but the use of the Risograph machine is popular today too, along with other forms of binding.
The boundary of what can be considered a zine seems to be played with continuously by self-published creatives. I’ve seen almost inappropriately sized miniature zines (with tiny text) and unwieldily, long leporello zines.
The desire to share out thoughts and feelings about anything and everything though text, photos, and drawings is universal. Art; self-expression is being human.
There are many established self-publication festivals around the world, from Canada’s Canzine Vancouver, Scotland’s Glasgow Zine fest, to Belgium’s Cultures Maison. Some events are multi-day and bring in large, international crowds such as Japan’s Tokyo Book Fair, but smaller celebrations such as Japan’s Zine Day Osaka takes place over a couple of days and have their own dedicated producers and following ensuring a continuation of zine culture.
Some zine festivals stick to one subject matter or concern, such as New York’s NYC Feminist Fanzine. Some festivals provide a safe-space for expression or for minorities to gather and connect.
There are so many festivals around the globe celebrating self-publishing; zines, artist books and so on, that I can’t track them all down or list them here.
I have two zines from America to share at a later date. Both risograph; one a personal zine with a mixture of contents, and the other a zine of photographs. There’s something special about holding a limited-press book in-hand, isn’t there?
DESIGN WORKS 
I once saw a zine and Wendy had a copy, made by a guy in Newcastle, at the time i didn’t realise that is what it was. I didn’t realise the word was around in dictionaries since 1949 either, but i can remember learning about a sort of underground press in 1930’s. So, thank you, I’ve learned something new courtesy of your blog, yet again. Infact, your blog would make an equivalent of a digital zine surely?
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Thanks! There are ‘digital zines’ but I’ve only ever read physical ones. Maybe… blogs overlap? I recently read a personal zine (or perzine) I brought from the USA and the author wrote about some very intimate subjects that one would not ordinarily share with a stranger, and then very mundane, domestic activities that everyone takes part in. The zine is as distant or intimate as you want to make it…! And I do recall learning that some countries had underground press used to write about radical subjects, or novels that wouldn’t be published otherwise.
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