I have written about the odd zine that I happened to pick up in the past, and very recently, in fact! I’ve decided to share a number of zines that I have on-hand in one post to show off the variety than can be found. This is not as in-depth a look as an entry would be looking at a single piece, but be prepared to eyeball a lot of images. This entry is picture-heavy!!
Firstly, I want to show a couple of zines by Kristyna Baczynski, Spring Wild, and A Measure of Space. Both are risograph-printed, with vibrant covers and monochrome insides. They’re very easy on the eye.
The cover of the zine Spring Wild is two tone. The inside is a dark green ink on light green paper. It’s not possible to go outside and enjoy the wildlife beyond back gardens as I write this, but this small zine is a little catalogue of spring-time plants native to European countries. The body copy is in printed handwriting. It’s full of charming illustrations and wit.
Ordinarily, I’d avoid scanning books with their spine at risk of damage, but a thin zine is much less likely to be harmed by scanning its pages, so I feel at ease sharing some clean pictures of some of the publications’ contents here.
Many zines you’ll see out in the wild (on any (comic) book store shelves) are printed in monochrome, which is to keep costs down as they’re not often made with the intention of making a big profit. (More likely, the zines will be worth more second-hand if the creator’s work is coveted.) Most of the zines I have in possession are of a single colour.
Working in black and white, A Measure of Space has plenty of visual clarity that may come across as cluttered if it were coloured haphazardly. I actually like pouring over some of the more jam-packed comic panels to make out little details.
Both of Baczynski zines are bound saddle stitch (with staples) and so are most of the zines I own. Finding ones tied together with other materials is a welcome surprise.
It feels quite special to find a zine with a cover that’s a different colour paper or card from the rest of the internal pages. I haven’t many zines that are printed on coloured paper as of writing.
Above is a page from How To… Make A Zine, a photocopied mini zine made from a single sheet of white A4 printing paper. This tiny publication is all about… (you guessed it) …how to make zines!
Because there are no hard and fast rules to the medium, I’ve acquired zines of all different sizes, contents, and materials. Some zines are even made from a single sheet of A4 and folded into 8-pages (including the front cover and back cover).
The scan above shows pages from a tiny zine, made from only one piece of off-white printing paper. Hayley Wells’s ICEBERG consists of full-page collage illustrations and small pieces of text formed from what look to be old-school rubber or metal alphabet stamps. For a monochrome zine, it stands out among other’s I’ve seen due to it’s unique visual presentation.
Lesser Seen Folk Demons is a beautiful risograph-printed zine using two colours. It’s a modern bestiary of spooks and creeps and we may find around the world if we’re lucky. It’s 24 pages long. Each demon gets a description, and an full-page illustration made from collage. Part of the allure of this sort of publication to me is stems from media from childhood that focused on bestiaries and lore of fictional monsters.
It feels much like a slender book; there’s a forward by Dr. Mathew Cheeseman of the university of Derby… there’s an ISBN in the back of the zine, along with the printing credits (year of publication, and edition etc.).
The text in this book uses just two fonts; one for headers and one for body copy. The tone of voice is very tongue-and-cheek. A page on The Deadly Diddlio reads:
THE DEADLY DIDDLIO
The inhabitants of Pyefleet-In-Water, eastern England live in fear of The Deadly Diddlio, a malevolent wind-borne spirit who is purported to visit their small island once a year to bring discord, broken windows and sexual mayhem. Dating back to the twelfth century, this somewhat unpleasant avatar can only be combated by interpretive dance, and lots of it. He’s a pain in the arse, basically, and bloody ugly to boot.
Actually, this book’s concept is not too unlike thoughts I’ve had about crafting illustrative bestiary-like zines, albeit with a vastly different tone of voice and art direction. Seeing this out there proves that there are people that genuinely enjoy such specific content. (I guess I should step on it already and draft such a bestiary of my own subject choices, huh.)
You can be sure that there will be more small press works that I’ll want to share on my blog in future entries. There’s also plenty other content that I want too share here. Look forward to it all!
DESIGN WORKS 