Are your zines hand done, cut-and-paste or desktop published...or both?

[Samantha Blythe]

How do you make your zines?

[James N. Dawson]

I have three machines I compose my zines on:

1. A circa 1990 Brother WP-700D wordprocessor. The memory, a floppy reader, is broken, so I have to keep it on while I'm composing a zine on it. To save money, and sometimes for some reason I don't understand, the cartridge ribbons don't leave a good impression, I use old carbons I bought at yard sales for pennies.

2. A typewriter, or actually several over the years. Recently it's been a Silver Reed I bought for $5 at a lot sale.

3. A computer with 97 Windows operating system, and a 98 Word Perfect wordprocessing program. (I don't know if I'm using all this lingo right.)

Lately, I've been using very little graphics, but not because I'm indifferent to them, but just out of laziness and lack of time. My earlier zines tended to be much more visual and I'd like to do another more image-heavy zine soon. I find images in old encyclopedias, magazines, etc., xerox them, and then cut them out with scissors and, generally, fill in the spaces left by the text. Sometimes I go through considerable time and care in trying to select JUST THE RIGHT image. I also put in a lot of mini-flyers zinesters/bandsters have sent me.

I've used digital cameras, taken pictures, and uploaded them to E-Bay, so I have some experience with them, but I don't have the slightest idea how to layout images electronically. I have an old floppy I scrounged out of somebody's recycle bin that says "Photoshop" on it, and I've been thinking of popping it in my old computer and playing around with it, but my experience in trying to understand and manipulate digital photos on screen is so negative and has left such a bad memory in my head, I'm not particularly eager to. It's hard to explain, at least about 75% of the time, trying to do things electronically makes me feel horribly lost, stupid and defeated. So for me, with images and layout, it's PHYSICAL cut-n-paste, not so much because I think it looks better, or because it's "retro-cool", but because psychologoically, the process is so much more satisfying and pleasant. I feel more confident, creative and competent.

I'd like to TRY some of this high-tech stuff, and I think I should, but it's not a project I contemplate with much enthusiasm, and will probably procrastinate on for years before I do. Zine creation is supposed to fun and relaxing in challenging sort of way. I'm not sure how much point there is in putting myself through a lot of grief wrestling with a machine that confuses me so much.

Another thing I mentioned on an earlier discussion---I don't do cut and PASTE, but cut and (magic) TAPE. It seems to work okay. One reader told me my layout looked like it'd been done on a computer on a zine I did this way.

[APFuchs]

Desktop publishing over here.

In fact, wrapping up one now and should be going to press tonight!

More news soon . . .

[Anna Maire]

My is done on the computer. I love the look of the handwritten zine I see, but fear mine would be incomprehensible it I tried having my contributors all submit their stories like that.

[Derek Neuland]

Cut and paste!! <3

[tim scannell]

ditto...c&p

Derek Neuland said:

Cut and paste!! <3

[Randy Spaghetti]

cut and paste forever. i've always liked the way bad typewriter font looks too, but my fingers could never keep up so i just use courier font and pretend.

[jeff]

I started out cut and paste, and then started typing everything up on a computer and cut and pasting. Now, I mainly do desktop publishing. There's the problem of room and of me procrastinating and leaving everything out. Things tend to get lost that way. I'm teaching my 6 year old daughter cut and paste, and my 9 year old son likes desktop. Different strokes for different folks.

[TimT]

Combination of cut and paste and print out, my handwriting is of variable quality so I can't really trust that. I get friends to draw pictures.

[Monstress Zine]

mostly cut'n'paste. my flats are not electronic. i do most of my text on my laptop and most of my drawings by hand with blue pencil and various fineliners and markers. i'm starting to experiment with a crowquill pen. i generally do the drawing larger and reduce them with a fancy laser copier/printer i have access to so that they don't look digitized. they look like crap from my home printer. i'm planning on scanning all my clean flats so i have copies and might eventually have them printed from pdf rather than hardcopy.

[Hannah / Frothy Press]

The first issue of Frothy was done in Microsoft Word. It was a pain in the ass to do the pagination that way. But I got it looking pretty much how I wanted it, which was essentially a ripoff of McSweeney's. Now I do cut & paste all the way. Frothy #2.5 was printed, then cut & pasted, since it was a 1/16th size and I needed super small font. Other than that I rely on my typewriter and my giant Rubbermaid bin of books, magazines, and photocopied security envelopes. I'm just starting to get into illustrating stuff myself and handwriting portions of my zines.

[dearwassily]

My zines are cut and paste, but I like very clean layouts. I like the cut and paste though so I can use different fonts and typefaces - handwriting some things, typewriting some things, printing out some things. Cutting out paragraphs and pictures and figuring out how to arrange them in an aesthetically appealing way is one of the most gratifying aspects of making a zine.

[Amy]

I have problems pasting text, because you can't just cut it smaller. You have to guestimate at the size you want and then reprint it.