Zine Day

This morning I got one of Austin Kleon’s weekly emails (every Friday morning) which triggered an interest in experimenting with ‘zines as mini-photography portfolios.

Experimenting with ‘zines seemed like something that might help distract me from some of the endless negativity from the current coronavirus pandemic!

Thanks to Austin’s post, I used the PDF file from this post on how to make mini-comics. After watching Austin’s quick video, I printed the mini-comic example and created my first mini-zine.

When it came time to try to create my own mini ‘zine using some of my content, I experimented with two approaches: using Word and using a custom print template in Lightroom Classic.

In Word, I modified an example file I found here on the web to use US Letter paper (instead of A4 that it’s setup for). One of the things that’s tricky is that you need to rotate four of the images/text blocks on the page so that it works correctly.

In Lightroom Classic, I tried two approaches using the Print module. One was using the contact sheet approach and the other was setting up a custom template – which worked better as it gave me better control over the image block sizes, borders, etc.

In Lightroom, I created a sample collection of eight images, sequenced them appropriately (also a bit tricky as the order isn’t what you might think – see the mini-comic example, and then brought them into the Print module using the custom template. From their I printed the page – being careful to use the print setting on my particular laser printer that avoids any margins or scaling.

After that it’s a simple matter of folding the page, making one cut, and then folding the book. It take a bit to get the hang of it, but the result is fun – and charming! See examples below:

All in all, this project proved to be a good distraction to take my mind away from the coronavirus happenings today!