Brain Graffiti Zine's guide to making a zine
No, we're not copying the Chicago Reader (By. Matt Brady)
So you’re a creative person who’s been making artwork for a little while now; you’ve been composing photos, smearing your hands with paint, developing film, writing short stories/poems and/or getting your hands dirty with ashy charcoal.
Sharing your work on social media has started to become tedious and you don’t get a lot of likes, which only contributes to you becoming disheartened with the artistic process.
“Fuck this, I’m done.”
You’ve said this to yourself- I don’t know- probably a thousand times already in your creative life.
How do you get your work out there in a meaningful way?
The answer is simple: self-publish a zine of your work.
But what is a zine?
A zine (pronounced “ZEEN”), or a “fanzine”, is a small-circulated, self-published magazine-like work/booklet that contains absolutely anything the creator desires. The creation of zines can actually be drawn back to the 1930s in Chicago, but the creation can be drawn further back in history, all the way to the mid-1400s.
The purpose of a zine is to get your work, other people’s work (with their consent) and/or your ideas/thoughts out into the world through a PHYSICAL format. It’s up to YOU how it gets into people’s hands and out into the world.
The ONE universal approach to making zines is in a booklet/magazine form, but after that, there are no rules; it is truly up to the creator to decide the color, size, page numbers, font, content, etc, etc, etc.
Here are OUR PERSONAL steps to starting your own zine.
Decide what you want the focus of your zine to be.
Zines are all about self-expression, but before you go finding places to print and getting supplies, sit down and figure out what you want the focus to be.
Since Brain Graffiti is focused on music and also utilizes a lot of art, that will the paradigm from which we will look through.
Is your zine about fashion? Is it about music? Is it about art? Is it about movies? Is it about someone?
Do you want it to be about your artwork? Your current portfolio?
Do you want to be a curator of art and start a zine that highlights other artists? Does your curation fit a theme? Does your curation NOT fit a theme and you’re just picking art that you think is cool?
Do you self-publish multiple zines that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with one another? One is a photo zine of your work and then another is a curation? Does your zine have 30 pages and only one page has something on it?
The list goes on and on and on and on and on. That’s the beauty with zines; it’s truly up to you with what you want to include in it.
Get the art/ideas together.
This might sound self-explanatory, but create a Google Drive/Dropbox/Onedrive folder of all the stuff you want to include! Get it all into one place so you can sift through your catalogue and come to a final decision.
Finding out how you want to construct your zine AND formatting.
This is where it starts gets convoluted and confusing, due to the fact that everyone’s financial situation and workflow is different.
Finding out how to construct your zine and formatting the pages go hand-in-hand. Because everyone is so different, we wanted to include them in the same step due to the fact that some people might want to format as they construct or find a way to construct first and then format. This all depends on who you are.
Because zines are in a booklet/magazine format, you can do one of two things: find an online company or local shop that prints magazines (some companies have “zine” options on printing servies) OR make it by hand.
For printing services that will put the physical booklet together once you’ve formatted the pages, we recommend using Mixam. That is the primary service that we use.
If you want to try and make your zine by hand, please check out this “How To” that we found on Google; it has great videos and step-by-step guides to creating your zines by hand!
The way we do it at Brain Graffiit is like this: Jess makes the RAW pages by hand, using her clippings and our concert photos while I transcribe interviews, print them out from Google Docs, cut them out and help her glue them on top of her collage. Repeat about fifty-some times.
After we get the RAW pages done, we scan them on to a hardrive and then go to Mixam to have them printed.
This is OUR way. OUR way is NOT the “right” way. There is NO “right” way to construct and format a zine.
Get it out there/where to sell!
Right when we came up with the idea to do Brain Graffiti, we created an Instagram account to promote it.
Social media is a great way to get your zine out there to start making connections and beyond!
Try and sell them at an art fair, city market or anywhere that you think would be a cool place to vend them! Make flyers for your zine with QR codes and put them in public spaces, public bulletin boards, on lamp posts (fuck whoever is giving you a hard time about that. Those motherfuckers have nothing better to do), chairs, bus stops, etc, etc.
The marketing is up to you!
Maybe you don’t want to promote it that much and just have it through your personal account. OR MAYBE YOU DON’T WANT IT ON SOCIAL MEDIA AT ALL! It is completely up to you!
Utilize a Bandcamp account if you opt to sell online as well! Of all of the shipping companies in the world, Bandcamp cares the most about artists and their service fee is abysmally small.
Our zine recommendations
Here is a list of really incredible zines that you should check out for some more inspiration! We’ll keyword them as well so you can know what they specialize in.
Pink Slip/Post-Script: Art curation, lifestyle, music, culture/cultural issues
Destroy: Art curation, music, culture, lifestyle
Blast of Power: Music
Chainsaw Press: Music
Pass Down Magazine: Music
Gush: Music
grachki.: Music
Cueball: Music
A DOCUMENT OF A CHICAGO MUSIC COMMUNITY: Music photography, lifestyle, culture
Comment here or just DM us on Instagram if you guys have any questions because we would love to help!
-Matt and Jess
So thorough!! Seriously the master doc for zine creation ✂️