saintofcrowns (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
saintofcrowns) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
makezines2025-09-11 07:42 am
saintofcrowns) wrote in makezines2025-09-11 07:42 am
Zine Introduction (+ hello!)
Crossposting an entry from communal_creators, if that's alright. Some background: I've participated in a lot of zines of varying organization and polish, mostly fandom, and also have helped organize a zine jam every July since 2023. I am working on a TTRPG sourcebook project with friends later on next year, so I'm doing a zine for my own worldbuilding project as a warmup.
To be frank, unformatted worldbuilding is not very interesting for anyone to read. It also isn't very interesting to work on, at least for me. My ongoing project is to lay out my low-fantasy, Chinese alt history setting in the format of a museum exhibition. There be fantastical beasts and nitty-gritty cultural stuff. My setting is not associated with any particular project other than I wanted an excuse to draw lots of gryphons and research early Zhou dynasty. I like the scaffolding of metafiction and in-universe media: ie. creating subway maps and tourist brochures for a completely fictional setting. For this project, it means multimedia with writing and art in the form of artifacts, diagrams, and information plaques. Hopefully this is enough structure to keep me interested and I can (in the future) print if I want. The particular exhibit inspirations I'm drawing from are Guanghan's Sānxīnduī and Chongqing’s Three Gorges Museum.
I'm not a historian or a curator. This made me a little nervous to start this project, but fuck it. You can just do things. For the duration of the next month, I am planning to finish the art and writing for the displays on:
I'll be treating it as a zine with deliverables. Feel free to ask about it.
Resources I am using
Layout.
Adobe InDesign is the industry standard and most well-known formatting program, but most people cannot afford it and it's sort of a nightmare to run. Here are some alternatives beyond cough cough piracy.
Scribus is open source and free. It's designed for layout and typesetting.
The Electronic Zine Maker (slight eyestrain warning) is a great free option made by an indie developer with foldable paper zines in mind, but it's very useful for formatting zines to be embedded digitally on itch.io when combined with these tutorials: EZMReader, Custom Pages.
Formatting for print.
Holdover from working on zines. I default to drawing at 300 DPI, even if I don't have plans to print. It saves me hassle if I do format for print later on. I also think about page size, gutters, and bleed, especially if the project has enough pages to be perfect bound.
For colour profile, save yourself the trouble and work in CMYK (GRACoL or SWOP, or ask your local printer what they use). Lulu has excellent templates for 10+ print sizes if you scroll down to 'Book Design Templates'.
Organization.
Kanboard - like Trello, but open source and free.
Obsidian in general is great.
But really, visit the Sānxīngduī and Three Gorges museums if you ever get a chance. They are both engaging and excellent at telling a narrative. Particularly pay attention to the way halls are laid out to introduce audiences to a concept.
communal_creators, if that's alright. Some background: I've participated in a lot of zines of varying organization and polish, mostly fandom, and also have helped organize a zine jam every July since 2023. I am working on a TTRPG sourcebook project with friends later on next year, so I'm doing a zine for my own worldbuilding project as a warmup.To be frank, unformatted worldbuilding is not very interesting for anyone to read. It also isn't very interesting to work on, at least for me. My ongoing project is to lay out my low-fantasy, Chinese alt history setting in the format of a museum exhibition. There be fantastical beasts and nitty-gritty cultural stuff. My setting is not associated with any particular project other than I wanted an excuse to draw lots of gryphons and research early Zhou dynasty. I like the scaffolding of metafiction and in-universe media: ie. creating subway maps and tourist brochures for a completely fictional setting. For this project, it means multimedia with writing and art in the form of artifacts, diagrams, and information plaques. Hopefully this is enough structure to keep me interested and I can (in the future) print if I want. The particular exhibit inspirations I'm drawing from are Guanghan's Sānxīnduī and Chongqing’s Three Gorges Museum.
I'm not a historian or a curator. This made me a little nervous to start this project, but fuck it. You can just do things. For the duration of the next month, I am planning to finish the art and writing for the displays on:
- information on 3 key historical figures
- setting, including the specific archaeological site
- 4 artifacts from this specific era.
I'll be treating it as a zine with deliverables. Feel free to ask about it.
Resources I am using
Layout.
Adobe InDesign is the industry standard and most well-known formatting program, but most people cannot afford it and it's sort of a nightmare to run. Here are some alternatives beyond cough cough piracy.
Scribus is open source and free. It's designed for layout and typesetting.
The Electronic Zine Maker (slight eyestrain warning) is a great free option made by an indie developer with foldable paper zines in mind, but it's very useful for formatting zines to be embedded digitally on itch.io when combined with these tutorials: EZMReader, Custom Pages.
Formatting for print.
Holdover from working on zines. I default to drawing at 300 DPI, even if I don't have plans to print. It saves me hassle if I do format for print later on. I also think about page size, gutters, and bleed, especially if the project has enough pages to be perfect bound.
For colour profile, save yourself the trouble and work in CMYK (GRACoL or SWOP, or ask your local printer what they use). Lulu has excellent templates for 10+ print sizes if you scroll down to 'Book Design Templates'.
Organization.
Kanboard - like Trello, but open source and free.
Obsidian in general is great.
But really, visit the Sānxīngduī and Three Gorges museums if you ever get a chance. They are both engaging and excellent at telling a narrative. Particularly pay attention to the way halls are laid out to introduce audiences to a concept.