advertisement


The PFM Produce and Share a Zine - Round 3

Mr Perceptive

Mr Perceptive

Perceptive Member
Its time for Round 3!!

The idea of this challenge is that you sign up here and commit to producing a zine and posting it to all the other people in this zine group, everyone has to cover their own printing and postage costs and in return gets a fantastic zine collection from the other members of the group. The target date for posting out your zines is Saturday 29th May 2021 with Friday 30th April 2021 as a last date for people to commit which gives 4 weeks for printing etc.

Now we had a lot of interest last time, but only about a third of those who showed interest actually committed to producing a zine, don't be scared, a zine by its very nature can vary from a collection of hand produced pages stapled or folded together (http://blog.umamidesign.com/ud-content/2013/09/ud_130918_zine-instructions.jpg) or a printed booklet (https://mixam.co.uk/booklets)

Zines from Round 1 - Thread for first round here - this has lots of useful reference information in it
https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/the-pfm-produce-and-share-a-zine.239696/
Lmg88Czh.jpg


Zines from Round 2 - Thread here https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/the-pfm-produce-and-share-a-zine-round-2.243176/
Cv6efCRh.jpg


It would be great if we could get 6-10 people in this project, it makes producing the zines more cost effective, and its great when you get multiple zines sent to you through the post. I'm in another Zine exchange group, and last time we had quite a collection of zines (most of which were shot on film!)

iA9OM2Dh.jpg


Any questions and fire away, I'm sure someone can answer!!
 
A little FAQ, stolen from my friend Ian's post in another forum!

FAQ

Q: So how much will it all cost?
A: My experience is that you can get a box of 10-20 zines from Mixam delivered for about £25-£30, if you want just a black and white zine, then Doxdirect are probably cheaper and you are looking at less than £20. Then there's the postage to each person taking part. Previous zine exchanges have had less than ten entrants, so 10 lots of postage could be another tenner depending on the size of your zine and postage class (2nd is fine for this!)

Q: Most of the participants are crusty film shooters. Is this a film only thing?
A: Not at all. Shoot the whole zine with your phone if you like.

Q: How should I design it?
A: That's the challenge of making a zine. It's not just about plonking a bunch of photos in a book, it's about crafting something. Text or no text? Colour, monochrome or mix? Square, landscape or portrait (or mix)? One image to a page, or collages? A Google search for "Photography zine" will give you some good cover ideas too!

Q: How big should I make it?
A: As a minimum, I'd suggest A5 and containing 10-15 pages. Bear in mind you need to pay for it, and post it, so the bigger or heavier you go, the more cost to you.

Q: How many should I order?
A: It's up to you, but on April 30th, we will be asking people to commit yay or nay so that we can get final numbers of participants so that people can make appropriate print orders. Previous zine exchanges have had no more than ten entrants though and reading through this thread should give you an idea.

Q: Wait... Deadline?
A: Yes. Your zine needs to be finished in principle by 30th April 2021. You can then commit formally, and we will know how many people are taking part and how many prints we need to make. Zines should then be printed, and posted out after the 30th but before the 29th May.

Q: New images or old? Theme?
A: It's up to you, but most zines work well when based around a theme or project. I prefer to take new images for it, whilst others like to go through their back catalogue. Do what makes you happy.
 
I'm in - in the hope it will drag me out of my current creative trough - I'm spending more time dusting cameras than using them.

It'll be a nice challenge to go out and take some more pictures in my ridiculous shrunken world. It's strange but I responded to Lockdown 1.0 by wanting to take loads of pictures to document the time: during Lockdown 2.0 I cant bring myself to do much at all. I think it will be good therapy and an optimistic gesture to grab a camera and seek inspiration.

Kevin
 
kjb said:
Rookie questions - can you send a final doc straight to Mixam etc from Affinity? Is it intuitive or does it take some time to get to grips with it?
Click to expand...

You export from Affinity as a pdf which can then be uploaded to the Mixam website - but you have to be really careful as page ordering can get corrupted, as front/back cover positioning and more importantly bleeds can mess up (especially if you have double page spreads or images that overlap pages). The most reliable way is to export each page as a pdf and call it page1, page2, page3...etc and upload each one in turn, Mixam will then order them correctly.

The latter definitely worked for me withy regard to double page spreads and page bleeds last time - but I did have a little coaching from a helpful dialogue with Mixam

Incidentally Sean Tucker posted a recent video about zines last week, some useful tips


BTW only get a quote from Exwhyzed for your printing costs if you have a strong heart (it was several times more expensive than Mixam - it might be that they don't want to do low volumes!!)
 
I'm in for round 3, I even have an idea for it!

kjb said:
Rookie questions - can you send a final doc straight to Mixam etc from Affinity? Is it intuitive or does it take some time to get to grips with it?
Click to expand...

I bought & learnt Affinity Publisher for the last Zine. There are plenty of YouTube instruction videos; 'Affinity Revolution' is good if you can get past the presenter's accent, especially for setting up Master Pages. Exporting in PDF is fine as is colour management

Uploading to Mixam was probably the easiest part of the process. Very happy to help if needed
 
Less than 3 weeks to go for the commit date :)

After a multitude of ideas, several false starts (and a number of potential projects put on the backburner for the future), I have finished shooting! (unless I find a significant gap that needs plugging!!)

Now is the process of editing, collating and culling, it is this process that I find the hardest, partly as I have similar views in very different weather conditions (sun, rain, overcast (dull), fog)!
 
I was fully intending to get involved in V.3 but lockdown 2 has led to utter lethargy and a total lack of creativity. I've been dusting cameras rather than using them - along with guitars, language courses, art kit and everything else I vowed to use more in the time I'd gained. I've not even been inspired enough to curate my archive which I know has kept others going. So apologies but I'm going to sit this one out.
 
Finally, I think I have the contents sorted and built into a draft, I've found this one quite difficult, maybe its the material, maybe its just my headspace. I keep chanting (internally) "Less is More"!!! but its so hard discarding (half) decent images because they don't fit the narrative - I started with just over 600 images (shot over several visits), the initial cull gave me 98 images (some were similar duplicate views in different weather conditions) and now I'm down to less than 20, its been brutal :confused:

Maybe I'll shoot the next one on film as there will be considerably less images to start with!

Now to do the final image edits, export in CMYK and build the final zine.
 
I'm afraid I'm going to sit this one out chaps. I've got an idea and a collection of images for a zine, but I want this to be a slightly longer term project which may result in something more like a small book.

Lefty
 
Well at this rate I'll be posting one to myself and one to TonyL !!!

Fortunately I'm in another zine exchange and I timed this one to meet the dates on the other one, 13 have committed to the other one so far, so I will be sending my zine off for printing shortly :)
 
51164294785_fa57776c06_w.jpg


Sent out today. No spoilers before you get them, apart from it starts in 1646!

Mixam have done another really good job which I'm very happy with. Hope you enjoy

ps I have a couple of extra copies spare.........
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top