How to make a mini-zine

Ahh Zines. I remember when they were quite prevalent back in the 90’s. Little tiny self made articles of interest. Published whenever the author felt like it, usually free, or maybe $1. Most were photocopied so many times that the images would distort, or have random ramblings or theories which sometimes made no sense at all. But still I liked them nonetheless, the little windows to another’s mind and creativity that they were.

With the dawn of blogging making it easier to speak one’s voice with minimal effort, the zine fad has since been killed, or at least horribly crippled. There still remains a strong zine underground as long as you know where to find it. I was surprised to find that Myspace has an exceptional amount of zines and zine distributors, along with a few zine libraries as well. Most of these pages list a way to contact them for copies, or you can just simply message them as well.

I had gotten my first glimpse of zines at a young age, when my family had hosted a small BBS from our house called, “Swagland.” My father being none other than the “Swagman” himself. The BBS had many postings that inspired everyone involved to create a zine they dubbed, “Swagazine.” Although I gladly hold possession of hard copies of the first few editions, it has since been put up on the net at www.swagazine.com.

As I have grown older, I have aspired to write my own zine that I have dubbed, “Debauchery.” However with the life events that have occurred seemingly one right after another, I have not been able to produce what I originally thought would be a great zine, full of naughty pictures and surrealistic stories of the night’s debaucheries that I myself had a hard time believing. One day I will make this zine, in all it’s glory that it deserves. Until then I have settled in making a small miniature version using the format below.


This project makes a zine that’s 8 pages including the front and back cover. The most important part, is when you fold, line up all the edges as perfect as you can, and crease well. These work great for little fliers or comic books or whatever you want. If you photocopy the paper after you have done all the designing, then you can have all the copies you want to distribute.

Note: I want to preface this project by saying if you don't know what hot-dog or hamburger style means, think back to elementary school. Hot-dog means longways (like a hot-dog bun) and hamburger means the opposite. However that's why I put the pictures so you should be able to figure it out.



You will need a piece of 8 1/2" X 11" paper, a pen, and scissors.



Start by folding the paper hamburger style. Unfold the paper and then fold the sides in to meet the first crease you made. Then it should look like the picture.


Unfold everything and then fold the paper hot dog style.


Make sure everything is creased well by folding the paper one way and then the other. When you are done unfold the paper, and you should have 8 little sections as shown in this picture.


This picture is just to show the layout of the pages. Now you can go on designing the pages however you want!


Fold the paper so it looks like a "W" like this.


Now cut the center segment. Be careful not to cut past the center segment. The alignment of the folds and this cut are the most important part of this project.


Fold the paper hot dog style, and squish out the center where you cut. (see picture) Pull it all together so it looks like a plus sign.


Find the front cover and pull everything else in behind it. Now you're done!