At 3 o’clock on Monday a zine workshop was held in the Phil conversation room in The GMB as part of Trinity Arts Festival. Elizabeth Rochford, of the visual arts magazine “The Bridge”, and experienced zine creator Harriet Bruce facilitated the workshop.
As Harriet explained, zines are “a way for people to publish their own work in a valid format,” without financial restrictions or advertising. They are “a platform for private work”, she claimed, which is cheap, yet allows the artists to be “as daring as they want it to be”. The publications can be very broad, including poetry, prose, sketching, collage, music, comics, photography, and more.
Another advantage to form of media is the low cost and ease of printing. In the workshop, attendees were taught how to make their own zine from one piece to folded and cut A3 paper. These zines could then also be scanned, photocopied, re-cut, and easily distributed. Harriet also pointed out that there are many printing collectives that can be reached out to for printing support.
In the short course it was emphasised that “anything you want” could be put in the zine. They stated that if you have design software like inDesign, layout of larger projects can be simply done. They explain that sourcing content for a zine is easy, and that anyone can “take anything from your sketchbook and scan it in” for use.
Folding and layout is the only difficulty. Participants used magazines and newspapers clipping to create their own zines, and black pens, as black is the best colour that scanners can pick up, and makes printing copies less of a challenge. As everyone worked on, they were advised to use a “strong image for your first and last page – like a full stop.”
