My Zine Collection

Cloudfather - Kyle Alu

The sheer variety of zines in existence is pretty incredible, and even my small collection of zines shows a wide scope in style and serves as such a great little treasure trove of inspiration.

In Cloudfather zines (of which I own two) the relentless use of collaged drawings and altered cut-outs overlapping each other and facing various directions is impressive. Some pages look busy, some more thoughtful, but all have a feeling of precisely constructed fullness to them.

Cloudfather 2 - Kyle Alu

ON - Various

ON is a really cool jumble of advice, poetry, photography, and other little bits and pieces. It's a curated zine with many contributors, which gives it a nice magazine feel with lots of ideas bouncing off each other. There's a sense of community in the pages of this zine. It's dense - filled with the exciting, expanding creativity of a group of young people.

Catherine O'Keeffe

These two poetry zines are beautifully constructed. The coloured paper, folded-in-three leaflet layout, and careful placing of text give this a really smart look. I love the layout because it makes use of a single sheet of A4 in such a simple but incredibly effective way. It reminds me of a travel leaflet I once had to make for geography homework. The poems themselves are very raw and personal. The unwavering lower case lettering itself (as well the lack of punctuation) seems to offer up the vulnerability of the author (the lower case 'i' particularly evokes vulnerability, I always feel protective of those little 'i's). My favourite poem from third edition with readers notes is below.

Fliss Collier

Fun for a fiver is a zine which offers suggestions of activities to do for cheap, or for free. It is very sweet and comforting, and quite a useful and cheery sort of zine. It has several pages, and is about A6 sized with a nice weight to it. The perfect pocket zine. It offers a practicality most comparable to the advice and opinion pages of ON. The combination of its pleasing size/weight and its comforting and useful content is the most inspiring thing to me because one of the most important things about making a zine to me is the potential to trigger an emotive response in readers.

Usually when I make a zine I want to share something that I love or care about in some way. I would like to incorporate in my zines the comforting component of Fun for a fiver, the tenderness of third edition and early modern europe, the depth of creativity in ON, and the sprawling, considered compositions of the Cloudfather zines.

Listening to: Crowded House - World Where You Live