This eight-page, handwritten and hand-drawn primer was created by Floral Park, New York-based minicomics artist Julia Gforer. Offering “step-by-step instructions to make your own book without a computer,” the DIY zine focuses on digest-sized publications, recommended for about 40 pages or fewer. “A book like this is ephemeral in exchange for being accessible,” Gforer writes.
With easy-to-follow instructions and steps, she walks fledgling zine makers through preparing pages on half of an 8.5”-by-11” inch sheet of paper, making sure the page count is divisible by four, preparing a dummy book so each side of an 8.5”-by-11” piece of paper includes pages whose page numbers add up to total n+1, where n is the number of pages total. (For example, a 12-page zine would pair pages 12 and 1, 11 and 2, 10 and 3, and so on. That’s really the trickiest bit, to ensure your pages sequence appropriately when you go to photocopy or print.
The primer reminded me slightly of Ron Rege, Jr.; Dave Choe; Brian Ralph; and Jordan Crane’s more widely ranging Re: A Guide to Reproduction, as well as Jessica Abel’s “DIY: Making Minicomics,” which takes on the more complicated minicomics format (four pages per side vs. two pages). Minicomics maestro Matt Feazell also offered a minicomic about making minicomics at one time.
But this is all you should need to get started, really. Gforer’s approach is easy and elegant, like this how-to zine. As Bread and Puppet Theater said in its 1984 “Why Cheap Art?” manifesto, which is quoted on the back cover, “Art has to be cheap and available to everybody. It needs to be everywhere because it is inside of the world.”
Available for $1 from http://www.thorazos.net; https://www.etsy.com/shop/thorazos.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment