Lockdown Zines

When the first pandemic lockdown hit in 2020, I came across a blog post by Austin Kleon on Zines.

Intrigued by this creative process and wanting to create something tangible with my hands I decided to experiment with a few zines myself.

It started off with one per week. Instead of capturing my scrum master weekly learnings in a notebook (which will be lost months later) I captured my learnings as a weekly zine.

It was important that I kept the process light so that 1) its sustainable and 2) enjoyable! Like many things, if it’s too heavy, we give up before starting.

The process in 5 easy steps

• Write down weekly learnings
• Decide on the paper, pens, materials, layout, and content for the zine
• Fold paper into zine (link to video of how to fold an A4 paper into a zine)
• Piece together the text, images, materials onto folded zine
• Repeat 😊

The most enjoyable part was coming up with the concept, finding different materials and putting it together. The results were surprisingly satisfying. I made 10 zines then stopped. I may go back to it later but with a slightly different approach.

Credit to Austin Kleon for his fresh thinking and inspirational weekly newsletter.

I’ve been following him a few years now and these still keeps me going. From art to music to books or just plain ‘ol interesting daily discoveries.

He has a range of books which I’ve bought. They are easy to read and the ideas easily actionable. Check them out here.

Zine above : paper stained with tea, suede material stuck on sides.

Zine below : paper burnt at edges with charcoal finishing in between.

To some extent these zines wasn’t just me recording my weekly learnings and experimenting with zine-making. I guess in some way it was also an outlet to get me through the lockdown. Help make sense of it all.

To create something meaningful. To create something to look forward to.