How a game about making zines helped me recapture my creativity in lockdown(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
How a game about making zines helped me recapture my creativity in lockdown
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/22/electric-zine-maker-video-game
5 comments
Link to game: https://alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zine-maker
This reminded me of the joys of self publishing physical media. I used to write instruction booklets that taught people how to grow hydroponics. A highly technical subject that I was trying to make accessible to people who were not technical. I got a lot of this satisfaction from writing and distributing my own software as well. Most of my enjoyment came from the interaction with others that these made possible. I also realized that I'm suffering digital burnout and I feel much the same way as the author of the article. I have considered leaving it all and probably would have were I not responsible for my family. I think this served a a powerful reminder to me about the need to create things and transmit ideas that aren't reliant on the fleeting nature of our digital world.
I've been wanting to make a photography zine of some pictures I've taken over the last couple of years, but I'm at a loss for layout tools. I used inDesign in college, but I'm really not looking to dip back into Adobe, even if it's "only" $20 a month.
Does anyone know some open source layout tools?
Does anyone know some open source layout tools?
Check out Affinity Publisher it’s not open source but it is cheap and pay once. Affinity’s tool are also great.
+1 on Affinity Publisher.
But I started with their (excellent) vector app (Design) and followed with Affinity Photo. So I'm sort of an Affinity fan now.
But I started with their (excellent) vector app (Design) and followed with Affinity Photo. So I'm sort of an Affinity fan now.
For classical layout, Scribus is fine. For more advanced stuff, Inkscape is really good at geometry and Krita really good at hand-drawing.
If you're familiar with web technology, headless firefox/chromium can export to PDF, following @print and @page rules. There's a bunch of new(er) CSS properties for print usecases. i don't have anything to show yet but i've been delighted trying it out
If you're familiar with web technology, headless firefox/chromium can export to PDF, following @print and @page rules. There's a bunch of new(er) CSS properties for print usecases. i don't have anything to show yet but i've been delighted trying it out
Do you have a scanner? I think traditional “paste-up” style zines have such a cool hand-made aesthetic. Plus, no licensing fees for a glue stick :)
I use Scribus. It can be rough around the edges, but I've made everything with it (magazines, pamphlet, art books...).
https://www.scribus.net/
Depends what you already know. I have had good success producing pdfs with chrome and html, but if you want high-dpi images for print that may or may not work for you.
I would recommend investing the time to learn and publish it in LaTeX (in all seriousness).
This program would be great for art classes! Showed the zine maker to my girlfriend who is an art teacher, she loves it. She regrets already teaching zines this year.
Alas, I got caught up in the project planning tendencies I've acquired from work. I got to design homepages for two projects/e-zines but that's pretty much all I've finished. Nested in my project directories are markdown files of stories in various stages of completion, a portfolio of digital paintings that have lost stylistic cohesion, CSS and JS files for half-baked "cool ideas". In my Trello boards are concepts and character backstories though, right now, there's only one card in-progress and null finished.
But I'm not disappointed with it! I definitely learned a lot in this ultra-unfinished project. It gave me the impetus to finally learn CSS and JS properly (as opposed to copy-pasting SO snippets to meet deadlines). And I bought a Wacom tablet and learned digital painting which is a really cool hobby to wait lockdowns out.
It is exhausting trying to do everything as a one-man team but the act of brainstorming itself is creativity-refreshing. I'd still like a finished work to point to but, with all I've already done, I have found internal satisfaction.