Mini Zine March 2024 has proven to be a great success and it’s not even over yet.
It’s the first time I participate in this challenge, so I’m very proud of myself to have completed the limited series of mini zines about languages that I planned on making this month. That is seven mini zines of around 16-24 pages each.
What I’m really proud of is that I decorated the zines and the pages all by hand. I designed the cover also by hand and used regular color crayons for that purpose so they all came out nice and colorful.
In some of the zines. I used pictures I printed from Google, but most of the drawings and decorations, I made by hand. So that was a new skill I taught myself because I never used such decorations for my zine pages before. I usually use backgrounds I print from Google or from flyers I collect around town. Sometimes I use Washi tape for decorations as well. But this time, I decided to challenge myself and draw stuff by hand. Sometimes the drawings fit the theme of the respective zine, sometimes they didn’t, but either way, I used them simply as decorations to make the zines more aesthetically appealing.
The covers were also a challenge for me. I attempted to use different fonts for the name of the series (“Speaking in Tongues”) and the second name of each issue. But all these fonts were once again made by hand. At times, I looked up funky fonts on Google, and copied the letters by hand, decorated it with the color crayons and organized it on the cover with a color background I drew.
Seeing the final product come together was so satisfying, I decided to use that same method for some of my future zines too.
After I finished the last issue, I was happy, but also felt a sense of loss because I had no more zines to work on. And the fact that I got a chance to use my zine room for its original purpose was so exciting, and now that I won’t need to use it anymore until International Zine Month was rather sad.
I’m considering making an ongoing zine that I will type on typewriter and decorate by hand with color crayons, and only work on it in my zine room. That way, anytime I finish a zine, I won’t feel that same sense of loss because I’ll still have my ongoing zine to work on!
These last days of Mini Zine March will be used for printing the zines and sending them to my zine friends and anyone who might be interested in checking out this series in all its hard-copy glory. Later on, I’ll also add it to my Ko-Fi shop so people can download it in PDF format as well.
Now here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.
Speaking in Tongues
Issue 1 – Intro
Issue 2 – Hadaß Badaß
Issue 3 – Maudite Marde
Issue 4 – Ich liebe Deutsch!
Issue 5 – Enunciate It
Issue 6 – Broken Tongues
Issue 7 – I Dream in Tongues
Peace, love and zine challenges kick ass!