How to Make a Collaborative Zine (and why you should)
✨The magic of making something together✨
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In February, my friends and I attended our third annual trip to Lake Waccamaw, during which we rent a huge lake house for “a long weekend of crafting, cooking, laughing, hiking, eating, napping, and following our whims wherever they lead.”
One of this year’s whims was to make a collaborative zine! I’m biased, of course, but I think the result is a beautiful, chaotic, sentimental, inspiring, irreverent, and creative souvenir from a perfect weekend. I hope it becomes a yearly tradition.
While making it, I realized the collaborative route is a great introduction for first-time zinesters—making one together is much less intimidating than going it alone. It’s also a fun way to invite others into your creative process. Instead of cutting and pasting alone at my desk, I get to share the experience with people I adore and get inspired by the unique ways they approach our group assignment. What could be better?!
If you want to make your own collaborative zine, my instructions (and warnings!) are below. If you want to buy a copy of our zine, Venmo $15 to @Christine-Hennessey or PayPal Me, and include your mailing address. These full-color beauties will be printed to order, so please allow two weeks for delivery! 💛
✂️ How to Make a Collaborative Zine In 5 Easy-ish Steps
1. Gather your collaborators
This step was easy, since I had a captive audience of creative people willing to humor me, but it’s important to remember that your collaborators don’t need to be writers or artists. Anyone can (and should!) make a zine! The barrier to entry is low, and that’s what makes it so fun. Start by sending an invite, texting the group chat, or taking advantage of an existing event, like a book club or a birthday party.
2. Pick a loose theme
The first night of our weekend, I gave a short presentation to explain what a zine is and spark some inspiration. (You can view my presentation here!) For our collaborative zine, I offered a few guardrails—I often find that working within limitations makes me more creative. Here were my very loose instructions:
Create 1-3 pages inspired by this weekend. Some ideas:
Imagined lore from Myrtle’s life and legacy.
A made up history of parrots, fatmuckets, found whale skulls, or Lake Waccamaw.
A graphic representation of your favorite moment from this trip.
A list of everything you’ve eaten this weekend. Bonus: include a recipe.
A conspiracy theory about what is going on with Dale’s flounder.
Amazing facts about the longleaf pine.
Your theme can be as specific or vague as you like. Last year, a friend of mine made a collaborative zine about sandwiches; in college, I did a series on obsessions. Niche does not mean boring—passion can make anything interesting.
3. Set parameters and expectations
I told everyone I would photocopy and bind the zine the following week, then promptly deliver their commemorative copies. Any subsequent sales would go toward next year’s Waccamaw fund. What I did NOT realize is that printing in full color is WAY more expensive than black and white. Color was necessary for this zine, however (we’re a bright and bold bunch!) which is why it's a bit more expensive than my solo work. Keep printing costs in mind if you choose to make a collaborative zine and decide ahead of time if your project will be in color or black and white. To keep things simple, our format was a simple 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, folded in half—a classic size and easy to copy.
Finally, a week turn-around was overly ambitious. It took me over a month to put the zine together. Luckily my friends are very patient!
4. Choose a deadline and collect submissions
If you’re in-person for a weekend, like we were, pages are simply due before checkout. If this is a long distance zine, you can create a shared Google folder or (my favorite) hand out your mailing address. Just find a way to get those beautiful pages to the person responsible for putting it all together, preferably in a timely fashion.
5. Choose an editor and assemble!
Since this was my idea and since zines are my ✨thing✨ right now, I was the natural editor for this project. I took all the pages home, laid them out on my guest bed (an essential part of my process) and got to assembling.
I suppose you could use a digital program, like Canva or InDesign, to put your zine together. I prefer scissors and glue. Everyone gave me their blessing to edit as needed, so I took a few liberties—adding color to a black and white page, combining two pages into one, straight up collaging the cover, etc.
Since each page was made by a different person (14 of us!) it took a while to find a narrative thread and figure out the flow and order of things. I moved things around, grouped pages by theme, and eventually an arc began to emerge. Once I was satisfied, I headed to Office Depot, spent approximately one zillion dollars, and made 15 copies as a first run.
These annual weekends in Lake Waccamaw give me many intangible gifts—connection, inspiration, deeper friendships—but it’s so nice to complement those things with something tangible, too. I love zines, and getting to share that love with some of the raddest people I know is the best gift of all. 💛
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👋 About Me: I’m Chrissy Hennessey, an enthusiastic snacker and native New Yorker living in coastal North Carolina, where I stayed after earning my MFA. My writing has appeared in a decent number of journals, I’ve received fellowships to some fancy residencies, and I’ve written three unpublished novels. This newsletter is a passion project I started in 2019 as a way to connect with artists and writers, share my creative journey, and build a community. Thank you for being here!
I love the thought of zines. They seem so simple and doable until I start to think about doing one. LOL