So, now that I’ve described an abject failure and an accidental success, it’s time to move on to the winner – meaning the zine format that actually worked well with riso scanner.

Out of the three experiments, this one was by far the simplest. Line drawings and only one colour – I printed samples with both black and medium blue. The best part about this zine, however, was the paper. I chose brown craft paper for black ink and off-white for blue ink. The black turned out to be far nicer – and the dark tone of the paper gave the opportunity to add highlights with white pencil.

I have printed the ‘dark edition’ for two local zine festivals and it has sold out both times – people seem to like the feel of the rough craft paper. And to add to all the praises – this zine was also the easiest to make.

All the pages are drawn on separate B4 sheets (standard copy paper in case anyone is wondering) with a black fineliner pen. I use the originals as blueprints for printing. After all the pages were done, I simply taped them together with a paper tape as an almost life-size dummy of the zine.

At first in pairs,

and then in fours.

On the back it looks like this:

I print it on A3, trim the edges with ruler and X-Acto knife after printing and use saddle stitch binding with two staples pr zine. (There’s a special long-armed stapler for this.)

Here you go. This one comes with a recommendation. 🙂