zines and nice things

I have been searching for types of illustrations for different purposes to see how the styles vary between topic, and have taken a liking to zines and zine culture. Over the summer I am going to make my own simple zine using pens, pencils and a photocopier. After experimenting with Quark at the start of the year, I have decided that it is far too complicated for little projects where overall quality is not immensely important. I might even use publisher.

I have found several websites which concentrate on zine culture, the first being wemakezines which is a networking site similar to facebook or myspace but purely for people interested in making zines. They even stress how they are not interested in people's social lives or interests, and simply want to use the site to compare, swap and take ideas for zines. They also arrange events, including a zine making day for 13 - 19 year olds which took place in September last year at Leeds library.

I also found this blog which I believe could be useful for publishing etc.