Making Your First Zine: From Idea to Illustration
Kate Bingaman-Burt · Illustrator & Educator
A working professor's zine method: fold, cut, collage, and start making today
What you will learn
- How to fold and cut a single sheet of paper into an eight-panel one-page zine with no staples
- Where zines came from and the different genres (obsession, collection, interview, bio, illustration)
- Generating content ideas fast using specific creative prompts rather than staring at a blank page
- Building imagery through collage, rub-down lettering, and photocopier/acetone-transfer techniques
- How to plan pagination and layout across the cover, spreads, and back cover before drawing anything
Standout ideas
- The one-cut, no-staple fold for turning a single 8.5x11 sheet into an eight-page booklet
- Keeping a collage scrap folder of torn magazine and National Geographic images as an analog idea bank
- Using a colorless blender (acetone) pen to transfer photocopied toner onto other surfaces for texture
Best for: Illustrators, designers, and total beginners who want a fast, low-pressure introduction to making and sharing a physical zine.
This class delivers exactly what it promises: a genuinely complete, low-cost path from blank paper to a finished one-page zine, backed by real technique (the fold-and-cut method, collage sourcing, rub-down lettering, transfer techniques) rather than vague inspiration. Its scope is narrow by design, covering only the single-sheet zine format, so anyone wanting multi-page booklet binding or digital zine-making will need to look elsewhere. At 46 minutes it moves quickly, but Bingaman-Burt's long list of concrete prompts and her own zine collection give it more substance than its runtime suggests.