8 mini zines I have made #1: The uncertain nature of comedy 15/2/25

 

I still can't believe that my friend had a paper version of the egg girl, my favourite stock image from the Internet, in amongst her collaging supplies. What a find!

Making mini zines is one of my favourite, relatively healthy ways to decompress when my mind is refusing to quieten down. Crafting of any kind usually does the trick.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves 

For collage zines, I don't always start with an idea; I often just spend time scavenging and cutting out a load of images that I like until something resembling a theme emerges. This one's theme is, loosely, women and comedy. 

Was initially going to write something on the square paper bit on the left, but thought it looked better blank as it's a Busy Spread.

If I don't have enough images of a specific thing to create some kind of pattern or interesting composition, I like adding hand-drawn bits. I also love using printed text as textures; you don't need to read these parts, but there are sentences and phrases in there which subliminally add something to the 'story' (so in this one, several magazine articles about performance, play and perceptions of women in comedy/the arts). These help me to land on a theme before I start, in a similar way to the recurring images.

I like the idea that certain words might jump out as you look around the page, even though they're in the background/not obviously signposted -picking specific elements out and making meaning with them is something our brains love doing.

The black paper/stock for this zine is really nice and sturdy and tactile IRL. The colour does mean that it would be super annoying to make copies. 

This, like all of my mini zines, is very much a just-for-me thing that I made for fun. But I am proud of it, and like how this one turned out. It's got kind of a scrappy edge to it which actually, when you dig into it, is thematically appropriate to the subject. Yes.

"...perhaps women find the buzz of making a roomful of strangers laugh as much of an addictive pull as men?" This is a genuine thought someone had.