What is a zine?
Here’s the short answer: A zine is a small, self-published booklet or magazine.
Zines allow individuals, especially from marginalized communities, to share their ideas, experiences, and interests. Often handmade, zines might also permit more authentic expression than what’s found in mainstream media channels.
A Brief History of the Zine
But the long answer to the question is much more complicated. To understand zines — to grasp what they are and why they are made — we need to understand their history.
Zine-making hails from a longer lineage of do-it-yourself (DIY) culture. These small booklets first emerged as ‘fanzines’ in the 1930s and 40s, where science-fiction enthusiasts would share their favorite stories (or publish their own).
A few decades passed, and by the 1970s, the form of zines had become associated with the punk subculture. Aided with technologies like the xerographic copier, punks DIY-ed zines to share their own narratives, an important project against the conventional news that presented them unfavorably.
Nearing the twenty-first century, zines became a popular information-sharing medium at the grassroots level. Zine contents, then, shifted to the political, covering topics like feminism, identity, and avant-garde art in their pages.
Regardless of their form, cultural associations, or subject matter, zines have always been about creating community. Starting your own publication always suggests a desire for finding others with similar interests, and “willing a readership into existence,” as Hua Hsu notes in The New Yorker.
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And with self-publishing baked into the practice, zine-making has little to no ties to traditional publishers. This is why marginalized groups throughout recent history have often shared information through the zine, creating content of their own rather than relying on the traditional media ecosystem. And without the editorial constraints of traditional publishers, zines can also work as tools for honest storytelling, as a filter-free voice for the voiceless.
What can zines offer us in 2024? On the internet, content is produced much faster and audiences are much larger. Zines offer more intimate forms of expression, directed towards smaller communities over social media’s faceless ether.
Developing Zine Ideas
Outside of mainstream publishing and created by niche communities, zines have taken many forms. There aren’t many fixed rules on what the zine can or cannot be. A good way to start might be to think about what media you want to include, such as:
- Sketches and drawings
- Mini-comics
- Poetry, prose, or any kind of writing (handwritten or typed!)
- Collaged images
- A political/social manifesto!
Zine contents have varied throughout history, so if you have something to say (anything at all!), then a zine can say it.
But for specific inspiration, creators from the past might show us the power of zines: how they transform communities and make their voices heard.
Zine Examples
1. Giant Robot
Creators Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong met as fellow undergraduates at the University of California, Los Angeles, bonding over shared interests in punk music and Asian pop culture. Put two and two together, and Giant Robot was born. “Everyone was doing punk rock things here and there, and we just figured we could apply that to Asian-American topics and culture,” Nakamura once said in an interview.
As one of the first Asian-focused punk zines, Giant Robot’s pages featured Asian voices when the cultural landscape lacked it most. Authors contributed incisive essays on topics like “yellow fever” and conducted interviews with overlooked Asian artists.
The zine was discontinued after 2011, but the publication still runs an online store selling past issues and Asian-focused paraphernalia.
2. Homocore
Published in San Francisco from 1988 to 1991, Homocore was one of the first queer zines, directed toward the hardcore punk youth of the gay underground.
Its name — a blend of the words “homosexual” and “hardcore” — captured the publication’s primary audience: disenfranchised queer hardcore punks, a group that could only express itself through the community-oriented, self-published form of a zine.
As Stephen Duncombe comments in Notes from Underground, “Queer punk rockers, for example, feel unrepresented in both predominantly straight punk zines and the liberal assimilationist gay and lesbian press.” The result of this reality was Homocore, a zine that inspired AIDS activism and published LGBT advice columns and political essays.
3. Punk Planet
Based out of Chicago, Punk Planet started with concern that larger punk publications were becoming too mainstream and too elitist (after all, zines are for the people!). Their pages often included media criticism, notes on feminist praxis, and discussion of labor issues; they were known especially for extended interviews with artists and activists.
They also gained notoriety for reviewing every music album they received — often including genres far beyond the boundaries of punk, like country, folk, hip-hop. The editor’s only condition was that the record needed to come from a small, independent label.
4. Bikini Kill Zine
The punk scene of the 90s was largely male-dominated. At the time, more women were trying to share their voices within the community. Enter riot grrrl: a movement combining feminism with punk rock aesthetics and the DIY ethos. Their focus? Leftist female empowerment: challenging gender norms and addressing sexism, domestic abuse, and eating disorders, to name some.
Popular female-led punk bands in the scene began publishing zines too. The group Bikini Kill, for instance, published the “Riot Grrrl Manifesto” in their second issue of the Bikini Kill Zine, declaring important goals in the riot grrrl movement.
“Us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways,” reads the manifesto. “We must take over the means of production in order to create our own meanings.”
5. Shotgun Seamstress
Created by Osa Atoe, Shotgun Seamstress “came out of the experience of being the only black kid at the punk show,” (according to the zine’s website). First published in 2006 as a fanzine with many cut-and-paste elements, Atoe’s publication often profiled Black and Brown punk artists, giving voice to their struggles in a scene that was overwhelmingly white.
6. Profane Existence
Profane Existence is an anarchist punk collective first and a zine second, based in Minneapolis.
The collective’s publication covers (it’s still in circulation!) anti-mainstream issues like veganism, animal, women's and minority rights, anti-fascist action and the punk lifestyle. Releasing feature articles, interviews, and local reportage on Minneapolis, many have described the zine as “the largest of the anarchist Punk fanzines in North America.”
The punk-anarchist ethos is integral to Profane Existence’s visual identity: printed on each zine cover is the motto “Make Punk A Threat Again!”
So what is a zine in 2024? There are many contemporary examples that cover a variety of topics. These include Adbusters (environmentalism and anti-capitalism), The Drift (cultural criticism), Forever Magazine (fiction and poetry), Crumble (art and architecture), Cake Zine (society explored through sweets). Many can be found in independent booksellers — go support them!
How to make a zine (using Goodnotes!)
Believe it or not, Goodnotes is a great platform for making zines. The app takes away many pain points from making zines from scratch, like confusing page sizes and challenges with handwriting. Here’s how to make a zine using Goodnotes:
Create Custom Page Sizes
While most zines use A5 paper, there are few rules on what zines should be — they can take any paper size or shape (think brochures, pamphlets, and even posters).
One key Goodnotes feature is creating documents of any size. When creating a new document, tap Size > Custom and then select your desired width and height.
Even better? While creating zines physically is constrained by the kinds of paper you can use, Goodnotes’ custom page size allows you to create zines of any possible dimension.
Use Custom Backgrounds
When making zines physically, the paper types you can use are often limited. Some styles, like dotted or two-column paper, might not be available to you. Other times, you’ll only have specific colors on hand.
But on Goodnotes, all of our paper templates are customizable — whether in template or color, down to the accent level.
Read more: Our support guide on changing a page’s template in Goodnotes 6.
Even if we’re missing certain templates you want to use, you can even import your own.
Create Collages with Goodnotes
Collaging is a big part of zine-making. Because of the medium’s free form, different types of media are often collated into one page of a zine.
Goodnotes makes collaging easy: simply copy images from online or on your device, and paste them on your document.
Instead of cutting images with scissors for your collage, our freehand cropping tool also allows you to take these images and transform them into any shape you want (imagine using scissors on an iPad, except mistake-free!).
Sticker Creator via the Elements Tool
If there are specific logos, symbols, and designs that you find yourself constantly reusing throughout the zine, the elements tool is for you.
Anything you draw, write, or add into your zine can be saved with the Elements tool to be easily used again.
To add a new Element, you can either:
- Select something with the Lasso Tool or Image Tool and save it
- Import images from your camera roll or through the Files app (both photos and PDF images!) directly in the Elements picker
Read more: The elements tool — how it saves stickers, diagrams, and text across your notes.
Handwrite Poetry and Manifestos!
Even better than handwriting on physical paper is handwriting on digital. With Goodnotes, the poetry or manifestos you write on your zine are mistake-free! Rather than spending hours ensuring your prose is written and spelled correctly — our undo button and eraser can do that for you.
Bonus features:
- Since Goodnotes 6, our spell checker can read and correct handwriting
- We also have other collaging tools to help you in zine-making, like tape and highlighters
What is a zine? Something the can be made using Goodnotes.
Zines are powerful tools of self-expression. We've mentioned that they're small, self-published booklets/magazines, but we've also noted how they're a tricky medium to define, with such varying contents throughout history.
But the most definitive thing about it? Zines can be made using Goodnotes. Download our app on the App Store, on Google Play, and on the Microsoft store, too.