The idea that print will cease to exist is bizarre. Print is everywhere and if it disappears it will take a lot, the tactility in books, the pleasure of smelling a printed page. Print cannot and will not 'die', it will just adapt and grow within the digital world. Zines, for example, always the type of publication that is mainly handmade. Nevertheless, zine designers adapted, and nowadays there are endless possibilities for creating a zine using digital tools. Softwares like InDesign exist for cleaner, professional and less fear of making a mistake and ruining the whole thing zines. Additionally, there are a lot of artists that prefer to do it themselves creating handmade zines that can be scanned into a computer for printing and distributing/circulating to the public.

Teal Triggs, a graphic design historian, critic, educator, and owner of a vast zine collection that acquired along her career, was invited to talk about that same collection in an interview with “It’s that nice” magazine (2015). Triggs defends the tactility of her collection - consisting of self-published, and occasionally held together with safety pins zines -  and zines in general saying “Ultimately when you handle the material you see things in a completely different way. A photograph of a zine online may mean that you miss that six-point, hand-scrawled note in the left-hand corner in the margin that’s half-covered by a staple. It’s the act of opening it up and there being a little surprise, a delicious little bit of content that lets us access what this individual wants to say. We gotta keep that going.”

In this essay, I will prove that zine designers use the digital overpower of the world as a tool rather than a threat. While also presenting different purposes on what makes a zine a zine.

Here are a couple of projects that distribute and present zine culture in a different way, while supporting various artists/designers using a digital tool. The shophouse walking tour kit in japan (in zines) by Kia Kia, a mass-printed project that gives you a tour of the Penang Shophouses in a variety of zines. As well as, the zine-o-maniac website, a space in the digital world to subscribe and receive, every month, a collection of zines. Furthermore, some cases that question the “print is dead” discussion, being, the analyzing of a study conducted by student Chloe Parks about the future of zines. An interview directed by me to the owner of Books Peckham and an advocate to zine culture, Petter Wills. As well as some references I found in the way.

The New York Times article “why the internet didn’t kill zines” (2017) quotes Shakar Mujukian, the publisher of The Hye-Phen — “a zine by and about queer and trans-Armenians who, as he puts it, often ‘feel as ignored and invisible as their motherland’” as he describes zines as “the precursor to personal blogs”, but are they? Zines have such a flexible aspect to them that the purposes can be infinite. Devin N. Morris, quoted in the same article as above says that zines have a way of encouraging people to have “inspiring interactions in real life.” In a way, social apps don’t. 

The shophouse walking tour kit in japan by Kia Kia (Fig.1) gives us just that, this project (Kia Kia, 2018) encourages people to explore, wander, and rediscover the city. The kit consists of three zines of different topics: introduction (introduce you to the origin, types of shophouses in Penang), characteristics (gives you an idea of what makes a shophouse, a shophouse), documentary (documents the special traditional trades, little conversations in Penang), one brochure map, one Penang Hokkien slang book, postcards, stickers, and vouchers. This transforms the purpose of zines from ‘just a personal blog’ into a more artistic and creative encyclopedia (fig.2). Are, also, mass-produced and digitally designed. That shows the designer, Eve Lyn Lau, used a digital tool to create and distribute these tactile prints.

The production line of a zine consists of the designer making the page - using all kinds of materials, whether it’s digital (like a collage, not creating it fully digitally) or not -, repeating that a couple of times until you have enough pages, organizing them and stapling them together. This process works for one-of zines but the presence and the evolution of the digital world helps that one-of zine turn into a mass-printed one through the scanning and printing of that original one.

Zines are not used only on the purpose of having and transmitting a message, they are sometimes used as mini-galleries to showcase the artist’s work. These types of zines need a cleaner and more professional look, therefore the need for creating these online is high. This project presents that concept of artist zines and distributes theses through the digital world. It is a project that supports zine makers conducting their work by hand or digitally, and then mass-printing it, distributing, and sharing it through a monthly subscription system online (fig.3). The zine-o-manic project is that monthly zine subscription service that (Zine-o-Matic, 2015) ”curates and ships a full package of zines, stickers, and indie art to your doorstep” (fig.4).

These were just a couple of projects that prove that printed zines are thriving and will continue to grow alongside the digital world. But to add and support this argument I found this study by Chloe Parks, a student at California Polytechnic State University, conducted a debate to discover if the creation of handmade zines will continue in the future, despite the immense digital options for those making them, as it was conducted by a student the results come with limitations. While interviewing members of the zine-making community, receiving a lot of defenders of print, (Parks, 2013) "It is interesting to note that every participant in the study had a URL to offer as a digital presentation of their work (zines, art, portfolio, etc.). A majority also mentioned social networking and blogging sites as filters through which they share their work.", this shows how the community of zine-makers adapted into the digital era and that even though a total handmade work is done, the presenting and distributing part is made mainly in the digital world. 

Lastly, I was able to direct an email interview with Peter Wills, the owner of Peckham Books a second-hand shop for books and zines in Peckham, and - as quoting his website “RIP dead trees and dye zine distro - viva BOOKS.” - a promoter of the zine culture. To the question ‘What does it feel like to produce/sell something like a zine, nowadays?’ The answer was “I think it's easier now than ever both to produce a zine & also to get it out in the world through shops or zine fairs or direct. I think there are so many ways to get your work out there or to create something that choosing to make a zine, as something physical, means something & means that that work can navigate the world in a different way.”

The digitalization is a trend that grew from the modern economy, and installed itself in every aspect of the world - not just in print - however, this trend in Wills’s view didn’t reach zines, because of its DIY creative culture. “I think zines and DIY productions have always been kind of separate to trends like digitalization that are the main issues for industries that are reliant on profit - whereas with zines money isn't really the issue so there has always been that freedom in terms of the format. So I think that hasn't been much change in the zine world other than interesting uses of online formats like Horrid COVID zine is doing at the moment, including video and online formatting with zine type content. For books, I do think there has been a shift towards more high-end designed stuff, like the book as an object as a way to continue to make money, which I think is a problem. But as I said above I'm not totally convinced the issue is necessarily with the digital more that there are outdated publishing structures.” Wills responded in his view on the digitalization of the zine culture, thinking on how these printed pieces, such as zines and books, are ‘surviving’ this digital trend.

Finalizing, as Wills defended the idea that print is not dead and will not die, religiously.  “I think it's nonsense, to be honest, and pretty much been discredited at this point. There is a great book called Post Digital Print by Alessandro Ludovico which has a whole chapter tracing this argument of the death of print essentially for over 100 years - every new technology that comes along is supposedly going to kill print off. I think there are arguments to be had around knowledge sharing and access but I think the end of print is vastly exaggerated.” 

Like suggested by Peter Wills, Alessandro Ludovico (2012) said the death of paper prints is yet to happen, as the printed page is more valuable and reliable to the people. Nowadays everyone can put their life and thoughts into the internet, but making a book out of these will take more. Therefore, people consider that the printed page must have better information since it takes time and money to create.

Print is very far from “dying” and it will continue to evolve and adapt in this digital era. The responses from these projects and artists explain how zines can feel more intimate and creative than a tweet. The care and work that goes into them is greatly important, yet that does not mean that the evolution of the digital world is going to make print die. It just means that the community is adapting and using these developments to grow.