A few years ago I was really inspired to make a zine but I had troubles with the pagination. I know sugar cookie can help with this.

How do you know how many pages it will be? If the zine is several pieces of folded paper, then page 1 will have page 5 on the other side, or something like that. Do you decide how many pages first, or do you just make the pages and then figure out how many it will be? What if you have too few / too many? Do you just add a blank page at the beginning or end?????

not that i am any authority - in fact i am really pretty anti-authority, BUT - i would gather the contents for the zine, lay it it out in som rough form to see about how many pages might be needed and go from there. as far as blank pages at the front or back, i would say that is up to your own design discretion. remember: it's your zine - YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. right? i mean, any length, any content, any design - it's all up to your own imagination really. of course you might have to figure in printing costs and whatever, so how many pages, and how elaborate can you afford or are willing to invest the time to do? it rests on your omnipotence. =P

I usually figure out how many pages I'm going to put in first. Also, sometimes I make a mini-zine thing that's just a tiny book with the right amount of pages and maybe a word of what I want to put on there. (like "intro" or "interview" or something) That way, I don't really have too many extra pages or anything. (and extra pages are pretty easy to fill)

I want to see your zine if you end up making one!!

I found the eaiest way is to make a sort of template. Just fold 5 sheets of paper in half to make a little booklet and then try putting the content you have on to the blank pages. You can try things in different positions and add or subtract pages as you need. Once you're happy you can glue everything onto the blank sheets and it makes it easier to photocopy, rather than having loads of sperate sheets and getting confused at the photocopier.

That's my technique, anyway.

Hugh

Well, the problem is that I do things in really convoluted, complicated ways sometimes.

You see, I have a treasure trove of religious cards that go back almost 100 years that were rescued from the trash. The person's name was Leo and he was Italian. I don't want to use the originals, so I scanned them all and then I placed them in a Quark document. I'm not that good at doing pagination in a Quark document, either. So the project got a little complicated. Maybe what I should do is not worry about printing the layout on both sides of the paper (this is where things got confusing). It just turned into this anal project that I gave up on because it got too complicated. Or maybe the subject matter was just too serious for me to continue.

Maybe I should go back to doing silly books about silly things, and then I won't worry about Leo. But I want people to see Leo's things because they are SO COOL! The first version of the book was okay, the pages were messed up, but I printed it in color. It's neat-o.

Ack! Stupid indiepages logged me out in less than 5 minutes.

Oh, well, that was me posting above.

christine

I am planning a pagination tutorial, once I have time to do it. It is fairly simple, but there are some tricks I do to get it right, especially with weird sizes of zines. Hold on...

oh, yay, i need that!

so might you explain to a veritable village idiot what pagination is? i could look it up, i could, and i could make a reasonable assumption i suppose, but...in this age of paris beating out space station stuff as headline news - well, f*** it. =P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagination

i found pagination on wiki, i thought it was a made up word that designers used (like "signage"), but it is for real. it is the layout of pages in a document. i am still thinking how to present a tutorial... sorry i am slow.

i have made a tutorial! please check it out and let me know if everything is easy to understand. i also put a special bonus there, so check it out.

easy as PIE!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sugarcookie/sets/72157600380801555/

i am starting a zine called SHADY LANE...it's going to be about shitty roommates, shitty landlords, and shitty rental dwellings...if any one wants to send me their horror stories about renting, leasing, living in dorms, dealing with difficult roommates, shady landlords, squatting, living in sub par dwellings, etc...please do! i would like to have a zine ready to go before SPX in Washington D.C. (in case i go), and definitely before Zine-a-palooza, in Atlanta...both are in october, i believe. please send submissions here:

popgunrecordings@hotmail.com

or here:

Raoul de la Cruz
PO BOX 8062
Athens, GA 30603

thanks!

Oh, Raoul, I should totally do this. I'm glad that I checked in, maybe I can do something for you on my day off tomorrow! Are there page dimensions? Are you accepting any kind of artwork with stories that can be photocopied?

Sugar Cookie - the pagination tutorial was helpful. I've set stuff up in Quark before, but my question was mostly about how do you know how many pages your creation will be? So to see the way that you do it, not in a book at first, but just on individual pages and then placed in a book, really helped. I tried to do my book in Quark first, which just killed the creative process. Maybe I can start over by making my book a little differently. Thanks!

toot-a-loot!

i always work around how many pages first and go from there. everything you would do for a quarter size zine would be in multiples of 8, so you can keep adding pages. make sense? i have never designed a zine in quark (except for my book) cos i like the quickness of cutting and pasting. you can size things in quark (or any program - i use photoshop to clean up comics) and then print them out and cut and paste them together.

can't wait to read your zine, christine!

Hi Raoul,
I SO want to do this (lol, maybe we should have a Courtney vs. Kevin page, although he wasn't shitty at all).

Do you want text only or for us to lay out the page?

Court