If you have been following along with the , you know this week is dedicated to showing your appreciation for the postal system! Without this great system, zines would not be able to travel all around the world to find their way into our mailboxes and into our hearts.
To celebrate Day 9 of International Zine Month, why not purchase some stamps, envelopes or postcards? Or check out these great tutorials on how to create your own personalized envelopes and stationery?
How to:
Make an envelope without tape or glue (Horizontal Bar Design)
You may have noticed a few changes around the 24 Hour Zine Thing website lately:
The Participants page has been updated and rearranged by location! Now you can find others in your area that are also participating in this year’s event.
After tons of questions, participant response, and a lot of thinking, the official rules for the 24 Hour Zine Thing have slightly changed. Check out the brand new Frequently Asked Questions page for the latest updates.
Check out the Contact page for links to the Twitter and Facebook page, as well as buttons that you can use to tweet us questions and stay in touch with other participants using the #24HZT hashtag.
And more great changes are coming soon! Do you have an idea on how this site/event could be even better? Tweet it, post it on our Facebook wall, leave a comment on the blog or e-mail it, and I will work to put it in action!
This year’s 24 Hour Zine Thing is right around the corner, and it will be here before you know it! Participating in the 24 Hour Zine Thing is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
1. Sign-up as a participant!
Head to the Sign Up page and complete the brand new form.
Want to see who is already signed up? You can view this year’s current participant list (and find links to past participants) on our Participants page.
2. “Like” the Facebook Page!
People are already talking about this year’s event over on the .
3. Follow us on Twitter!
Find us at , and be sure to use #24HZT to join the conversation and keep everyone posted on your progress!
And that’s it! Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for July 1st to roll around. In the meantime, check out the interviews, zine reviews, and tutorials we have throughout the site to get the creative juices flowing!
2011 has been a great year for zines. The year was filled with zinesters all over the world working on the , and 21 participants successfully completed the 2011 24 Hour Zine Thing by sending in their completed zines, not to mention the many others that completed their zines for local challenges and events.
I already have a feeling 2012 will be just as great. is already planning their for January 14th through January 15th. July is such a long time away so this is a great opportunity to ring in the new year with some other creative individuals and work on your first zine of 2012.
If you are a zine library, bookstore, distro, etc. and would like to start planning a 2012 24HZT event in your town, please keep in touch! I am more than happy to help in any way possible.
Thursday was the deadline to have your zines in for the 2011 24 Hour Zine Thing event, and I have received some beautiful submissions this year! This was the 5th year that I have hosted this event, and it’s amazing to see how different the zines are from year to year. 2011 was all about handmade touches and color copies. Here are the triumphant participants that finished their zine for this year’s challenge!
1. Rachel – Food Issue
2. Kirsty – On A Sugar High 1.5
3. Michelle – Missouri Jam Bomb
4. Brandy – Pixelated 1.5: Attack of the Oil Pastels (Of Doom)
5. Hannah – Undestructable #1
6. Persephone Pomegranate – Reclusive Obscenities
7. Rob – Zero Hour! Printaissance Special Edition
8. Jen – The Power of Craft Compels You!
9. Anonymosity – Green Power [A Guide to Eco-Lifestyle]
10. Deirdree – Elliot Smith Stabbed Himself In The Heart
11. Rory – Posture #2: Create or Perish
12. SBRC – Forget Me Not: A 24 Hour Zine
13. Rick Silva – Caravan #28: Adventures in Geeky Parenting
14. Dennis – Amina
15. Samantha – Unfun (a jawbreaker fanzine)
16. Philip Dearest – Being Brave Is One Thing
17. E*phi – The (almost 6x) 24hrs in Berlin Zine
18. Crystal – Teachers
19. Wes White – Villanelle
20. Jenn – Jacks Heart
21. Alex Wrekk – Brainscan #26.5
If you do not see your zine listed here but have already sent it out, or just completely forgot, send me an email at 24hourzines[at]gmail.com and we will work it out!
Things are beginning to wrap up around here for this year’s event. I have spent the day addressing envelopes, so if your zine is listed here your Participant Pin (pictured above) will be sent out on Tuesday. The sign-up sheet is open, so if you like to be an early bird go ahead and sign up for next year’s event!
Thank you to everyone who signed up, sent in their zine, organized or attended an event, and even the ones who attempted but did not finish. No worries! All that matters is that you helped to keep zines alive and going, which is what this event is all about.
We have a winner! The wonderful pin design featured on our 2011 Participant Pin was created by Katie of ! Katie is extremely active in her town’s zine culture, and successfully hosted an event in her apartment in Birmingham for the 2011 24 Hour Zine Thing Challenge! She was gracious enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions for us about her involvement in zines, how to create a zine culture in your hometown, and more! You can read the interview and see pictures of zines completed during the event below the cut.
Rick Silva is the creator of the wonderful zine Caravan, and has participated in the event for three years now! Who better to ask about conquering the 24 Hour Zine Thing challenge?
Why did you decide to participate in the 24 Hour Zine Thing challenge? It’s a great excuse to exercise some creativity. If not for the zine challenge, well, I didn’t HAVE to put a zine together this summer. It’s a great motivator to do something extra.
What type of pre-planning, if any, did you do before starting on your 24 hour zine? My only pre-planning was to brainstorm a bit for ideas. With any kind of writing, I tend to mull it over in my head for quite a bit before I actually sit down to write it out.
How did you get your idea for the topic of your 24 hour zine? My inspiration is right there (usually demanding that I play with him or feed him!). My wife did one minicomic about our first summer with our son. I wanted to do my own autobiographical piece. I also thought that I had enough fun material stored up from the past two years or so, that I could really do a fun take on “geeky parenting”.
How did you come to the decision to use the type of binding method and size that you chose? I wanted to do some cartooning, so I knew I had to go pretty small or else I’d never get the zine done in time. I can’t draw at all, so I was using really crude stick figures, and I didn’t want to agonize over re-drawing them every time, so I knew I’d need to digitally copy/paste. Thus the decision for quarter-sized and to lay the whole thing out in MS Word.
Was completing the challenge harder than you expected? Definitely harder. It took me longer than I thought it would to come up with dialogue for some of the situations. I also ran into a lot of technical problems with getting the images where I needed them to be. MS Word is NOT designed to be a layout program, but it worked for me because I’m very familiar with its functions, so I knew how to work around its limitations. It wasn’t always easy, though.
What advice would you give to others who are attempting the 24 Hour Zine Thing challenge? Avoid preconceived notions about what the project needs to be. The really great thing about zines is that they can take any shape/size/form. So stretch the boundaries of your ideas. Don’t feel like your zine needs to look like other zines you’re seen or read. It only needs to look like YOUR zine.
Shannon was one of the organizers for the 24 Hour Zine Thing for a few years, and created this amazingly honest 24 hour zine for the 2007 challenge. If you participated in the 2007 24HZT Grab Bag exchange, you were lucky enough to receive a copy of this zine!
Name: Shannon City: Dieppe, New Brunswick Zine Goal: Size: I’m predicting quarter size, or tall half size Personal Challenge: I’d like to make something more artsy as opposed to my typical perzine, or themed issues. But we’ll see when it all happens! My zines are usually only 16 pages, so 24 will be more of a challenge.
For her 24 hour zine, Shannon decided to explore the idea of “dirty little secrets”, noting on her first page that “it depends on the person, to determine how horrible the thing that was done” truly is. She goes on to list her own top ten dirty little secrets, describing her own feelings towards each of the subjects and how she handles these secrets throughout her everyday life. The secrets range from past experiences that she now regrets, her own feelings about herself, as well as recent events that had posed a problem in her life. Probably one of the most personal zines submitted to the 24 Hour Zine Thing project, Shannon’s zine is definitely a must-read.
As of midnight last night, the 2011 24 Hour Zine Thing is officially over! Congratulations to everyone who participated and a special thanks to everyone who hosted a 24HZT event! If you have any pictures from your event you would like to share, please feel free to post them onto the Facebook wall.
Now that the event is over, it is time to reproduce those zines, send a copy in to us here at the 24HZT, and get your zine out into the world! Trade it with others, submit a copy to a zine distro, send extra copies to zine libraries! The possibilities are truly endless.
If you would like to receive a nice shiny 24 Hour Zine Thing Participant Pin, send a copy of your zine, along with your name, mailing address and email address to:
Raven / 24 Hour Zine Thing
PO Box 2001
Abingdon, VA. 24210
USA
Once your zine is received, it will be scanned, reviewed, and posted to the blog for everyone to see!
Be on the lookout later this week to find out who won the 2011 24 Hour Zine Thing Participant Pin Design Contest!
The 24 Hour Zine Challenge asks zinesters to create a 24-page zine
from conception to final product in 24 hours straight.
Zines should be of suitable size and technical difficulty
so that this truly is a challenge for individual zinesters.
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