44 zine ideas you could finish this week
The mistake most first zines make is being about too much. Every idea here is about one small thing — small enough to fill eight pages and be done. Each one links to a template that's already written, so you start by editing instead of by staring.
Where you live
The subject you know better than anyone, and the one nobody else will write down.
The six best benches in your neighbourhood
One bench per page: where it is, what you can see from it, who sits there at 7am.
Start with the Field Notes templateOne street, four seasons
Photograph the same stretch from the same spot every season and write what changed.
Start with the Photo Essay templateShopfronts that have been there longest
Ask the owners how long they've been open and what used to be next door.
Start with the Photo Essay templateA walking route with no landmarks
Directions by smell, sound and the dog that always barks at the third gate.
Start with the Field Notes templateEverything growing out of the pavement
Weeds, moss and one stubborn tree, identified badly and described well.
Start with the Field Notes templateYour bus route, stop by stop
What is outside the window at each stop, and who gets on there.
Start with the Travel Journal template
Food and home
Recipes are the most-kept zines there are, because people cook from them for years.
Your grandmother's five dishes
Written down before they're only remembered — with the stories she tells while cooking.
Start with the Recipe Zine templateMeals for one, under twenty minutes
The honest weeknight cooking nobody puts in a cookbook.
Start with the Recipe Zine templateEverything you can make with a tin of chickpeas
One ingredient, eight pages, no repeats.
Start with the Recipe Zine templateA house-share cookbook
Each housemate contributes the one thing they actually cook well.
Start with the Recipe Zine templateThe breakfast menu of your street
What each café does best, reviewed at the table it's best eaten at.
Start with the Field Notes templateYour plants and how you kept them alive
Care notes, near-death experiences, and the cutting that became four plants.
Start with the Field Notes template
Writing
A zine is the lowest-stakes way to finish something and put it in someone's hands.
Ten poems written on your commute
The constraint is the collection: each one written between two stops.
Start with the Poetry Chapbook templateLetters you never sent
Addressed to a place, a former self, or a band that broke up.
Start with the Poetry Chapbook templateA short story in eight scenes
One scene per page, so the page turn does the work of a cut.
Start with the Kids' Storybook templateOne year of a personal newsletter
Collect your best issue essays into something people can hold.
Start with the Personal Newsletter templateOverheard, a collection
Things strangers said on trains, in queues and in the next booth, with where you heard them.
Start with the Poetry Chapbook templateThe case for something unpopular
One argument you believe and most people don't, made properly over eight pages.
Start with the Personal Newsletter template
Art and photography
A zine turns a folder of images into a sequence, and a sequence says more than a grid.
Your best twelve photographs from a year
Choosing twelve from thousands is the whole creative act.
Start with the Photo Essay templateA sketchbook, curated
The drawings worth keeping, with a line on what you were trying to do.
Start with the Art Portfolio templateA portfolio for one kind of client
Only the work that fits the job you want next — send the PDF instead of a link.
Start with the Art Portfolio templateOne colour, everywhere
A photo essay of everything yellow within a mile of your door.
Start with the Photo Essay templateBefore and after
A room, a garden or a bike being restored, told in pairs of pictures.
Start with the Photo Essay template
Music and scenes
Zines came out of music scenes, and they still document them better than anyone else does.
An interview with a local band
Before anyone else thinks to ask them anything.
Start with the Band Zine templateEvery gig you went to this year
Ticket stub, the set's best song, and what the room was like.
Start with the Band Zine templateA guide to your city's small venues
Capacity, the bar, the sound, and where to stand.
Start with the Band Zine templateTen records that explain you
One page each on why it arrived when it did.
Start with the Personal Newsletter templateA tour diary
Dated entries from the van, the floors you slept on, and the one great show.
Start with the Travel Journal template
School and kids
Making a real booklet is a better project than a poster, and children finish it proud.
A story your child dictated
Their words, exactly as said, with their own drawings on the opposite page.
Start with the Kids' Storybook templateA class zine about your school
Each student gets one page on the part of school nobody else notices.
Start with the Event Program templateA field guide to the school garden
Every plant and insect the class can find, drawn and named.
Start with the Field Notes templateA history project as a zine
One person or event, told in eight pages instead of an essay.
Start with the Personal Newsletter templateA bedtime story starring the family pet
The pet has one adventure. The adventure is mild. Everyone sleeps.
Start with the Kids' Storybook template
Events and groups
Anything that happens once deserves a printed thing people can take home.
A wedding order of service
The running order, the readings, and a page on how the two of you met.
Start with the Event Program templateA memorial booklet
A life told plainly, with the photographs family keep reaching for.
Start with the Event Program templateA community garden handbook
Who looks after what, where the tools live, and what to plant when.
Start with the Field Notes templateA reading group's year
Every book, one line from each member, and the one that started an argument.
Start with the Personal Newsletter templateA fundraiser programme
What's happening, who made it happen, and exactly where the money goes.
Start with the Event Program templateA street party souvenir
Photos, the menu, and the names of everyone who brought a chair.
Start with the Photo Essay template
Gifts and personal
A zine made for one person is the best present on this page, and costs almost nothing.
Fifty things you love about someone
A birthday present that takes an evening to make and gets kept for decades.
Start with the Poetry Chapbook templateThe story of how you met
Told by both of you, in alternating pages that don't quite agree.
Start with the Kids' Storybook templateA trip you took together
The itinerary, the photos, and the thing that went wrong that you still laugh about.
Start with the Travel Journal templateAdvice for your younger self
Eight pages, one piece of advice each, with the year you learned it.
Start with the Personal Newsletter templateA year in your life, one page per month
Twelve months is too many for eight pages, which forces the choice that makes it good.
Start with the Travel Journal template
Picked one?
Open its template, replace the writing with yours, and download a watermarked copy to check it. The clean print-ready PDF is $2.99, once — and only if you want it.