Embracing Limitations
Making An Insanely Small Zine
I’ve never made a zine before. After reading and observing several zines over the years, I concluded that it can be anything the artist wants to print on a page and that the utter freedom was daunting. What I most respected about the medium was its personal nature and much like illustrated comics, are a slice of that person’s identity being put on paper. Tender stuff.
After hanging out with one of the funkiest illustrator I know, Ness Lee, she invited me particpate in her zine series entitled Small Ass Zines. As the name implies, the idea here is its incredibly small size—coming in at roughly 1" by 1.125". The challenge therefore is communicating an idea told through iconic imagery and can be read at that size. I accepted this opportunity to challenge myself and kept in mind that limitations can spur creativity.
I started out with the idea of doing 8 tiny portraits of celebrities and public figures that I personally respected as a way of expressing the idea of “permanence” or the “timeless” nature of their impact on culture. These included people such as Stanley Kubrick, Massimo Vignelli, Milton Glaser, Jack Nicholson etc. After doing the first drawing, I realized a couple things: 1) All the facial details would be lost at the size of the zine 2) it seemed somewhat contrived to convey these faces in such a manner.
As I resolved to find something more playful and personal, I stumbled on the Twitter musings of the illustrious John Hendrix:
“As a person who has dedicated my life to the value of art, I’m not sure I know what ‘art that makes a difference’ really is…if your primary goal in your work is to say something ‘important’- it’s probably going to fail. Ultimately, I think most transcendent art is made from an artist’s nearly-insignificant desire to show some tiny thing they love to others.”
Humorously, this was literally a “tiny” product but more importantly, reading that was a significant psychological step to embracing this project further. I decided to illustrate 7–8 things that I deemed as timeless objects to place in the zine’s inner pages along with the title in a Spencerian Script for the fold-out.
In the end I decided on a list of seven things: The Chinese character ‘永’ meaning ‘forever’, a portrait of Stanley Kubrick, a piece of Toro sushi, the Bible, a very particular kind of not-too-thick-not-too-thin Chinese rice noodles, a piece of futomaki (太巻) and a pair of leather boots made by British label Grenson. As a final statement, the zine opens to foldout mini-poster of the title.
In hindsight, it was difficult to pinpoint what things I truly hold dear to the point of calling them ‘timeless’. Alas, a finely crafted piece of sushi is ageless — still being mastered by chefs for decades. Footwear by Grenson are made with a level of craftsmanship that would never go out of style. Kubrick’s films forever left an impressionable mark on cinema. This kind of reasoning spurred the inclusion of each item.
Lastly, I’m happy to annouce that the zine along with the rest of the collection made by 30+ artists will be exhibited at the Tokyo Art Book Fair in late September and Toronto’s Canzine in November!
Special thanks to Ness for the incredible learning experience!
