For crafters up for some advanced activities, look no further than Zine Making and Bookbinding: A Beginner’s Guide in 25 Projects. Brooklyn, New York-based Lauren Simkin Berke is an artist, illustrator and educator who knows her stuff, having taught illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design. “Creating a book or zine allows you to play at the intersection of image making, object making, design, and authorship,” she writes. The possibilities are endless.
First things first: Zines are “informal and inexpensively created booklets.” Add a hard cover and you’ve got a book. Berke’s writing is detailed, clear and full of the nuts and bolts of making things like board books, pop-ups and flexagons, which are “squares that look like they have only two sides, though there are more sides hidden within.” She also includes instructions for creating tunnel books—a series of cut panels that create the illusion of depth and perspective. Berke notes accordion book ornaments “can easily be made en masse,” which sounds like an ideal holiday gift project.
The book would benefit from photos, but Berke’s hand-drawn illustrations are a nice touch; they’re assisted by a chapter on getting started that includes materials needed, a sample of a DIY book press and technical names for parts of a book. (You’ve heard of a book’s spine, but did you know that hardcover books have tails?) Berke also includes idea prompts, bookbinding resources and suggestions for further reading. Zine Making and Bookbinding is a detailed handbook for motivated self-starters.
