Creating a simple travel zine helped me turn ordinary scraps and photos into meaningful keepsakes without the intimidation of formal bookbinding.
Inspiration from Zines
A couple of posts from the photography community here on Substack brought me back to my punk rock days.
My wife and I published a few zines together when we first met.
Zines are basically DIY mini-magazines you make yourself with whatever's handy - paper, photos, staples, and maybe some glue. They started as underground publications but have evolved into a legit art form, with collectors and exhibitions dedicated to these personal, often raw creations.
Since then, I've created a few hand-bound photo books with stitched or glued binding. I’ve got ideas for some more complex books but there are many layers of resistance in the way.
Choosing the photos
Creating the layout
Printing
Obsessing over imperfect binding
And an unclear path on how to get started
But a post about handmade photo zines (with tutorials) inspired me to create a zine rather than a book. Thank you,
and .A stapled zine removed much of the resistance, and the cool thing about the zines is that I can work out some of my more complex ideas with a simple folded and stapled zine.
The Genius of the Scrap Zine Concept
I had collected a whole bag full of scraps from our last road trip—maps, campsite tickets, and all kinds of stuff like that. I knew that I wanted to incorporate them into a handmade photo book.
My fear was that all of these scraps would just end up becoming a scrapbook, which is not what I want to do.
But a scrap zine differs from a traditional scrapbook.
My hand-bound photo books are so thick that if you opened it and it was full of scraps, you'd think it was a scrapbook.
Whereas a zine is more like holding a magazine, and the scraps are like little random size pages.
It removed resistance and gave me a way to play with all these scraps that I had. It increases the speed and ease at which I can create a photo book—really a zine—and allows me to incorporate the maps, ticket stubs, and whatnot that I have collected.

The Process
This is my first time putting together a zine, and I designed it in Canva. I had to manually split the pages in half and plug the photos in. I'm sure if I was using Adobe InDesign, this would have been easier.
I started by designing the center of the book and then working out from there.
I sketched it out on some scrap paper so that as I added pages, I would know how they need to look in the layout. I knew that when I printed it and printed everything two-sided, it would work out.
Everything folded perfectly. I had a brand new stapler for doing booklets, and I definitely need to practice with it more to figure out where to staple. It's probably off by a millimeter or a 64th of an inch, and it just drives me bonkers!
I also glued some pages into a fold-out center.
Two more notes:
Save my gluing until the end.
Do a lot more fold-out pages.
I will keep in mind that it's not just the center that's being folded out, but the reverse side could be folded out as well.
When it's unfolded one way, it's a triptych, and the other way, it's like a long panoramic photo. I need to keep stuff like that in mind.
Cost
The cool thing is it's a relatively simple process. It's affordable and cost me about $1 per page. This is 5 sheets of paper printed on both sides, so 10 prints cost me about $10.
I'm not ordering it online and having somebody else produce it for me. I really love the handmade aspect of it.
Creating these zines has reconnected me with that DIY energy I felt decades ago when my wife and I published our first punk zines together.
There's something liberating about abandoning perfectionism and embracing the slightly off-center staples and uneven edges.
The point isn't flawlessness—it's getting your ideas into physical form and enjoying the process.
Community
Let me know in the comments if you make your own handmade zines or photo books of any sort, whether it's stitching, gluing, or stapling.
Please provide a link to where you post your work.
Let me know if you have any questions about the process.
I can make a tutorial from start to finish, showing you how I do things.
If you have a tutorial, go ahead and post it in the comments. I would love to see it.
Thank you,
and for the inspiration!Mat
This was so interesting. You have inspired me to start making zines whenever I travel. Would love to read a tutorial for how to design the layout, print the pictures and putting it all together
I’m currently working on two zines. They really are a lot to fun to make, the hardest part is the photo curation 😂 I think this time I’m gong to use my Canon SELPHY printer to print small prints to help curate and design the layout.