That is not a snappy title, but it is an accurate one. I thought it would be helpful to share this quarter size zine template that I made for myself with you all. I made it both as a direct Canva1 template link and as something you can copy onto a piece of paper. If you like it please use it and share it, and thanks to everyone who shares and shouts me out, I really appreciate you spreading the zine love.
Quarter sized zines are made from a piece of paper folded into half twice and are the first zine I was introduced to in my infancy2. I feel like quarter size zines are the perfect starter size. I know a lot of people start with mini zines, and I recommend those for classroom use (no stapler required3), but they are really quite small. Haiku, after all, is not an easier type of poem to write just because it’s tiny.
Quarter sized zines give you six, 5.5” x 4.25” pages to work with (if you’re in the US), enough to get into it, but not so much that it becomes imposing. They are the standard “mini comix” zine size, and I have many fond memories of folding and stapling my dad’s zines with him at the kitchen table. They can be printed on cardstock as well to give them a bit more oomph (if your printer can handle it) and you can keep adding pages as you go.
Page counts for this size need to be in sets of 8 since you are working with two sides of a single sheet of paper. That means zines are either 8 pages (1 sheet of paper), 16 pages (2 sheets), 24 (3 sheets), and so on. If you’re getting into 5+ sheets of paper, you may want to move up to half letter size, but that’s a post (and template) for another day.
On to the Template
For those of you with Canva, here is a link to my here is a link to my template. I made it recently for the zine pictured above. You can open it and use it like any standard Canva template. I would start by making a copy in Canva to preserve the information until you get comfortable working with it. But if you don’t have Canva, keep reading, I have not forsaken you.
Here’s how it works …
The template is set up for a standard piece of US printer paper that you would print directly from a home or work printer. Unless you pay for full bleed printing, the printer will cut off approximately 1/8” all the way around; that’s the “safe print area.” The cut line is where you will cut the page in half, and the fold line is where you fold it (pretty self-explanatory).
The front of the paper will be laid out this way. The easiest way to fill it in - in my opinion - is to create a document that’s already quarter sized (5.5” x 4.25”) and create your zine there. That allows you to see the whole zine in order. Then you can copy each page and paste it onto this layout. When using Canva, I “group” the original page together before copy/pasting into the new template in case I need to tweak the positioning.
If using a home/work printer, make a single test copy, assemble, and fix the positioning of the pages from there.
Here is the back side of the pape (flipped on the long edge).
For a DIY version, you can take a plain piece of paper, fold it twice (along the fold and cut line), number the pages, and glue your work onto it manually. This will create a master print copy that you can then take to the copy shop (or the work printer on your lunch break, shhhh).
In Closing
Please feel free to use this template just don’t be weird and sell it or use it in a workshop you sell, that’s uncool. Absolutely use it in any classroom, library presentation, etc. and of course use it to make quarter sized zines to your heart’s content!
Let me know what other zine stuff you’d be interested in below. Like, comment, share, subscribe, ring the be-
Okay, bye!
“Why Canva,” you ask? “Aren’t zines supposed to be all DIY and cool?” Well, yes! I love old school cut and paste zines and have made tons, but if there had been an easy way to make zine page layouts in the 90s, I assure you, we would have used it. Also - cough - my husband does all my printing for me (aww) and he kept accidentally smashing up my zine master copies, so I pivoted to Canva because he’s doing me a huge favor so I’m not going to complain.
Quite literally. I was raised by a prolific zinester.
They do require scissors though. Teachers: Give them safety scissors, my 10th graders still tried to cut each other’s hair with them but it’s better than giving them big kid scissors and someone losing a full ponytail.
Thank you for sharing this! I could not wrap my brain around how to print quarter size at home!
Thanks for the template. Not thinking of making anything right away. But file this in the old memory banks for later access.