Tactile Zine Presents: Behind the Scenes No. IHm....so I have a long post and I figured what goes better with a long post then some nice tunes. Here's my chill late night writing sesh vibes mixtape. Make sure you have some music in your ears to properly enjoy this post.
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CHILL LATE NITE WRITING SESH VIBES MIXTAPE 2015
La Flame - 3500
Not a valid vimeo URLAngel Du$t Live Set - Huge shoutout to Sunny at Hate5Six
The Contortionist - The Parable (Rediscovered) - Shoutouts to the homies
Now that we're set and you’re listening to music, welcome to a behind the scenes look at how Tactile is made. Inspired by Cody’s
behind the scenes post “shippin’ aint easy”, I thought I’d try dropping a BTS too. Figured since I’ve been slow to ship Vol 4, this might be a fun way to get some content out as an appetizer. Vol 4 will be shipped before December 23rd and my month-long break. I’m kinda breaking up the whole process into four catagories and just felt like jumping around so keep that in mind.
Fulfillment.
Vans box, long reach stapler, staples, a metal ruler, and jdcarpe’s metal business card. All essential tools for Fulfillment of Tactile.
This is what I’ve been calling this step in the whole process. It’s the easiest but most time consuming part of the whole process I think. Fulfillment is where I actually print the zines, edit, print more zines, then fold and staple them. The words and paper become the physical zine. And my random sticker ideas go from the computer to adhesive vinyl. So I guess in a way, that’s really cool; the step where the ideas and writing turn into something tangible.
I print the zines in an undisclosed location. Undisclosed location has a room with Xerox printers available to me. The stickers are printed at a local makerspace on a Roland vinyl printer. Zines are printed in various runs while the stickers are generally printed in bulk in one shot. Getting time on the vinyl printer is a bit tricky so I try and to print a grip of stickers all at once. Zines are batched because it’s easier on me. But more importantly, it allows me to make incremental changes. Volume 1 was rushed and many errors were fixed too late. So moving forward, changes were introduced. The most important was introducing edit copies. In my head the print runs go in the following order:
- Test Print
- Edit Copy (can be multiple)
- Print Run 1 – X
I write all over these copies…but I don’t really like red ink. Diamine Diablo Menthe on the foremost copy.
With this structure, the zine has more steps for quality checks. I’ve always struggled with editing and this helps me to edit. The test prints are used to check things like how the covers look, the layout of the writing, and seeing how the graphics print out. Since Publisher is pretty good with guidelines showing where the max print area is, I’ve had to do less test prints lately. However because of the layout, I try and push how much I can fit on a page.
When I’m happy with the overall look, I print edit copies to actually write and mark up the errors I find. Even though the content has been read quite a few times at this point, reading the printed copy is invaluable. First it’s just fun to have something tactile in hand to read and interact with. Second, editing seems to be easier for me when I have paper to write on and draw lines on. And I’ve been happy with the results so I’ve stuck to it.
Finally, when the editing is finished, the zines are printed. Fortunately the papers come out of the printer collated so it sets me up for the next step which is folding and stapling the zines to turn the pages into the little booklet. This is the step which takes the longest. It’s also very repetitive and a bit mindless so it’s fun to listen to music or watch Twitch/Netflix at the same time. Usually at this point, I’m pretty tired so it’s actually nice to have a mindless task for a little while.
Stickers aren’t printed in the same regimented way because the makerspace is popular and it’s hard to get time on the printer. So I generally stockpile a bunch of artwork I’d like to use and print a ton out when the printer is available. The sheets are 29” W by X” L. Typically 100-200 stickers are printed at once and thrown into the sticker box….after I hand cut and separate all the stickers since they all are on one or two big sheets.
Vans: The official storage boxes of Tactile.
I like these stickers more than the other stickers I have to deal with though. Stamps are expensive when you’re buying a ton of them at once like I tend to do. Coming soon, how I discovered that you can buy $50 of stamps at once and other little things you randomly learn when you mail zines out.
