First of all, fuck the uni printer. I’m glad that I’m able to print things for free, but jesus christ on a backwards horse, it was awful to use. I ended up having to get another student to transfer the file from my USB to his computer and then email it to Rae so that she could print it off, because my USB wasn’t working with the printer… Unfortunately, as a result, a lot of the print tests weren’t able to be printed (I made, like, 8 of them) and one of them was the wrong paper size. I got too nervous to ask for them to be fixed since it had been such a hassle, but thankfully one of the print tests worked. It was just a bit too small (a lot too small).
Rae had some feedback on the word choices in the recipe page. Since it’s a zine about comfort, she thought it would be more appropriate to use softer language instead of words like chop and beat. It took some thinking, but I managed to find some words that fit the recipe and still clearly communicated what was required e.g. mix instead of beat. I feel that this, even though it’s a minor change, improves the quality of the zine.
I found that printing the zine double-sided on an A3 page didn’t improve the chances of the ink not bleeding through. As a result, later in the week, I bought 200gsm paper from Officeworks to use for the final copies. It was a bit exxy but the texture looks like it’s really good.
I did some different tests to avoid having to buy thicker paper. One of these tests was printing the pages one-sided, folding it in half, and then sewing the edges together. I tried sewing it in a few spots only (the corners and middle) as well as all around the edge. Both had an unpolished finish which isn’t what I’m looking for, so I decided against either of those methods.
I also made the baking paper envelope. It definitely works, however Rae had a fantastic idea to cut strips of baking paper and use them as a band to keep the cookie recipe and zine together. Me and my partner plan on making these tonight.
I’m a bit nervous about the printing not working, whether that be the pages not aligning right, or literally anything else going wrong. I have a lot of anxiety around assignments, especially if I’ve put a lot of work into them like with this one.
I’ve made my final versions of all the zine pages and have made them into PDFs ready to print tomorrow. I’m going to bring it on multiple USBs with the InDesign version as well in case something goes wrong. I’m also going to bring my sewing kit to bind them, and a lovely assistant to help assemble all the zines.
Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly!
-Ollie
