Don't panic when you look at photos of zines and start thinking, I can't do that!
I can't do that either! but we can! Students will not be expected to suddenly be highly skilled graphic designers! Zines can be very simple: Word-processed or handwritten or printed text; images collected from the Internet, your own photos, magazines, old books, newspapers, etc. cut and pasted into collages; and photographs. Art and design students may be comfortable making more sophisticated zines, but we can all do it.
Your zine will be made from 2 pieces of 8.5 x 11 paper, in landscape orientation, folded in half. This means 2 covers and 6 pages of content.
Here's a link to an article about the basic principles of composition in art and design. It's good! Even if you just skim it and look at the images. The article is part of a larger series Learning to Look, about visual literacy.
You'll be making your print/paper zine about an historical subject or event before the year 2000, so here are a few places to browse for ideas:
Here's a link to the Zinn Education Project, based on the approach to history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States, which the Library owns. This is a site of lesson plans for teachers, but it is also a great place to find an idea for your zine. The Project emphasizse the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history.
Here's a list of many books the library owns about different alternative histories. Some of these books are in the library as print books; others are e-books that you can immediately access.
OR even just do some Google searches, i.e., "little known history"
