I’ve been working on this for the past few weeks, and it’s finally ready to share: Dirty Little Zine, a one-page zine maker for the photo community.
It runs in your browser. No accounts, no uploads, no subscriptions. Your photos stay on your machine, the PDF gets generated locally, and that’s it. Nothing leaves your device.
Why
I miss printed stuff. That’s the whole thing.
After a couple of years shooting analog and some months publishing FILM RICK, I kept wanting to put my photos in something I could hold, fold, and give to a friend. Something to leave on a café table. Something that wasn’t just another post in another feed.
I’m not a graphic designer, and I never enjoyed using professional design software. But I love clean, magazine-style layouts, the kind of thing printed media used to do so well. So I tried to build a tool I would actually use: simple, opinionated about typography, and made for photographers who want to put a zine together today, not in “some day,” as I used to say.
How it works
Desktop works better, but mobile is fine if that’s all you have.
- Pick a cover image. Customize the title, subtitle, and author.
- Pick photos for spreads 2–3, 4–5, and 6–7.One portrait per page, or one to two landscape/square per page.
- Pick a back cover. Customize it.
- Hit “Print Zine” and download a ready-to-print PDF.
- Print, fold, cut. Instructions are in the app.
- That’s it.
The whole thing takes around ten minutes if you already have your edit ready.
What it looks like
I put together a quick demo: Mexico City Cyberpunk. You can see how the folded zine feels in hand.
Quality depends on your printer and paper combo. For this one I used standard 90 gsm paper from Navigator. It’s cheap, easy to find, and it works fine for quick and dirty zines. If you want something nicer, go heavier (120 gsm+) or matte. The format doesn’t really care.
If you want a copy of my Mexico City Cyberpunk zine, here it is:
→ https://library.dirtylittlezine.com/zines/cyberpunk-mexico-city
Download, print, and you have a physical zine from your friend Rick at zero cost. That’s the idea.
The bigger goal
I’d love to see more zines in the photo community. Not necessarily big, serious publications. Just something. A roll, a theme, eight pages, one folded sheet.
So if you make one with Dirty Little Zine, share it with me. Let’s build a small library of zines from all over the world!
NOW, the Dirty Little Library is up!
→ https://library.dirtylittlezine.com🔥
We already have more than 40 zines, available for free to you.
That’s it. Try it, break it, and tell me what’s wrong with it.
I’ll keep improving it from your feedback.
I first saw this one-page zine format on YouTube. Thanks to whoever came up with the original idea. I tried it with several existing templates, but I got obsessed with fonts and layouts and ended up building my own. Dirty Little Zine is what came out.