Why the low-tech zine is making a comeback | Canada Voices

In March, Newsweek hailed the media platform Substack as publishing’s second coming. While the app was born nearly a decade ago, the magazine declared it was “racking up cool-girl points” thanks to celebrity users such as Charli XCX and Rosalía. But, according to ad agency Ogilvy, Substack may in fact be more popular among older generations, raising questions about whether it’s really the antidote to doomscrolling claimed by Newsweek.

For Toronto-based artist Chelsea Watt, who has been making zines since 2013, the antidote is analogue culture. She is among a group of Canadian 20-something artists and writers who are turning away from a digital-first creative practice and putting their focus into paper. Watt said that these self-published, DIY-style pamphlets and mini-books counter the influencer model of attracting “billions of followers.” Instead, they’re produced in modest numbers to attract a small yet invested crowd – those “who are exhausted with seeing so many thumbnails and memes every minute.”

Traditionally bound by staples and crafted with low-tech tools (think glue, scissors and photocopiers), these micro-magazines have a rich history. In 2024, the Vancouver Art Gallery launched an exhibit called Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines, which traced how feminist, BIPOC, queer and other marginalized groups have used zines as snack-sized bat signals for their communities. The show also highlighted the medium’s enduring role as a form of resistance.

For those who experienced Canada’s countercultural zine boom of the 1990s and 2000s, from Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte to G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce’s queer punk zine J.D.s, the medium may seem retro or nostalgic.

Yet for Watt, who missed its first (and subsequent) rises, making and reading zines have become a defence against internet-induced brain rot.

“The algorithm serves nobody,” Watt said. “I don’t see it working in real time for me or many of my friends.” Even though she follows independent galleries and publishers on Instagram, she’s inundated by ads and other irrelevant and unwanted images. Her past zines, including Undressed (a collaboration with illustrator Rachel Zavarella) and Mood Tracking App, which mocks Watt’s relationship to tech, reflect an aesthetic that runs counter to today’s fashion campaigns that use AI, rejecting any level of gloss.

Watt said that she and the young women she knows are drawn to imperfection because it’s something that is “nearly non-existent” online. “I’m attracted to things I’m not fed in my feed,” she said. “Deconstructed, different shapes, different bodies, a kind of messiness that is human.”

Beauty brands and outlets such as MAC and I-D magazine have long been influenced by the zine scene. I-D launched a 50-page zine which they deemed to be the “first dedicated beauty publication in glossy and flippable large format” featuring South African musician Tyla on its cover this spring (it has since sold out). The same inspiration can be seen at MAC, the Canadian-founded beauty company. The brand’s creative director – and Lady Gaga’s longtime fashion collaborator – Nicola Formichetti inspired illustrator Brian Einersen’s 2009 zine, Lady Saga, which recast the burgeoning pop star as a superhero. MAC also recently revived its former zine – albeit solely online only. It’s paper version ran from 2009 to 2017 and was originally intended as a guide for the brand’s inner circle makeup artists.

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Paula James-Martinez, the British-American former fashion editor, said there’s a reason why the zeitgeist is starting to smell like zine spirit again. After noticing that her tween daughter’s friends were asking for flip phones instead of smartphones, she started asking questions.

“They’re all so distrustful of social media and attracted to analogue culture because it’s novel to them,” she said. “My daughter’s friend group thinks AI is [suspicious] – if someone is being fake at school, they call them AI. She will also tell me in seconds if something is AI on my phone before I figure it out.”

In response, James-Martinez dreamed up Cuqui (“cute” in Spanish), a teen magazine set to launch in January. She led a two-week workshop in Ojai, California, with participants aged 9 to 18 to find out what kind of content they wanted. That research informed what she called a “DIY, analog and reader-first editorial strategy,” including special issues with pages at the back where readers can collage and write and about themselves.

“Young people have lived through a period where everything was in filters and shown as shiny, perfect and anti-tactile,” James-Martinez said. Collage, she added, is the medium of choice for zines and gives younger generations the kind of hands-on experience they’re missing.

Zine Dream, an art fair in Toronto, is a prime example. Launched by Laura McCoy and Jesjit Gill, the inaugural gathering was held at Toronto’s Tranzac Club in 2007.

“Any zine fair facilitates meeting an artist and having a conversation with them – something that sadly, due to generative AI and the corporatization of art, is something people are looking for: one-on-one connection,” Gill said.

This year’s event takes over Parkdale Hall on Aug. 15. The fair drew more than 260 zine-makers who applied to display their work, including the Shanghai author-artist collective 51 Personae.

Alicia Nauta, a Zine Dream producer, said the group collaborates with artists and collectives to reach readers worldwide.

“With guerrilla-style distribution, they explore publishing as an urgent artistic practice beyond commercial channels,” she said.

Zine Dream’s global draw mirrors a broader resurgence of zine-making in Canada. Institutions such as the Toronto Public Library and the University of British Columbia have made zine education a regular part of their programming, and organizations such as the Toronto Zine Library and Montreal’s ARCMTL have helped legitimize and preserve the medium by building extensive archives where visitors can browse independently published works on-site.

Recently, zine culture has made its way onto the big screen with the documentary Beyond The Duplex Planet. The film, which premiered at South by Southwest in March, traces the life of American artist David Greenberger, who started a zine in the late 1970s inspired by conversations with seniors. The movie (and the publication it’s based on) highlights a different demographic from the zine boom of today, chronicling the lives of an aging population.

It’s a reminder that the zine hasn’t only survived; it’s served as a tangible record of our shared humanity.