Zines in Microsoft Publisher

superconor

Is it possibl;e to create fanzine-style publications in Publisher? Can you use it to layout say a booklet of 20 pages properly, just requirering you to flip the paper after printed one half of it? Are there any free programs which will do it? Any hints?

superconor

Anyone able to help me?

Nervous Wreck

All you'd need to do is figure out where you're putting everything and then it's as easy as opening a blank landscape document and splitting it down the centre... For example, your first page when done to it's entirety (and seen from above) would be layed out like this:


Front Cover Back Cover
_____________-______________

First Page Last Page





So just do the covers page first, print it, then put it back in your printer the other way and print the First/Last Page onto the other side. I hope that makes sense... That's the way I do my zines (except by hand, no printer of any sort until I'm ready to lash the entire finished product into a photocopier).

Also, I've never used publisher so excuse my ignorance if none of that makes sense....!

Hank_Scorpio

MS Publisher isn't a great program, by any stretch of the imagination.

If you want to layout good stuff then think about getting InDesign or Quark as these are pro tools for page layout. There is a free one that is called Scribus, with tuts on the net.

But you can use Publisher, but that would be my last choice.

Keep the page size to the finished size you want the book to be, for example you may want an A5 booklet, make sure your page size is 148 x 210. If it's an A4 sized booklet you want then you need to set up your page to be 210 x 297, print it on A3 and fold to A4.

When you are designing any book always do it in readers pairs. That is from page 1 - whatever.

In case of the first person that posted, I would do the cover as suggested, but keep it a separate file. This will be folded so make it double the width of the original file, make it 2 pages, and layout the back cover on the left side of the page and the front cover on the right side of the page.

Keep the page count to a multiple of 4.

Take a 8pp booklet for example
The reason I say not to do it as printers pairs is because if you decided to get this printed professionally at some point you don't want to give a printer a file that is laid out like

8|1
2|7
6|3
4|5

It's a printers worst nightmare. DON'T DO IT.

Ok so now you're wondering how to print it out.

In Publisher:

If you're doing this yourself, then you need to print out like so:

File>Print

Change Page Order

And choose print as book. When printed out, fold the prints in half (you'll have to be tidy doing this)

You can then print out your cover, wrap it around the print out you already have, get a long stapler put two staples in the center to hold it together.

That is the proper way to set it up and that's how you should approach any design job for print.