Electric Zine Maker (a work in progress, be gentle, hug it often)
A downloadable zine maker for Windows and macOS
The Electric Zine Maker (⚡️📝✂️) is a printshop and art tool for making zines.
This tool includes a drawing interface. You can import images, size and place, write text with any font that you have installed, smudge, paint, and a number of other options. You can also save your zines, and easily re-import them by dragging the saved zine folder back into the main menu. It is built with collaboration in mind.
The Electric Zine Maker has a new beautiful website where you can learn more about it! Click here to visit it.
macOS users that have trouble opening the Electric Zine Maker (the file keeps getting blocked), please read this guide for how to open it.
Windows users that have trouble saving their Zines (or other issues) please read this guide.
If you liked The Electric Zine Maker please consider paying for it so I can cover development costs and make money from it. Thank you kindly.
The Electric Zine Maker is still under development!!!
This is an early beta.
Be gentle! It has early beta feelings!!! 💔❤️!??
More art tools are being built for it.
There are a number of bugs. It is rough around a few edges.
You can read more about what is planned for it here.
The Electric Zine Maker is planned to be an "art toy". It's a playful tool with which you can create cute little things. The finished version will feature a silly little back-story, and other characters, maybe even some small game-like interactions to build a story around it, so that it's an all around playful piece of freeware.
Things planned:
* Many strange and interesting art-tools for the drawing interface
* Bugs need to be fixed and the UI's still need more work
* A back story, and little characters that reinforce the fictional universe it is placed in.
* A number of other art-tools (that are packaged with it), that allow you to create effects and glitch art for your zines.
* Clip art will be bundled with the Zine Maker so you have more art to work with.
Things from other devs:
* Jeremy Oduber made an html template for turning zines made with the Electric Zine Maker into a web ready html zine (web zines!). You can host those on itch. It's easy to use! Check it out: https://jeremyoduber.itch.io/js-zine
Kind Words:
"I think that just about everything Nathalie Lawhead makes is wonderfully energetic, raw, and approachable. Top of the charts, for me, is their Electric Zine Maker project, which makes single-page-zine creation a breeze."
- by Kat Brewster on Rock Paper Shotgun
"The arrival of this software into my life restored a sense of play to my creative practice and brought back a flame I thought had dimmed for good. It gave me the courage, too, to send scrappy, earnest writing to the people who wanted to read it, without the intense pressure of online publishing or the quick-fire takes of social media."
- by Sarah Maria Griffin on The Guardian
"What Lawhead and the Electric Zine Maker suggest is that seriousness is not always the best way to fight back against a system that doesn’t care about you; choosing lightness, lack of coherence, silliness and restful creation can be just as effective."
- by Nicole Froio on The Observer
"Zines und OpenSource passen wunderbar zueinander, findet Nathalie Lawhead und entwickelt seit 2018 den Electric Zine Maker. Nun ist ein großes Update für das Printshop-Tool erschienen."
-by Lena Simonis on PAGE
Awards:
IndieCade - Innovation in Interaction Design Award ("Honoring the craftsmanship and innovation behind unique interaction, hardware, and system design")
The Webby Awards - Honoree in General Websites and Mobile Sites - Weird
Special Thanks To...
Clinic for Open-Source Arts, University of Denver
The STUDIO at CMU - OSSTA
Partly funded by the Queer Games Bundle
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Update 12 (THE BIG ONE! New UI, New Templates...)Aug 27, 2021
- Version 11 Hotfix: T-Cut Template is Fixed...Mar 05, 2021
- * Windows troubleshooting: "My files don't save" & other issues... *Feb 27, 2021
- Fancy New Templates! (Quarter Size Zines and Fancy Zines)Feb 22, 2021
- Opening Electric Zine Maker on macOS guide (I downloaded the Electric Zine Maker...Nov 20, 2020
- The Electric Zine Maker won at IndieCade! 🎉Oct 26, 2020
- Electric Zine Maker: X is here! (Yes, we skipped version 9 and jumped straight t...Oct 05, 2020
- Two new templates: Mini-Booklets are here!Aug 13, 2020
Comments
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this is such a wonderful tool!! thank you!
Help again!! I can't load a zine I made!!
Quick tip for folks on Linux: Downloading the Windows version and extracting the zip file doesn't always work. Something you can try that works well for me is installing Lutris, and then installing the Zine Maker through Lutris. It has an itch.io integration.
it runs on linux via wine :D
Do you know where files are saved? I can't find them, even in my Wine's desktop folder
no ;-;
where is the linux version ? :(
Anyone having issues with it thinking you're holding fn on a mac? I can't press "e" without it always bringing up the emoji menu :/
this is happening to me too
Same here... massive bummer! I decided to just have an 'e' on my clipboard/write my text somewhere else then copy/paste.
a truly awesome creative tool! made laying out my first mini-zine unintimidating and FUN, which is so not how printing projects usually go for me, looking forward to playing around with this more in the future!
If anyone is having issues saving or loading their zines, try turning off the itch.io desktop app's sandbox mode. Seems like I'm able to load zines fine after that :)
Virus?? pls say for me im scared
Not a virus
nah it's legit, made plenty of things with this
hi! i LOVE this app but i'm unable to import any images :( it comes up with just a blank folder. it also doesn't create a zine folder on my desktop at all, and i don't have avast either
Published my first thing! Can it be added to the "made with the Electric Zine Maker" collection?
https://eelen-the-grape.itch.io/rotian-currency
Know what would be pretty neat?🤔 a Linux version in the Appimage format. Dunno if that's planned, but it would be a much appreciated update indeed.🤞🏾
Seconded
Quick question; What is a zine?
Hi! a zine is an anti-magazine-magazine. It's a booklet, usually smaller and with fewer pages than a magazine. With no economical pursue. Zines are very punk on the aspect of beign easy, cheap to make and very artsy and personal. They can be about anything!
Does anyone know what the default font is? (Also, amazing tool! Thank you for making it and sharing it!)
amazing, has a sense of play and experimentation that's really hard to find
this rules, thank you for making it. I’d love to see double-sided print support some day – or at least let me export to a single pdf I can print on both sides instead of two separate single-page pdfs
i dont wanna sound mean but is this still in development? last update was 2021 right?
Theres so much more that can be done with this awesome tool!
PLAY IS NOT DEAD!!!! electric zine maker proves this!!! thank you for injecting joy and whimsy straight into my soul with EZM!!!! you absolutely rock!!!!
with love,
gem <3
I made a lot of fanzines in high school and this tool would have come in handy with my color printer, super cute and I wish you all the best.
This seems like a really cool project. I have to give it a go. Hope you are doing well and are happy =)
This is a wonder. A magnificent masterpiece and a revolutionary tool in digital and analogue art creation. Sincere thanks to you.
this reminds me of kidpix a little bit, it was this art software that my school had in the computer lab
easter egg in top
Thank you for the amazing toolkit. I just published my first zine using it. Much appreciated!
This is a really awesome tool. Simply by looking at it, I'm filled with the impulse to create something. I like it very much. Thank you for making it.
Thank you for the maker! (I've finally desided to give it a go, by the way Random Shitty First ElectricZine by Родион (itch.io) )
Hi! Can I use this software on chromebooks? Im teaching middle school kids about zines and Id really like for them to use your zine maker! (there school only provides chromebooks)
I finally got around to trying this one out. Great stuff! I'm not the type to fxxk around but it's a lot more fun than I expected! I even made a zine/comic so you can add it to the collection =)
Also I can confirm this works on linux using wine even though you have to wait a second for it to save the pages (and if you put the tool in the background for too long it sometimes freezes). Works better using the "virtual desktop" but you can't alttab if you click away from the editor (whoops)
I keep coming back to this and thinking about it. I want to call it an art tool but it's so much more than that. Thank you for creating it.
Made my first zine today with this program! It's not much lol I made it in a few hours. But it's funny to me and I am my own target audience.
https://no1ofnote.itch.io/lunch-a-short-zine
just read it, absolutely adorable!! will be printing it out once i get more printer ink
Halp. My comp (possibly Windows 10) won't let me drag saved zines back into the program to open them. Any suggestions?
My friend and I have been using the program for fun, and it's really great and convenient, but a main problem we've stumbled across is that when you leave the program it doesn't ask whether you want to save your progress or not, which caused my friend to lose all their progress on the complex piece they were making. Another comment is that it should be easier to collaborate and send your work to another computer via the program itself. Great work!
This is such a cool tool! I was going to make something b/w and pre-planned but was so immediately taken by all the tools so I made something far more spur of the moment for my first zine instead ^_^ I don't doubt I'll be back to make more soon! https://lucabyte.itch.io/ive-never-made-a-zine-before
I love ezm so much! ive finished 3 zines w it that r all on itch.io and its been so fun to dive into zine making. To add to your wonderful collection of EZM zines https://tape-6.itch.io/
thank u for making such an awesome tool!! i used it to make my own zine about my hyperfixation on a movie for babies https://estrodragon.itch.io/i-am-transgender-and-autistic-and-i-tend-to-hyperfix...
SO AUTISM!!!!! love the drawing and casual titty, so epic awesome i love it!!!!!!!!!!
hi i just saw that you put one of my zines in your collection so I wanted to say thank you for that and also just thank you for making this super cool and fun tool!!!! it's incredibly inspiring and so so fun to use even (or maybe especially) as someone who isn't really a Visual Arts person. thank you for unlocking this funky little place in my brain. maybe i'll go upload my other projects to itch.
BRO the interface is WILD this gets instant 5 star from me
hey!! really love this, have been using it to construct my very first zine - i wish it was possible to adjust transparency of things, and to rearrange page order (if it is, i haven't yet been able to) but everything else is great! the various tools are super fun to play with. thank you!
Great idea, very convenient, good for beginners. My one concern is that it lowers the resolution of images. Is there any way to adjust that? Again, thanks for your hard work~