Kori's Making Things

 I'm obsessed with the song " Burn " by k-pop artist KEY (Kim Kibum.)  I've spent hours listening to it and picking apart the things I enjoy about it: the techniques and the layering, the mixing and the vocal choices.  Naturally, I hoped to one day make a zine that communicated my feelings about the song, because zines are how I communicate. Even though I always have lots of ideas for what I want to make zines about, I won't make those zines until the right format for it finds me.  And in the fall of 2024, it was the work of two of my book production students that inspired me to finally construct a zine to talk about Burn. After talking to one student about expressing music in comics, and reviewing the work of another student who had made a fold-out zine in a new format that revealed things in different sequences, I decided I wanted to make a zine that unfolded in a way to reveal the song in the direction it felt like the song was going.  I started by listening ...

 This month I'm making my way back to the Small Press Expo in Maryland, my first book show since 2019 (Which happened to also be SPX!) I'm always super motivated to make new zines for a new show, and I was also on the cusp of making my 100th zine!  I'd calculated that I'd made 99 zines ( list here ) and so my 100th aught to be a triumphant one. This triumph would be a quarter-letter saddle-stitched zine with a hand-stamped cover called "I Like Masking, Actually!" Some process photos follow.  It was a pretty smooth draw, using all my usual tools Paper: 5 mm blue grid notebook (Reeden Reed-Jr. Note or Kokuyo campus) Pencil: Pilot Color Eno soft blue mechanical pencil (.7 mm) Ink: Zebra disposable pocket brush pen I originally had an elaborate plan for the cover... involving a pop-up, full sized mask, but once I was done drawing the book itself, I decided I wanted to use my favorite illustration from the book as the cover image, and went with that. However, since...