Zine folding guide with diagrams: every fold, every line, explained

Fold diagrams borrow their language from origami, where the Yoshizawa–Randlett conventions have been standard for decades. A dashed line is a valley fold: the paper folds toward you and the crease ends up at the bottom of a V. A dash-dot line is a mountain fold: it folds away from you and the crease stands up like a ridge. A thin solid grey line is an existing crease. A solid red line with a scissors glyph is a cut, and it is the only place you ever cut.

Arrows show the motion, not just the result. A curved arrow means fold the flap over along the line; a straight arrow means push or slide. The sheet is always drawn in the orientation you hold it, landscape with the printed side up, and the panel numbers are drawn exactly as they are printed, upside-down where the print is upside-down, so you can check your sheet against the picture at every step.

Every library zine guide teaches the same thing: before you design, fold a blank sheet. Follow the steps below with plain paper, and when it is a closed booklet write 1 on the cover, 2 on the first inside page and so on to 8 on the back. Now unfold it. You will see the layout that the printed sheet has to match: 8, 1, 2, 3 across the bottom row the right way up and 7, 6, 5, 4 across the top row upside down. The slit is on the centre crease between the middle two columns.

Once you have done this once you understand every zine layout you will ever see, and you can spot a wrong one instantly. Foldpic lays the panels out for you, but the dummy is still the fastest way to convince yourself the upside-down panels are correct.

The steps below are generated from the same fold script that arranges the panels in the printed PDF, so the diagram and the layout can never disagree. Each step has one action and a check you can make before moving on.

The zine collapses cleanly only when the creases are sharp and accurate. Fold edge to edge, hold the paper down with one hand, and run the other along the fold from the centre outward. Then go over the crease with a ruler edge, a bone folder or the back of a spoon. On 100 gsm and above this matters more; on 80 gsm copy paper a firm thumbnail is enough.

The first fold, in half the long way, is the one that has to be exact, because the slit is cut on it and every other fold is measured from it. If it is a millimetre off, the middle panels will be a millimetre different in width and the booklet will not close flat.

The slit runs too far or not far enough: it must go through exactly two panels, from the first vertical crease to the third. The sheet was printed on both sides: the 8-page zine is single-sided and the back is hidden. The print was scaled: folds miss the panels and there is a white frame all round, so reprint at 100 percent. The cover is on the inside: the collapse in the last step can go two ways; wrap the arms the other way.