The Small Hours

The Small Hours is a family zine for the weeks nothing happened: the breakfasts, the bath-time chaos, the grandparents on the sofa. It is for people who take pictures of ordinary days and want to keep a few of them somewhere other than a phone. The minimal style is white paper, Inter for the words and no frames at all, so the photos sit on the page with plenty of air. The cover is a photo with a title and a season or date. Page two is a full-bleed photo, page three stacks two photos, page four is a large photo with a caption and date, page five is a single framed photo with a wide white margin, page six pairs a photo with a journal block for what the weeks were actually like, and page seven is a polaroid with a caption. The back panel carries a small photo and a sign-off.

With so few photos, each one has to carry a page, so choose the quiet ones: the back of a head, a hand on a table, light on the floor. The full-bleed page suits a landscape; the framed page is for a portrait you would happily print big. Write the journal page in the present tense and mention the small things, the nickname of the month, the song on repeat. Because the pages are white and the layouts spare, the zine prints well on almost any paper. Ordinary 100 gsm copy paper gives a soft, matte finish that suits the style, and a laser printer's slightly muted colours look right here. Make one every season; four a year fit in a single envelope in the drawer, and they are the ones you will actually look at again.

Printing this zine is the easy part: it goes on one side of a single sheet of A4 or US Letter (choose A3 or Tabloid for a zine twice the size), so any printer works and there is no double-sided alignment to get right. In the print dialog pick 100% or Actual size, never Fit to page, or the fold lines drift off the panel edges. Plain 100 to 120 gsm paper folds crisply and stops colour showing through; glossy inkjet photo paper is fine too because nothing prints on the back. Fold in half lengthways, fold in half twice more, unfold, cut the centre slit, then push the ends together and flatten. The template uses 9 photos across its 8 panels; the editor shows which slots are still empty.