Kept Close

Kept Close is a small remembrance zine to hand out at a service, or to post to the people who could not be there. It is deliberately simple to make, because the week it is needed is not a week for learning software. The layout borrows the wedding style: ivory paper, Cormorant Garamond for the name, thin gold rules and a soft fade on the photos so old prints and new phone photos sit together. The cover holds a photo, the name and the dates. Page two is a single framed portrait, the photo everyone knows. Page three is a large photo with a caption and a date. Page four is a quote page for a line from a reading, a hymn or something they used to say. Page five sets two photos side by side, often an early one and a late one.

Page six is a photo with a journal block for a short tribute of about seventy words. Page seven is a polaroid with a caption, and the back panel has a small photo and a closing line. Scan or photograph old prints in daylight, flat, without flash; the fade filter forgives colour casts, and the frames hide rough edges. Keep the words few and let the photos do the work. Print on a heavier ivory or white paper, 120 to 160 gsm, so the zine feels considered in the hand. It prints on one side of a sheet, so a home printer can produce thirty copies in a few minutes without any double-sided fuss, and the single cut and fold can be done by a family member the evening before. Order of service on one page, this in the other hand.

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 8 photos across its 8 panels; the editor shows which slots are still empty.