JULY The World's Smallest Newspaper (micro-zine!)

Swap description: The World's Smallest Newspaper – a micro-zine

This swap was inspired by Lea Redmond, proprieter of The World's Smallest Postal Service, upon reading this blog post about the creation of a miniature newspaper to accompany her WSPS products. As a lifelong fan of The Borrowers (Mary Norton), I was powerless to resist...

For this swap, a standard 8-page mini-zine (1/8 letter-size or A4 paper) is the maximum size for your newspaper. Unlike your average mini-zine, however, you must scale the type-face & content accordingly so that your partner will (probably) need a magnifying glass to read it. Feel free to scale-down the page size, too: If you have a master-copy of a standard-sized mini-zine, simply photocopy reducing the scale by 50% - et voila! A micro-zine with 1/16th size pages! It's up to you how small you go...

The name, style & subject matter of your miniature newspaper are entirely up to you; but you should follow the basic format of a 'usual', full-scale newspaper – e.g. headlines, feature stories, gossip columns, reviews, personal ads, small ads, puzzles etc (you don't need to include all of these things, so long as you are clearly emulating a newspaper style).

How to make a micro-zine
There are lots of different ways to make a micro-zine & you can invent your own and/or use whichever you like! If you don't know where to begin, here are a few options for you to consider:

• Create your pages at normal/full scale (e.g. half-size/A5 pages) then reduce the scale to mini size via the magic of photocopier or scanner & staple together
• Make a mini-zine using the standard 8-page format, but fold down from a half-size/A5 page rather than full letter-size or A4, to create a micro-zine (half the size of a standard mini-zine)
• Follow this YouTube guide to make a 16-page micro-mini zine
• I once made a mini zine that fitted into a matchbox by cutting & accordion-folding a full size sheet into 44 tiny pages...

Swap requirements

• 3 partners = 3 miniature newspapers sent & 3 miniature newspapers received.
• Miniature newspapers should be no larger than a standard mini-zine (approx. 7.5 x 10.5cm) but may be smaller.
• Content/typeface/text size should also be scaled down, to suit size of pages & should be at least 8 pages long. Full size text on miniature pages does not meet requirements!
• Send on time!

The obvious bit
Late swaps & low ratings will all be checked before assigning partners. Contact me if you think there might be a problem.