Mini-Zine Template for Scribus
A downloadable wrangling
This simple template lays out a PocketMod-style mini-zine (instructional video) on US Letter paper* for the Scribus desktop publishing program (1.5.7).
"Page" layout in code block form:
7 | 6 | 5 | 4 8 | 1 | 2 | 3
It comes with 2 sets of guides, a serviceable grid, margin-compliant text frames, a few embedded fonts from the Bitter typeface (previewed right here, why not), brief usage notes, and 2 (mini)pages of unnecessary commentary from me. You can drop a bunch of text right into this sucker and technically have a full project in like 5 seconds.
I suggest pasting your content into the story editor and styling it there, due to the low overall character count of the format, and due to Scribus being especially capricious about importing things without breaking them or itself.
A heads-up: I don't know that I can actually recommend Scribus as the best free mini-zine solution. Electric Zine Maker is really cool. And Comigo posted a great A4 Figma template here on Itch. Your one page deal probably fits their free tier's 3 page limit.
"I wouldn't use Scribus for such a task"
- Nermander, Hero Member, Scribus Forums, suggesting that this allegedly mature desktop publishing program shouldn't be used to create a desktop publishing item
But maybe you have more complex needs and circumstances which aren't met by other options. Welcome to Hell Scribus. (If you're a creator looking for a free layout option, and my commentary scares you: don't let it. The program works. It just has a lot of personality.)
If you run into a problem, I'm happy to bang my head against the wall with you. Reach out here or on tw*tt*r.
I don't care about a license. Go wild. Don't be a bigot. If you make something cool with this, I'd love to help promote it, but don't feel obligated to drop me a line. Don't forget to have fun.
* If you're from one of the sane metric countries, and you would like me to create this for A4/mm instead of US Letter/inches, leave a comment. I opted to upload the Letter template first because if I didn't publish it now, I would probably end up deleting it in a fit of neurosis.
Download
Install instructions
Unzip the file and place the resulting folder in whatever folder you told Scribus to use for templates. (If you haven't set that up, go to File -> Preferences -> Paths and select a folder.) You'll find it under the "Own templates" category in the "New from Template" creation option.
Comments
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Works perfectly! This is exactly what I've been searching for, thanks a lot !
This isn't the template I'm looking for (Quatro fold zine) But your write-up is amazing and I'm tempted to shrink my project just to use your template. Best wishes!
Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it! It’s kind of a niche template for a niche program, so I wanted people to at least get a kick out of the description if they found the page.
If you’re still looking for a quatro template, I think Electric Zine Maker does one. I’d offer to make you one but with my current workload I think I wouldn’t get it done until like July.
So while trying to figure out how to make Microsoft publisher do upside down text boxes, I ran out of paper, while looking for paper, all I could find was legal paper - But, with legal paper I could do 2 per page, back and front and the size was good! So while I failed to find the template I wanted, I do now have a pagination template for 4 page folios, which I then bound into a 48 page book.
And while writing this, I think I've figured out how to make upside down text boxes :) Perhaps I'll publish that template!