This last one is not a zine, but a full-blown comic book!
Cakeknife Chapter 2: Remnants Part Two by Lucas Keener
🎵 Solstice Baby by Xmas Movie Soundtrack - One of my former co-workers used to write music (I had no idea!), and he released a new track earlier this month. He’s not making Christmas music but rather music about Christmas.
The first half is especially slow-paced, and it feels like the book is much longer than it needs to be. Many of the chapters could have been cut without missing anything important.
A couple years ago, I created a work portfolio on Journo Portfolio. I like it as a portfolio site overall, but it’s focused on writing samples (or images, if you’re a graphic designer or photographer). I found it’s difficult to showcase a broader range of marketing projects, which is the type of work I have in my portfolio.
This weekend I started re-doing my portfolio as Canva slides. I’m moving over to Canva for a few reasons.
I spend a lot of time in Canva already, so there is no learning curve for me.
I like working with Canva slides more than PowerPoint or Google Slides.
I have flexibility in slide layouts to easily include text, images, and links. For example, I can include context and impacts for each project, which is difficult to do on Journo Portfolio. Their layout is very much, look at the thing I made, and that’s it.
Right now, I have three categories of projects–marketing content, internal communications, and sales enablement. If I want to make different versions of my portfolio to focus on only one type of work, I can do that easily in Canva.
I can point a custom URL to the slides' public URL, so they are still easy to share.
I’m re-making and also updating my portfolio, so I’m not just copy and pasting content from my portfolio site over to Canva. Gathering project info and images is taking a bit of time. But I like the direction that the slides are going. They’re a better representation of my work and experience.
For the past three Saturdays, I’ve been spending wonderful afternoons in a local workshop series called “Living Sketchbook.” We were encouraged to use sketchbooks as tools to capture ideas, experiment with types of media, and try new approaches.
During the first workshop, we spent some time writing about the past week. Then we drew over the text. The drawing could be related to the text, or it could be separate.
We spent the second workshop collaging. I liked looking for different textures or contrasting colors to glue next to each other.
The third workshop was to experiment with using different types of media together. I chose Tombow brush pens and Ink Joy gel pens — two things I haven’t tried using together in the same drawing.
Up to now, I’ve used sketchbooks on and off, when I had an idea to work on or new tools to try out. I didn’t know what made sense for me to do in a sketchbook on a consistent basis. This workshop series was helpful to see different approaches to keeping a sketchbook practice.
📺 I’m re-watching Continuum and currently in season 3. It’s a show that starts out interesting and gets better with each season. And okay it’s a bit unsettling that it was made a decade ago and feels even more relevant in 2025.
Capacities - A note-taking app where each piece of info is treated as an “object.” I watched a demo video and don’t think it’s a good fit for me, at least for now. Noting it here for future reference.
🍿I watched Practical Magic (1998) for the first time. I thought it was just okay. Way less magic than I expected, considering the title and the main characters are witches.
Wanderer Issue 10 is a perzine. Entries include favorite albums from 2024, travel diary, DIY music, events with Covid precautions, and community organizing.
Wrapped is a mini zine about why you should quit Spotify and how to change to an alternative.
Monstrous Existence No. 9 is a “paper blog.” This issue includes current interests (reading books and zines, music, movies) and zine trades. Some pages are decorated with hand-drawn doodles while others have collages in the background.
Monstrous Existence No. 10 is a double-sided mini zine. Typed text and hand-drawn doodles. This reads like diary entries.
Moonbow 1 is a mini zine with weekly reflections, current reading, and current music.
Robin Sloan makes large tri-fold zines where one side is a poster and the other side is long-form text on a subject. Aspire is about creating e-books that match the “speed, privacy, and reliability of the printed page.”
I picked this up at the public library without knowing anything about it. The book is mostly made of up anecdotes and some historical references. It feels like a lot of snippets, which is not what I want out of a book. But here’s a quote I liked:
Intellect without intuition is a smart person without impact. Intuition without intellect is a spontaneous person without progress.
