Travel Zines Part Two: The DTM Editions Archive
Travel Zines: A Recap
Last week, I shared my recipe for travel zines. Did you make one?
Yes? I love it!
No? Fear not, there is always next week. Zines are here for you.
If a template feels like an easier on-ramp to travel zine adventures, you can download my template (see also: folding instructions).
Now onwards, to the DTM Editions travel zine archive!
Travel Zines from the DTM Editions Shelf
I've been making zines and zine-adjacent projects since sometime in the mid-2000s. My first foray into travel zines was when I lived in rural Japan in 2010-2012. At that time, I was not super busy at work and had access to a photocopier at work.
Conditions were perfect for zine making.
I made two small zines of early and very naive observations and sent them home to my friends and family in Canada.
It would be easy to roll my eyes at Young Danielle, but I feel so lucky to have these zines as a window into my enthusiasms and curiosities during that truly wild and wonderful time.
There was a long hiatus in my zine-making life (PhDs take up all the space you give them). But as travel returned to my life in 2022, I was fully back in the thrall of zine life.
I made a small one-page zine (trimmed into a square shape) as a thank you for friends who hosted us in California for a long weekend in November 2022.
Distilling highlights from the visit and capturing some of the moments of joy - and turning it around within a few days of returning home - was amazing!
So I kept doing it.
On a trip to Japan in December 2022, I brought along an extremely tiny zine made from some scrap paper that I impulsively stapled together the day before the trip.
I filled it along the way, in quiet moments while waiting for dinner to be served or trains to arrive. Tiny Tokyo is now one of my very favourite possessions.
The quick drawings from the road became the first draft of a longer and much more detailed Japan zine, called Akeome Omiyage (roughly: new years holiday souvenirs).
Smaller trips or repeated trips get zines, too!
We try to visit our pals in DC every year, so I rolled a few of those into a zine about how much we love the city.
The process was a satisfying reflection on how much we have learned about the city over the years, as well as how much we and our friends have grown and changed.
Variations on a zine
I share this with wariness of scope creep, buuuuuuuut a short comic is another way of telling the story of a single moment in a trip. These don't have to be elaborate stories!
Here's one about eating making salt and pepper shrimp when visiting friends in California:
And here's one about a roadtrip and a fly.
Over to you
Just start! A zine is an inherently human thing: funny, messy, a little scrappy.
Embracing speed and imperfection as part of the process makes it so much more fun.
No holidays this summer? That doesn't matter. You can make a zine (or a comic) about a trip across town. One of my favourite sort-of travel zines, sort-of comics is about a Slice Rampage, where we just walked around the city eating pizza.
Making a zine is also a good excuse to rummage around in the nostalgia corner of your brain. What is the best trip you've even been on? What was the strangest travel memory from childhood? Any trips you regret? Or group travel gone (hopefully hilariously) wrong?
PS: I'm facilitating a Speed Portrait Night with the fun and fabulous Hot Pizza Studio on Saturday, November 1, 2025, 7:30-9:30 pm in Toronto. Come join me! It will be fun, I promise!
