Recently I enjoyed a very good zine called "Clipart Crypt: a clipart fanzine", by Lee Arden. Lee is a zinester and small press runner I've gotten to know over the last few years. The zine was excellent; I encourage you to purchase a copy and enjoy it, too!

Physically, the zine is large, a bit bigger than US letter sized paper. It has a slightly thicker yellow cover, and inside pages are pink printed in blue. The whole thing is riso printed, which is a fancy print industry term for "limited colors, printed using cool techniques, very aesthethic". The original clip art that fills it up was of course many colors, and the translation of all of them to shades of blue (think greyscale black & white printing, but blue) gives each layout a cohesive, put together look while maintaining a slightly chaotic, free-form, collage-y feel.

The zine contents are a mix of text as well as clipart sourced from archive files of clip art. Clipart that you could purchase on CD or floppy disk for use in your own emails/church bulletins/slideshow presentations is something that makes sense now that I am reminded of it, though my early days of making creative PowerPoints filled with lots of clip-art as an elementary schooler mostly only ever used stock clip-art or stuff I downloaded off the internet somewhere for free. I was intrigued by the history of this era of digital creativity as described in the zine, and the implications about copyright/image ownership implied by what Lee found in the many archived clipart sources they explored.

I feel like this zine would make a great object of study for a class on print design or graphic design layout: I really get the sense that there is intentionality here as well as a lot of creativity that went into creating "Clipart Crypt". It is very inspiring to me as a person whose own zines have ended up feeling very same-same-y in terms of layout.

If you're in the US, you can buy your own copy to enjoy from Sheer Spite's US distributor. If you're in Canada or anywhere else, you can purchase directly from Sheer Spite Press. I highly encourage you to get your hands on a physical copy and really savor it. I don't make affiliate money or anything, I am just a big fan!

Other Sheer Spite items you should pick up while you're shopping (a non-comprehensive sampling of my faves from the current line-up):

• Less AI Slop, More Lentil Slop fridge magnet
• DIY sticker
• preorder The Politics of Lonely, a forthcoming book by Lee with a traditional publisher (meaning: you can look for this at your local favorite indie book store or ask your library to purchase it!) I think Lee has very good insights into the so-called "loneliness epidemic" and how that plays out in real life for people of my generation and Lee's (among others). We've had some great conversations over the years of what other writers in the adult friendship/loneliness space are overlooking or not giving enough credit to, and this book builds on some stuff I know Lee has been working on/thinking about via previous zines and writings. So I am very confident it's gonna be really good!! I am excited to start reading it when my own preorder comes in at Octopus Books.
• Swapping Genders With My Ex available in print or digital; d'awwwwwwww
• The Writings of Shahd Alnaami, from Gaza 100% of the price goes to Shahd, a Palestinian writer based in Gaza. I found her writings deeply moving.
• Our Fantasies, An Anthology of Daydreams I like the range in this one, from the fantastical to the mundane, from the highly detailed to the very high level.
• Anything by Cindy Barukh Milstein Can't go wrong.