“Dave gave the OK. Work your magic!!” That was Daniel on a Tuesday morning in February, and it was the last email XPANded needed. Three days later the zines were with Dave. When Mike opened the cover, his reaction was a sharp intake of breath and a single “oh yes”: every landscape photograph inside sits in a heavy black border, and the effect is very nice indeed.
XPANded is an A5 landscape photo zine by Dave, who posts his work on Instagram as @CFCDave55. It is the classic stapled format with a high-end finish: smooth silk, long panoramic frames, and street life that meanders round town. The story of how it was made is best told in the words of the two people behind it.
Dave’s emails are short and cheerful, signed off “cheers dave c”. He handles the photographs. The artwork comes from his friend Daniel, whom Dave calls his graphics pal, and who has built every PDF Dave has sent us.
This was not their first zine with us. Dave started in 2023 with As Seen In…, approving the proof with a breezy “full steam ahead”, and wrote back when the copies arrived:
“received my zines and am delighted. will defo be back with another project”
Dave, on his first zine with us
He meant it. In Colour followed in 2025, then XPANded, and he has been back again since. For XPANded he used our Helping Hand project form, ticking landscape, silk throughout at our recommended weights (300gsm outside, 130gsm inside), a matt laminate and staples. Harriet sent the quote, and Dave replied the same morning that he was going ahead and was “waiting for my graphics pal to sort a PDF”.
Daniel’s file arrived with a reminder from their last job: “Last time I remember you had to batch convert all of the images to CMYK if that is still the case please do.” We noted it, so the panoramas would go to press in print colours rather than screen ones.
Our free file check turned up one other snag. The PDF ran to 34 pages, and a stapled zine is made from sheets folded in half, so its page count must be a multiple of four. Mike asked whether they wanted to add two pages or lose two. Daniel’s reply opened with a shrug you could almost hear: “Of course it does.” He passed the decision to “the man himself”, offering a flyleaf or extra content, and an updated file landed before seven the next morning, sent, as he put it, “while I had time this morning”.
If you are sequencing a stapled zine, count in fours before you export: 28, 32 or 36 pages, never 34. Our guide to how stapled zine binding works explains the maths and the folding behind it.
The front cover establishes the rules. A serif title sits above a single panorama of night water, red and amber light dancing on the ripples, held inside a thick black frame on white. Inside, each long image gets its own black border, one per page or a pair facing each other across the spread, with white paper all round.
The photography wanders. A pub corner glistens in the rain opposite a fairground glowing through the trees. A red lifebuoy hangs above a shingle beach. Floodlights burn over a football match. A smiling face in a café faces storm clouds and sheep grazing on a hilltop. After dark, festoon lights blur in the fog, and the back cover signs off with ruins against a candy pink sky. Nothing looks staged; this is the stuff most people walk straight past.
A5 landscape gives those panoramas width without the cost of a bigger page. The 130gsm silk keeps the black frames dense and their edges sharp, and night scenes stay rich instead of sinking into the paper. A heavy black border on bright white is a stern test of print quality, because any wobble shows. Here it holds. Our notes summed it up as a very high-end feel to the zine, the photos and the production. If your photographs are a mixed bag of places and moods, a consistent frame like Dave’s can hold them together as one body of work.
The matt laminated cover wraps it in a sturdy, soft-sheened shell that resists scuffs, and the staples let it open easily and stay light enough to post. Unsure whether your work wants portrait, square or landscape? Read our comparison of zine formats and what each one suits.
After the go-ahead we sent an online proof for a final check, printed, and handed the boxes to the courier. Dave’s Instagram, @CFCDave55, is well worth a scroll if you want more of his town after dark.
Behind plenty of good zines sits a friend who knows their way round a PDF. Bring yours along, get your zine on press with us, and we’ll do the counting in fours.
