There is a Cornwall that never reaches the postcard rack, and Michael Redmond keeps finding it. A white caravan parked under tangled winter branches. A figure on a harbour bench beneath a string of bunting. In his own words to local press at launch, these are photographs of the county “but not the images that you usually see on postcards and Instagram.”
The Beautifully Mundane Cornwall gathers them into an A5 photo zine printed entirely in black ink. Michael grew up in the South East with an eye for urban, street and industrial scenes, and since moving to Cornwall more than a decade ago he has trained it on ordinary things in ordinary places, working in both digital and analogue. Our notes put it simply: it’s the nitty gritty of the county, shot from angles most people never think to look for.
The spec is as unfussy as the subject, and every line of it was a decision worth explaining.
A5 portrait, because nothing needed reinventing
Some projects call for a custom size or a clever fold. This one didn’t. A5 is a natural home for a photo zine: easy to hold, easy to post, and comfortable on a fair table or a bookshop counter. Our studio verdict was that the spec is rock solid and doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel.
That restraint suited Michael’s aims. He wanted the book to stay affordable for readers on lower incomes, and a standard size keeps production lean. If you are making your first photo zine, start here and spend your energy on the edit.
A 350gsm uncoated cover, matt laminated
Michael knew he wanted a matt feel and was happy to take our advice on stocks and weights. A heavy uncoated board gives the cover that soft, unshiny surface, and the matt laminate keeps scuffs off the black ink without adding gloss.
The cover design is neat and succinct. The title is set small on the side of the caravan, so the photograph carries the whole front, with Michael’s name at the foot. On the back, an ISBN barcode makes it ready for retail.
130gsm silk inside, and two different blacks
This is the decision that makes the zine a lesson in print. Lift the cover and the inside of the front board is uncoated, printed solid black with Michael’s introduction reversed out in white. Turn to the first photograph on silk and the black changes character completely.
On uncoated stock, ink soaks into the fibres and settles into a muted charcoal. On silk, it sits on the surface and dries jet black, so it jumps off the page. Neither is better. They suit different pictures. Seeing the two side by side in one zine is one of the clearest demonstrations we have printed, and it gives you a real choice for your own photographs: silk for deep, dense shadows, uncoated for a softer, moodier finish. For more on what each paper finish does to ink, read our side by side guide.
Black ink only, with every image converted to greyscale
Printing a mono zine in black alone is economical and honest, but it has one trap. Photographs left in RGB or CMYK colour can pick up a faint tint on press. We explained how to convert them to greyscale and offered to do the conversion for Michael, so every frame printed as true black and white.
The layout leans on that black. Each photograph is the main feature on its page, and opposite it a contributor’s response appears in white type on a solid black page, with a name and short description beneath. The device separates looking from reading, and each picture gets a beat of silence before the words arrive.
The words are the twist. Michael sent each photograph to a different writer, artist, photographer or poet and asked them to respond however they liked, with no input from him. Philippa Perry, Grayson Perry and the Rev Richard Coles are among them, and the project had Arts Council England support. A fibreglass dog with painted eyes draws a photographer’s thoughts on catch lights; a globe engulfed in flames prompts a naturalist’s warning about the climate. The pairings fit so well that we assumed Michael had gone hunting for words to suit each image. He hadn’t.
Perfect bound, with an eye on the gutter
Sixty inside pages give enough thickness for a square glued spine, printed with the title, so a stack of copies reads clearly on a shelf. Perfect binding has one catch for photographers: the centre of a spread disappears a little into the spine. We spotted a double-page spread where detail risked vanishing into the gutter and encouraged Michael to adjust his original file rather than patch it at our end, so the fix stayed in his hands. Our notes on preparing files for a glued spine show where to keep faces and focal points.
Michael built the whole thing without a laptop, so we talked him through an iPad workflow and exporting a print-ready PDF/X-1a file. He told us our short printing video guides helped along the way.
The zine has sold well enough for us to print it several times. Your own county has corners like these that nobody bothers to photograph. Go and find them, then start your photo zine with us and pick your black on purpose.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100