In the autumn of 2024, Simon was out on his own hyper-local litter pick along the beaches and paths near his home on Ibiza, wondering about all the rubbish he kept finding. Two summers later that thought had become TRASH, a free, non-profit zine made between London and Ibiza under the S&B Zines name, with Simon as editor and Will as art director. It celebrates the island people adore and asks them to tidy up after themselves, so the coves stay immaculate and tranquil.
Inside Issue 2, Manuel of Ibiza Hike Station explains how exploring forgotten trails grew into clean-up hikes, and a sunlit group shot shows volunteers hauling bulging sacks up from a turquoise cove. The Sloppy Tunas brand turns plastic recovered by fishermen into swim shorts. There is even a beach clean playlist, so residents and tourists can enjoy the vibe while they fill a bag. Getting all that through our zine printing studio took a little over two months, and it started with a video call.
Early July, on a call from Spain
Simon booked a Monday afternoon call with Mike and dialled in from Spain. They talked through paper and format, and that same afternoon Will sent a work in progress file: everything done but the cover, with the Spanish half still to be flipped. Mike’s reply was “Yep, you’ve nailed it!”, with one catch. There was no bleed.
That flip is the heart of the design. TRASH has two front covers, Summer 2026 / Free / For The Island on one and Verano 2026 / Gratis / Por La Isla on the other, both over the same photograph of seafoam circling a red can marked Ibiza, half sunk in the sand. Lime starburst badges tell you to flip it over for English or dale la vuelta para español. Where the halves meet, an IBIZA wristband lies at the water’s edge on both centre pages, one of them upside down, so it reads correctly whichever end you started from.
The bleed took a day to fix. We sent Will our bleed video with the maths: an A5 page of 210 x 148mm needs artwork at 216 x 154mm, with backgrounds running 3mm past each trim. Will had set bleed up in InDesign, but it wasn’t surviving export. Mike’s fix is always one of two things: drag the background out into the bleed area, or type 3mm into the Marks and Bleeds boxes when exporting. Our page on why print files need 3mm of bleed goes through both.
A paper benchmark called So Young
Simon and Will already had a model in mind: So Young, an uncoated magazine we print. Simon admitted they were thinking of “shamelessly copying” it and asked us to double check its inside weight. Mike confirmed So Young had moved to 100gsm, and TRASH followed suit: a 200gsm uncoated cover around 48 inside pages of 100gsm uncoated, full colour, wire stitched, 52 pages in all.
Mike’s own note on the stock is a shrug: uncoated, because what other choice could there be? A zine about sand and litter wants a raw surface. The paper drinks the ink, so pine-clad cliffs and rock pools keep their detail and lose any gloss, while the lemon, mint and deep green page tints go soft and sun washed and the lime highlight bars still hit hard. Stapled and light, it is easy to read between swims.
One more wrinkle surfaced that week. Simon noticed two pages looking odd in his download, and in Acrobat Mike found a transparency glitch on some yellow lettering. He suggested a PDF/X-1a export; Will traced it to an “overprint fill” setting ticked on two elements, and when it crept back onto two pages at proof stage, Simon and Will spotted it and fixed it ahead of the run.
Two empty suitcases to London
Simon had a London trip booked, so we timed delivery to his London collection point for the morning before he landed. Mike’s dispatch email wished the zine luck on the island and hoped it would become a staple of people’s reading habits. Simon flew in with two big empty cases, checked them back in at 32kg apiece and carried the zines home himself.
August, when the cafés wanted more
A month later Simon wrote again. The reception had been warm. He was handing the zine out through cafés, shops and restaurants around his part of the island and topping up the piles every week, and with the season running through September and most of October he wanted a second edition, same spec, with a few small edits to the Spanish text. He also, finally, sent his thanks.
“We are just delighted with the quality and feel of the print … the slightly contradictory idea of a ‘premium zine’.”
Simon, editor of TRASH
Mike was out of the office when the files arrived, so Harriet took the upload and the proofs. One correction came back after the proof, Will reuploaded the same afternoon, and the next morning Simon wrote “we’re happy, let’s print it!”. The new copies reached London before his next flight out. His note on collecting them: “I’m delighted with them and can’t thank you both enough.” Planning for next year’s edition, he added, starts next month.
If you are making a community zine, two things from TRASH travel well. Bring a title you love to your first conversation, because knowing what it is printed on settles the paper question in minutes. And if you publish in two languages, give each its own front cover and design the centre spread to work from either end. A light uncoated stock under a stapled spine keeps a free title cheap to hand out, so check what a stapled A5 run would cost you before the season starts. For the bigger picture, our step by step on printing a zine covers the rest.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100