A lidded jar of sauce, a squeezy bottle and a steel pot of spoons and forks sit on a red tabletop, with plastic stools waiting behind. That is the front cover of Goreng, the Malay word for fried, and a first zine from photographer and YouTuber Paul Napo. Inside, a man in a red shirt grins over a plate of noodles in front of a turquoise wooden stall, regulars share teapots at a round table, and a woman in a pink headscarf carries a plate through a busy cafe. It runs to 48 A5 pages, wire stitched: 44 pages of 150gsm uncoated inside a matt laminated cover of 300gsm silk, all in full colour. If you have a camera roll in mind, our photobook and photo zine printing service covers builds like this one.
Staples, so the noodles can cross the fold
Our first quote for Paul set two builds side by side: stapled, or glued with a 5mm spine. At 44 inside pages either would work, since glued binding starts at 32. He chose staples, and the noodle spread shows why. That portrait runs straight across the centre of two pages, and a stitched zine opens far enough for the fold to stay a thin line rather than a trench that swallows the middle of the picture. That matters when one of the strongest photographs in the zine straddles the gutter.
The paper suits food. A 150gsm uncoated sheet is thick enough to stop dark pictures ghosting through to the next page, and its matt surface keeps reds, oranges and that turquoise paint warm instead of glossy. For the cover he swapped the uncoated board in our first quote for 300gsm silk, then had the outside matt laminated, which leaves the photograph smooth and easy to wipe. Elsewhere he lets white space work: smaller pictures sit in clean borders, sometimes facing an empty page.
Colour questions, answered straight
Before sending anything, Paul noticed his colours shifting when he exported from Affinity Publisher, and asked whether a test copy would match the final run. Mike recommended the FOGRA39 profile, pointed out the converted file was only a touch more yellow, and gave him the frank version: a single proof copy will not be colour matched to the run, because even two presses side by side behave slightly differently. Paul’s reply was “Thanks for the honesty ;)”.
When the files landed, Harriet’s preflight caught the usual first zine snags. A stitched zine needs its cover inside the same single page PDF, front cover as page 1, so the files had to be rebuilt; a handful of pages were missing bleed, then a fresh export let neighbouring pages spill into each other’s bleed. Three versions in roughly a day, and the third was “spot on”. Our guide to setting 3mm bleed on your artwork covers exactly those traps. When Paul opened the boxes in Dublin, his verdict was “Prints are great, colors are perfects”.
Gone in days, then on YouTube
Every copy had sold within a week. Paul then made a French language video guide to making a photography zine, built round his own experience of printing with us, with an Ex Why Zed printing voucher up for grabs. More than one photographer has since written to us mentioning that video.
For another photographer’s zine about places to eat and drink, look at Omokage Yokocho, Joao Maia’s A5 study of Japanese bar alleys. If your own pictures are full of tables, stalls and the people who keep them going, send them our way and we will check every page before a single sheet is printed.
Photographs of the zine by Paul Napo.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
