A5 Booklets
4pp Cover onto 300gsm Silk
Matt Lamination to outer
32pp Inside pages onto 120gsm Uncoated
Four colour print throughout
Trimmed, collated and staple bound
Skateism is a photographic zine by London-based photographer and director Matt Joseph, capturing the energy of a roller–skate crew tearing up a multi-storey car park. Created as a companion to his film and documentary work, the zine needed to balance crisp monochrome tones with a bold hit of orange type. We worked closely with Matt on samples, artwork set-up and multiple proofs to land a neat A5 zine that does justice to the movement, community and intensity of the sessions.
Skateism drops the reader into a slice of the London skate scene in 2024. Shot in a car park, the work mixes blurred streaks of motion with sharp portraits and wider group shots of skaters lining up on the tarmac.
The zine sits cosy in the hand at A5, making it easy to share at screenings, pop-ups and events while still giving enough room for full-bleed photographs. It feels like a capsule from a single night: grain, lights, concrete and wheels all humming together.
We printed Skateism as an A5 stapled booklet with a 4pp cover on 300gsm silk. Matt chose a matt laminated outer so the cover image stays protected while still feeling smooth and contemporary.
Inside, 32 pages run on 120gsm uncoated stock with four-colour print throughout. This combination is key: silk on the outside for a punchy, durable wrapper; uncoated inside for a softer, slightly toothy surface that suits grainy black-and-white photography. The uncoated stock gives the greyscale images a tactile, documentary feel while still holding the occasional orange accent cleanly.
Trimmed, collated and staple bound, the booklet keeps things honest and “ziney” – exactly what a fast, underground skate project needs.
The wrap-around cover is a single black-and-white photograph of a skater mid-air in a car park, spanning front and back. Across the bottom edge, the SKATEISM title runs in vivid orange caps, bleeding off the page so it shouts from a distance.
Inside, most pages are full-bleed or close to it, with skaters cutting across the spreads and headlights streaking through the background. A central spread of film screenshots breaks the rhythm and nods to the moving-image roots of the project.
Orange typography appears sparingly – mainly for titles and small details – so each instance hits hard against the monochrome photography. The saddle-stitched binding allows the zine to lie relatively flat, which is ideal for those wide, double-page shots of the whole crew on the ramps.
Matt began by asking for a sample pack and spare zines so he could see how different papers and staple layouts behave in real life. We posted a mixed bundle and followed up with a quote based on an A5 zine spec that would suit his project.
From there the conversation dived into colour management and profiles. Matt wanted the black-and-white images to feel true and the orange to stay accurate. We advised on using a FOGRA27 profile for uncoated paper and suggested checking Output Preview in Acrobat to simulate how tones might shift in print.
Getting the artwork right became a genuine collaboration. We helped work through page counts in multiples of four, checked that the film screenshot spread sat exactly on the centre spread, and requested resupplied PDFs as single pages in reading order for clean imposition.
Bleed and full-bleed imagery were another key topic. After an initial file without bleed, we shared our video guide and Matt reworked layouts so important details didn’t sit on the trim line. We then produced a pair of test copies so he could check blacks, saturation and layout in hand before committing to a full run.
The final hurdle was the wrap-around cover. Lining up the front and back halves across the spine proved tricky, so we offered to rebuild the cover from a supplied spread/PSD, ensuring alignment and bleed were spot on before generating the final proofs.
Our role on Skateism was part printer, part production support.
