Posted August 27, 2021 by alienmelon
This update is thanks to The STUDIO at CMU - OSSTA and the Clinic for Open-Source Arts, University of Denver who's support for the Electric Zine Maker made it possible.
Today the new update to the Electric Zine Maker is FINALLY out, and this is the big one! Where do I even begin?
The main UI has received a complete overhaul. Things fit better on smaller screens, and the colors (the very bright colors that are too much for some people) are now manageable. Here's what's new...
Night Mode has been added (it's among the top left icons that let you minimize or close EZM)... it allows you to toggle on or off the bright background. With nightmode on you get to make zines beneath a starry sky. It's much more dark and calmer!
The entire UI has been redesigned to fit on smaller screens. The minimum resolution now is 960 x 640.
Fonts are generally more readable (at least the text meant to be read).
Animations for the buttons have been improved so they aren't so processor intensive.
Many UI elements have been re-drawn to be cute pixel art, like the windows for printing and saving!
Aside from the obvious visual changes there are three new templates!
The Mini-Mini-Booklet is a tiny 29 page book. It's the smallest (reasonable) book template. It requires scissors and a stapler.
With it you can make adorable tiny books that have just the right page number to still be fold-able.
The Micro is... a tiny book with a whopping 60 page count. I don't really know how to describe it. This one is an invention.
You fold it a lot like the 16 page micro-mini, but use the last page at the end to glue it against all the other pages... serving as kind of a book spine and jacket.
It's really complicated. I almost gave up on it, but someone on Twitter commented that it would be adorable to have because you could make books for dollhouses.
All that said, you can make these adorable tiny books (pictured in the animated gif above). You can actually page through them too. They're super cute.
The Micro is hard to fold, cut, and glue. It may take a number of tries. The instructions for it are the most elaborate.
The Tetraflexagon!
Yes, it's a strange little zine that lets you page through it indefinitely. It's very unique. As you page through it you find these random directions... I don't know how to describe it, see the animated gif above.
Some fixes have also been done to printing and saving...
Overall, you should see some improvements with performance.
Windows users that are running Avast, please remember to make an exception for EZM so that saving works.
I will be writing a longer blog post about this update and my plans for the Electric Zine Maker soon...
If you enjoy using the Electric Zine Maker, please remember to pay for it!