22 page zine

I’m an artist putting together a 22-page zine to accompany my solo exhibition in October. It’s built around anonymous responses to the sentence “It’s alright that I…”, alongside my own paintings and drawings.

I’m not a designer, so I’ve used AI tools to rough out content, structure and layout. It’s been a useful starting point but far from finished — some pages are closer to where I want them than others.

The brief in one line: make it feel homemade, tactile and human — torn paper, typewritten text, handwriting, drawings, slightly wonky placement, real imperfection. I don’t want it to look slick, overly polished, or AI-generated.
Timeline: I need this finished and print-ready within three weeks — by 22 September.

Attached: current 22-page working PDF, so you can see where things stand. I also have all original artwork as high-res files and a fuller handover document, ready to share once we’re talking.

How I’d like to work: I’m on a tight budget, so before committing to the whole thing, I’d like your honest estimate of how many hours it would take to bring this to a strong, print-ready standard. I’d then like to start with a small paid stage — a few representative pages, an agreed number of hours — so we can see how we work together before the rest is commissioned.

If this sounds like your kind of project, I’d love to hear your thoughts — including a rough hours estimate and any early reactions to the PDF.