The Story

Making a zine was like screaming into the void, except occasionally a letter would arrive from a stranger signalling your message had been received. They were also real, physical artifacts. Like a print version of a candid photo, zines trapped the feeling of a specific time and place in amber. 

This is exactly the feeling I wanted to create with BZINE, a newsprint zine produced for budtenders. Every spread is dense with imagery, some obvious, some obscure. Articles and interviews are interwoven within the layout, sitting comfortably alongside nonsense and ephemera. It’s the sort of thing you can stare at for hours, especially if you’re baked.

With only 3000 copies printed, BZINE was distributed via B2B channels to cannabis retailers nationwide. That sounds like a pretty decent print run for a zine, but stocks were completely depleted within six weeks. And to think I was worried about having a pile of these sitting in storage somewhere.

Special thanks to writer extraordinaire Jess G, without whom this publication would not have been possible.