How I Made a 128-Page Zine in Just 6 Hours

Since last Sunday, I’ve been holding a solo exhibition in Shinjuku, and things have been pretty hectic—so this newsletter went out a bit later than usual.

The reason is simple: I made a brand-new zine specifically for this exhibition.

The show opened on February 1, but I didn’t start working on the zine until January 26. To make it in time, I had to submit the final data to the printer by the end of the next day, January 27. That meant I had just one day to do everything.

I was honestly worried it wouldn’t make it—but somehow, it did. Here’s the zine I ended up making.

This time, I want to walk you through how I made it in one day (actually, about six hours)—from the workflow to the real problems that came up along the way.

📝 Quick update:
If you ordered the Monthly Zine with Darkroom Print, everything is on track to ship around Feb 10. Thanks for your patience — you’re all amazing!

Table of Contents

• The Editing Took Just 6 Hours

  • ⏰ January 26, 10:00 PM: Selecting Photos in Lightr …

  • ⏰ January 26, 11:00 PM: Starting the Layout in InD …

  • 📝 Why I Use InDesign

  • ⏰ January 27, 2:00 AM: Title and Statement

  • ⏰ January 27, 2:30 AM: Exporting the PDF — Trouble

• 🎉 The Zine Arrived in Time for the Exhibition

The Editing Took Just 6 Hours

⏰ January 26, 10:00 PM: Selecting Photos in Lightroom

On January 26, I suddenly decided to make a zine for the exhibition. When I looked at the clock, it was already 10:00 PM.

There was no time to overthink it. I decided on the theme immediately. Since the exhibition was at a gallery bar in Shinjuku, the theme had to be Shinjuku.

I opened Lightroom. Normally, I’d create a dedicated folder for the zine and carefully add candidate images. But this time, even that felt like a luxury.

Instead, I scrolled through my photos chronologically and exported anything that felt like it could fit the theme. I exported more than 150 images to a local folder.

It was still only 11:00 PM. A good pace.

⏰ January 26, 11:00 PM: Starting the Layout in InDesign

Next, I opened InDesign.

When I’m working on layout and sequencing, I usually reference other photobooks or zines. But this time, there wasn’t enough time to pull ideas from multiple books.

While selecting photos in Lightroom, I realized this zine had a similar vibe to one specific photobook: 90 Nights by Meisa Fujishiro.

90 Nights documents Tokyo’s club scene in the 1990s. John Sypal wrote a great review of it—if you’re interested, definitely check that out.

The book focuses more on people than landscapes, and you can really feel the heat of the night. That matched exactly what I wanted to do with this zine. So I decided to follow a similar layout approach.

The layout rules were simple:

• No margins. Photos fill the entire page.

• Horizontal images are either placed two-up on a single page, or shown large across a full spread.

I also borrowed the sequencing idea:

• The first few pages feature strong, iconic images that grab the reader.

• Toward the end, quieter images appear—like the night slowly coming to an end.

It’s the flow of a night out at a club: excitement on the way there, drinks, peak energy—and then the calm that comes when it’s almost over.

On top of that, I layered the chaotic energy of Shinjuku, which became the core of this zine.

I kept placing photos in InDesign, one after another.

Some of the images were black and white. When black-and-white photos are printed as color in on-demand printing, the blacks can sometimes turn slightly purple. To avoid that, I converted each black-and-white image to grayscale.

In InDesign, I selected each photo, chose Edit Original in Photoshop, converted it to grayscale, saved it, and moved on.

📝 Why I Use InDesign

By the way, I know people use all kinds of tools—Photoshop, Canva, and more. I heard that InDesign was the standard for book layout, so I started using it and never really looked back.

Compared to Canva, InDesign has a few clear advantages:

• You can instantly switch between edit view and trimmed preview (on Mac, just press Shift + W).

• Even in preview mode, the center line is visible, which makes spreads easier to visualize.

When you’re printing a zine, you also need to account for bleed—usually about 3mm beyond the final size. If you don’t, you risk white edges appearing after trimming.

InDesign makes it easy to handle these print-specific details efficiently, especially with shortcuts. That speed really matters when you’re on a tight deadline.

⏰ January 27, 2:00 AM: Title and Statement

Four hours in, after checking the flow over and over in preview mode, I finished placing around 100 photos. Including the cover, the zine ended up being 128 pages.

But there was one problem: I still didn’t have a title.

As I reviewed the sequence, I realized something. Even if you walk the same streets at night, the scene changes completely depending on your angle—Shinjuku is like a kaleidoscope.

That word, kaleidoscope, felt perfect.

It was 2:00 AM. There was no one I could ask for feedback. I asked ChatGPT what it thought, felt good about it myself, and decided on the title Shinjuku Kaleidoscope.

I then wrote a short statement to match the title.
(For the record, I started working at 10:00 PM, and by this point I’d had about three cans of beer.)

⏰ January 27, 2:30 AM: Exporting the PDF — Trouble

Everything looked finished in InDesign.
I exported the PDF for printing. While it was exporting, I had a cigarette and reviewed the flow one last time.

Then I went to the printer’s website, selected the page count, quantity, and specs, and paid.

Here were the specs:

• Printing: On-demand

• Binding: Perfect binding

• Paper used:

  • Cover — Matte Coated 135kg (Gloss Lamination)

  • Body — Matte Coated 110kg

If you’re curious about zine paper, make sure to check this out too.

Then I uploaded the PDF. That’s when the problem hit.
The printer I usually use has a 3GB upload limit. My file was 5GB.

It was already 3:00 AM. I was tired. I’d been drinking. I wanted to sleep.
But if I wanted to make the deadline, I had no choice.

Since this was an A5 zine (A4 spreads), the images didn’t actually need to be that large. Even for a full-spread image, 4093 × 2894 pixels at 350dpi is more than enough.

So I selected the largest images in InDesign, opened them in Photoshop, and resized them to around 4000–5000 pixels on the long edge at 350dpi.

Some of the originals were over 12,000 pixels wide—definitely overkill.

I resized everything, got the files uploaded, and just like that, it was already 4 AM.

🎉 The Zine Arrived in Time for the Exhibition

And this is what arrived.

It made it.

People started buying it from the very first day of the exhibition. To everyone who picked up a copy—thank you so much.

This zine is also available on the FAR EAST DARKROOM website.

It’s packed with raw, vivid photos of people living in the nights of Shinjuku—scenes I’ve been shooting for nearly seven years. It also features color photos, which I haven’t used in a zine for a while.

If you pick one up, you’ll be supporting my photography—and I really appreciate that.

The sales also help support FAR EAST DARKROOM. As you know, FED buys photobooks and zines upfront to reduce inventory risk for photographers and help fund their next projects.

Sales from this zine will go toward supporting new photographers as well.
Thank you all for the support. See you next week!

👉 View the zine details 👈

🦖 Come hang out with me on Instagram → @_nuts.tokyo_

🪐 New videos on zines & photography up on YouTube

🧃 Curious about Japanese and Asian zines? Visit FAR EAST DARKROOM.