I finally gave in and tried a paper mockup for my zine layout, and it saved me a ton of headache

I was always against doing mockups by hand because I'd rather work in InDesign and fix everything digitally. But last month I was designing a 24-page zine for a local art fair in Austin, and nothing I did on screen felt right. So I printed out rough thumbnail sketches at half size and taped them to the wall, and immediately spotted a bad page order I'd missed (pages 7 and 8 had a huge white gap between them). After 3 tries with scissors and tape, I got a flowing spread that actually felt good. Have you ever had a digital design look perfect but fall apart when you see it as a physical object?

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henderson.hugo16d ago

Does it count if the digital version looked great on my monitor but when I tried to fold a mockup I realized the cover was backwards? I'd say yes because that happened last year with my first ever zine attempt. Printed out a rough draft and taped it together, got so confused by the page order that I had to redo the whole thing. Now I always do at least one hand mockup before sending to the printer. Saves me from shitty surprises.