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Binding as manifesto.
The saddle-stitch demands a center. The long-arm stapler demands a spine. I use a regular stapler, two inches from the corner. This is not incompetence. This is to remind you that the binding is a decision, not a requirement. Every zine contains a theory of assembly.
Lo-fi as radical act.
The xerox look isn't a limitation — it's an argument. Grain says: this was touched by human hands. Bleed says: we ran out of margin. Drift says: the original is elsewhere. You copy a copy of a copy until the original is irrelevant. That's not degradation. That's transmission.
Compression as criticism.
At 300dpi everything looks finished. Drop it to 72dpi, convert to bitmap, apply diffusion dithering — suddenly the image has opinions. The face becomes a pattern becomes a field becomes a feeling. This is what I mean when I say lo-fi is not a budget constraint. It is an epistemological stance.
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