Mental Health Zine
Front cover of volume 1 of Mental Magpie, a zine by Lunar Autumn.
A personal illustrated zine built from the words and small reminders I needed during a difficult period. It brings together photography, scanned pen/ink drawings, handwritten scraps, sharpie doodles, collage, and digital composition into a collection of gentle truths about rest, hope, self-compassion, and continuing through difficult things.
I originally made it for myself, but it became something I wanted to share with others too.
I wanted the zine to feel hopeful without pretending that difficult things are easy. I intentionally composed one double-page spread as a continuous piece, with the rest of the pages designed to work both as individual pieces and as part of the larger zine.
I used contrast deliberately. Some pages are calmer and have more space, while others are layered, colourful, and visually chaotic. Text can be bold and immediately readable, or buried among the surrounding imagery so that the viewer has to slow down and look for it. The goal was to make the viewer engage with the words rather than simply pass over them.
The finished zine was designed as both a digital publication and a collection of individual square artworks that can be printed separately. Signed print versions of selected pieces are available for purchase, prepared with bleed and trim margins for physical printing.
The project began with a collection of phrases, drawings, photographs, and older pieces of artwork that I Wanted to bring together. I scanned and vectorized physical work, created new lettering and illustrations, edited my own photographs and built the spreads digitally.
Rather than forcing everything into one visual style, I allowed each spread to develop its own composition and then considered how it connected to the pages around it. Repetition in colour, typography, texture, and imagery helped hold the different materials together.
The finished zine was designed as both a digital publication and a collection of individual square artworks that can be printed separately.
Mental Magpie - zine
Gallery
Visual highlights from the project
