What is SHRIMP ZINE?

SZ is a free browser-based web app designed to be used on phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. If you use it on a phone or tablet, we recommend adding SZ to your home screen as a shortcut. It will then behave just like a native app, freeing up the screen space taken by the browser’s interface.

SZ lets you choose images from your device, lay them out using intuitive settings, add light styling or text to your pages, and export a PDF, ready for printing and sharing.

Nothing you upload or create leaves your device; your zines and images are stored locally in your browser, along with a record of all the changes you have made. If you have saved SZ as a shortcut on your touchscreen device, the app will also work offline.

We have no control over your browser’s storage settings, so be sure to download and back up your zines as PDFs when you are ready. You can also download your zine-in-progress as a zipped file in the .shrimp format, which lets you move your work to another device or share and collaborate with other people.

A zine is a small-circulation, self-published booklet, traditionally created by hand (cutting and pasting images or text, photocopying, then stapling them together into a magazine format) or more recently, by using digital desktop tools to assemble layouts before printing and binding them.

Since their beginnings dating as far back as the 1930s, independently made zines (or fanzines) have always been characterized by their DIY ethos: being resourceful with low costs, a focus on community building, and by-passing traditional publishing methods.

As devoted zine-makers for close to 20 years, we believe this medium is a powerful way to distribute your ideas, experiment with your creativity, and build communal networks based on personal interests. Zine-making also offers a decentralized way of sharing information and knowledge and a rare opportunity in our digitalized world for anyone to share their story and physically put it in someone else’s hands.

SZ was created in the summer of 2020, during the peak of the pandemic, by photographer, zine-maker, and educator Andreas Laszlo Konrath together with artist and creative technologist Katsu Sawada, and engineer Christopher Kim.

The project began with a conversation while Andreas was the artist educator for the Dia Beacon Dia Teens program, teaching on Zoom during lockdown and trying to find a way for students to engage deeply with the zine-making process. That’s when Katsu and Chris jumped at the chance to build a free, accessible, mobile-first zine-making tool for young folks to use at home.

The majority of the students did not have access to laptops or desktops, and the cost and steep learning curve of desktop publishing tools like Adobe InDesign were also prohibitive. The focus was to create an easy-to-use, touchscreen-friendly learning tool that would give students access, within the mobile digital realm they were already native to, to the creative engagement of zine-making.

Our initial MVP launched in spring 2021, and since then we have been able to introduce the project and our love for zine-making to friends, educators, students, and organizations both in the US and across the world. Andreas and some of these teaching artists brought the tool and zine workshops into institutions such as Dia Art Foundation, the Guggenheim, 92Y x Teens Take The Met, and the Whitney x The Center.

Over the years we have also partnered with institutions such as the New Museum, CARA, Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Virgil Abloh Archive, the Queens Museum, DreamYard, POWRPLNT, The Lower East Side Girls Club, Penumbra Foundation, The Church, The Society for Photographic Education, City-As-School and 8-Ball Community; universities such as The Cooper Union, The New School, NYU, Johns Hopkins University, UPenn, and UMass Amherst; and several local bookstores, galleries and print shops: Photobook Cafe and The Photographers’ Gallery in London, The Photocopy Club and Toner Gallery in Cornwall, and Photographique in Bristol, England.

From 2022–2023, SZ was accepted to the New Museum’s Cultural Incubator program, New Inc, as part of the Future Memory track, culminating in Andreas presenting a keynote at the New Museum during New Inc’s DEMO2023. In 2024, we updated SZ with a fresh UI reskin and a few enhancements with the help of designer Nick Shelton. And in 2026, searching for collaborators to help reshape SZ into a more capable and flexible multi-device experience, Andreas joined Meta Label’s DFOS community and created an open call. The call received amazing support, connecting Andreas with Emīl Blūm, a Latvian-born designer based in Portugal, who has helped bring this new and current integration of SZ to life.