ME
I'm Alex, an artist in the North-West of England. Late 2025 I started a community (maga)zine for my local town and had such a nice time organising it all, editing, doing the graphic design, that I want to run my own zine based around art, culture, and creativity. My art education background is in fashion/garment design (one year in art school). After I left art school I did a few STEM degrees. My professional background is in science communication. I've remained active doing all kinds of creative/craft things including: illustration, acrylic on canvas, photography, silicone casting, collage, and water colour.

THE ZINE NAMED LimitedNormal
As I am just getting started with this, contributions will be made on a voluntary basis meaning nobody gets paid for their work. However, if I have selected your submission to feature in the zine, I will send you one zine free of charge to an address in the UK. If your submission features in the zine and you want to receive the zine on an adress outside the UK, I will send you one free zine if you pay the full postage to wherever you want me to send it.

As I will be funding the printing costs myself, I aim to sell the zine online as well as in-person if I can find the right venue(s)/event(s) for it. If I end up with more money in my pocket than I spent on this, I can start offering some money for any future contributions to next editions of the zine.

The topic for this first edition of LimitedNormal is creativity theory & creative processes. This is inspired by me doing a part-time undergraduate diploma in Creativity Theory, History, and Philosophy a few years ago. You can do anything you like for it as long as it fits with the topic: you can write something (semi)academic, you can write a short story, poetry, non-fiction. You can make any kind of artwork for it as long as it can be captured in a photo or multiple photos or a drawing: something that can be printed on paper. You could also make a flow chart of your creative process or some other abstract depiction of your thoughts on this. A meme you made yourself is also welcome!

There's not really any rules besides that text must be in English and that I will not accept anything created with AI.

The deadline for submission is Monday June 1, 2026.

I will print the zine to the following size: A5 landscape (210 x 148 mm, which is 216 x 154 mm with bleed).

I will go for full colour, so works will be as colourful as you submit them.

For text submissions, the max. word count I can accept is 2000 words.

For image submissions, please don't submit more than what would fill 6 pages at a5-size landscape orientation. Submit high-resolution files to ensure suitable printing quality.

When you e-mail me your submission (your work), please also include in your e-mail:

* The name you want displayed with your work
* The city or town and country where you currently live
* How was your work created? This can be brief
* If you have any preferences for how your work will be included/shown
* Your website and/or social-media URL/username and/or e-mail address you want displayed with your work
* A small biography and/or artist statement, if you like this to be included. Max 100 words total.


I aim to communicate clearly and in a timely manner to everyone who has contacted me whether that's to ask questions or to submit work. I will get back to everyone to let them know whether I have selected their submission for the zine, or not (in case I get more submissions than there's space).

Please send me your final draft of your work, unless you have some specific questions on how to prepare your work for submission. I can proofread and do some minor editing on your text submission if you like (things like typos), but please submit a proofread draft rather than something you know still needs work. Thanks!

I hope everyone has a good time working on this topic. I'm looking forward to your submissions!

If you'd like to share my call out for submissions, please use these images: