By Design - October 2022

COVER STORY AN UNEXPECTED OUTCOME —continued from previous page

marketing services, we dropped Graphics & Print completely and became Zine. What does Zine mean anyway? How do you pronounce it? It rhymes with “shine” so it is pronounced with a long “i.” People sometimes pronounce it with a short “i” like in “magazine” which makes sense too, but it’s always been Zine with a long “i.”

publishing business, namely magazines, which is one of our specialties today. So when people mispronounce it, it doesn’t bother me. But even more interesting is that the name does now have a very profound and special meaning for me. I will give you a hint…it is related to a famous mountain. What is that profound meaning? Maybe we'll unfold it in this interview. This way, the readers will experience the same discovery process I did, and hopefully the same sense of wonder. OK, then tell us more about Zine. Did you have a vision when you started it? If you count wanting to separate it from the printing business a vision, then yes. Otherwise, no. At least nothing intentional. It was always just “what’s the next thing I need to do?” Which is a perfectly fine way to operate in the short term, especially at the beginning. But, you know, you can’t stay there. Because once you “do the next thing you have to do” you have to figure out what the next thing is. And then you find yourself just doing, doing, doing. And even if you reach your goal, there is just more doing on the other side of it. That’s how we get caught in the “hustle and grind” trap and start to burn out.

Give us a little background about Zine? What led you to start it? Zine was born in a dusty little print shop that my husband and I purchased in 2004. I was in the middle of a career change, wanting to move away from a confining, 9-5 job. My husband was looking for a job and we felt being business owners gave us the best chance at autonomy and wealth. We serendipitously discovered a business called Speedy Printing that was for sale. Everything fell into place Now the new career I was pursuing was graphic design. I had worked in software development for the Hubble Space Telescope for about 9 years, and though it was an amazing place to work, I wanted to do something creative and artistic that also gave me the freedom I sought from the 9-5 grind. The print shop was the perfect place to launch my new career, but I felt I needed to sell the design services separately to give it more value. Thus Zine was born. It was originally Zine Graphics & Web since web design services were in high demand. Then when I decided to focus on print, we changed the name to Zine Graphics & Print. And then we added and we became the proud owners on August 1, 2004.

Zine was born inside a retail printing business to provide high-end design services for print projects.

I wish I could say there was some profound meaning when I selected the name, but there wasn’t. I was planning on being clever with the words “dezign” and “inzpire.” But that cleverness never happened. It all worked out down the road because “zine” with a short “i” is associated with the

18 The Results-Driven Life by Design