Zine superstar Sam Pratt reveals how he got the idea for his latest project. They say it can't be done: that the Web is no longer a level playing field; that without massive corporate backing, upstart sites just can't compete in the cutthroat information economy, where marketing muscle has overwhelmed originality just as completely as Gates crushed Jobs. And maybe they're right. But having devoted most of the past year to fermenting the Web zine of my dreams, which launched earlier this week, I'm not prepared to put a cork in this quixotic homebrew before it's even popped. Of course whenever some Brain Truster points out that, for example, Feed's original start-up capital ($75,000 coaxed from family and friends) would not get a new venture off the ground today, the entrepreneurial spirit positively droops. Especially when you don't even have one-tenth that much to spend! But such pronouncements can either chill you... or help steel your resolve. I'd urge anyone who's weary of the current crop of usual Web suspects to go ahead and reseed cyberspace with a new wave of shoestring startups: "Can't be done? Watch us." GETTING STARTED Have you ever gone to a newsstand to buy a magazine, but left without finding anything that scratched your media itch? That experience is often what impels people to start their own publications (though ego and greed are equally potent motivators, to be sure). In my case, browsing the all-too-normative pages of online publications like Salon and Slate sent me searching for less, well, print-like online outlets. Of course, I'd already had the experience of running my own paper zine (Ersatz: The Magazine of Cheap Imitation) and I'd gotten my feet wet in electronic publishing by writing for the likes of Suck and Stim. Missing, it seemed to me, was a Webzine which, though written by media-savvy people, would reject the blustery subject of "Media" in favor of more whimsical, primary sources. Though the idea was vague at first, I imagined a streamlined product as punchy as The Onion and as reflective as Word. The process of distilling a site idea is a lot like writing a pop song or designing a poster. It begins with a hunch — a catchy riff, or a typeface you're dying to use. But rounding that hunch out may require countless revisions before you realize what you're really after. Testing a pie-in-the-sky scheme calls for total immersion in the concrete problems of what to say, and how to package it. I'm convinced production is at least half the battle in luring surfers back to your site; if it's either too slick or too sloppy, you risk losing the digerati whose approval is essential for good word of mouth. So I had to "waste" many hours cracking the design nut before the real meat dropped out. When coming up with a defining metaphor for your zine, it's very easy to get bogged down in the endless options. I learned the hard way. At one point I overthought so much that I found myself alphabetizing a list of 500 potential Web zine names. (Click here to witness this testament to misspent energy). But no real progress was made until I started grappling with specific icons and code. Guided by a cruise ship metaphor, my first forays centered on the titles CASTAWAY and STOWAWAY. Random notes would appear on a shuffleboard, I decided, features in the ballroom, and tech notes in the engine room. But the cruise ship idea soon felt too specific; I didn't want the design to suggest that the content might have some necessary relation to seafaring themes. (I do, however, appreciate any site which follows a metaphor closely: Overdetermined designs have the virtue, at least, of strong character. All I'm saying is that one should make this choice carefully, since you're going to have to live with it for some time. People hate nothing more than a redesign — no matter how cool — so I wanted to make sure my site's 1.0 would have some staying power.) Next came WHIZ, NORMAL, and SNIP, and though none of these mock-ups survived, they did help clarify my thinking and vet missteps. So don't be afraid to experiment. A simple plan finally emerged as it dawned on me that all my ideas were flowing into five distinct channels: quick "Tired/Wired"/thumbs-up-or-down-type picks & pans media tips & links longer essays quotations & blurbs found texts & graphics How did I arrive at these channels? Some background is required: Ersatz got started by accident (I'd never even heard of zines) when I started occasionally photocopying interesting things that came across my desk at my museum job. I'd hand-draw "Ersatz" along the top with fanciful lettering, and mail the final result out to 50 friends. Pretty soon people were sending me material they thought fit the Ersatz aesthetic, or sending in their own projects, and the list grew to 500 people. At that point it became a more "professional" operation, involving printing and binding and subscriptions. My goal in starting an online zine was to use the power of the Web to get back to the immediacy of the original Ersatz. So, in designing the site, I wanted to create distinct but flexible "channels" that could accommodate just about any type of content that I thought worth slapping up on the Net. Thus it was that, while riffing on the number five — pentagons, stars, the brothers Jackson — I found myself smacking my forehead with the fingers of my left hand. Eureka! The Webzine's sections were swiftly named for each of the five digits. Pastiches of the browser pointer led to the site's low-res, pixellated aesthetic. And there it was, at last: TheFinger. Isn't this metaphor just as restrictive as a nautical one? I don't think so. Fingers are universal, and thus flexible enough to hold widely varied content without the metaphor seeming forced. The finger metaphor has greater growth possibilites, and is more allusive — just think of all the gestures and symbols associated with those body parts. Let me free associate for a moment to illustrate: ring fingers, tying a string on your finger as a reminder, the tsk-tsk gesture, fingernails, fingertips, knuckles, palms up, iron fist in a velvet glove... Sure, sea travel has countless associations, too; but it would be difficult to sustain that metaphor. Having a section called "Pointers" is a natural Net pun — the notion of pointing-and-clicking can be applied to reviews, tips, and links in a graphic metaphor that feels relevant, not contrived. Trying to "squarepeg" the same content to a cartoon Cruise Director was just too much. FINGER POINTERS My ignorance of HTML was offset by long experience with black-and-white desktop publishing: Anyone familiar with Quark Xpress circa 1988 knows what it feels like to get really inventive with a limited toolbox just to squeeze out the simplest graphic trick. Claris HomePage became my editor of choice, but no WYSIWYG program can release you from the sacred duty of learning some code. If you want your engine to run smoothly you're going to have to check under the hood. And my browser's "View Source" command became a dear friend, too: If I was struggling with a certain effect, I'd compare another site's code to what HomePage was spewing out, and make manual corrections. As a 28.8 man, I didn't want the site to eat up bandwidth. Frames were sorely tempting, but luckily Jeff Hansen — a veteran zinester who created the hilarious and admirably quick-loading Cardhouse — counselled me, "Never go beyond tables, unless you can offer three different sets of pages — high, low, and text-only." I also kept images down to two-color, fingernail-sized GIFs. The process thus far had taken me some 6 months. Meanwhile HotWired unveiled their new bitmapped look, to my (brief) horror; contributors still had to be wooed on the cheap; and my limited cash went into a content deal with FootFoot, a (paper) zine I'd admired, to ensure that TheFinger stayed fresh. The crucial search for a host ended with dti.net. The $100 domain name registration and the $95/month commercial rate seemed like a steal compared to a $700 Ersatz print run. I was finally ready to start uploading pages. It's true, the best known sites are already in bed with the big boys. But I've found that one dedicated person with a small amount of computer literacy doesn't need $75K up front — just a taste for sleep deprivation. And if you consider how few sites really scratch your media itch, you have to hope that a finger which finds just the right spot will take off. I hope you'll check out TheFinger, and then start plotting your own zine! Sam Pratt, who published the widely-admired zine Ersatz, files a weekly column called ZIPcodes for The New York Post, and freelances widely for magazines such as I.D., Detour, and Suck. His Webzine TheFinger launched on November 1st, 1997.