#18 Real Human Zine

This episode:

• 💡We’re turning newsletters (or images & an idea) into social media carousels and (stronger option→) printed pocketable zines

• ⚡️Creative tech inspo from SXSW festival of music / tech / film / ? in Austin & London (my advice: always meet your heroes)

• 💓 Real heroes, & why you might not want to be one

• 🎧 Guess the theme song

JEN_AI Challenge #18: Zine Machine

We’ve all had an idea for a ‘killer app’, business or creative project that died in our heads due to lack of time, resources, or the nerve to make it real.

I’m Jenni Munroe, an ex- Google / DeepMind Generative AI (‘GenAI’) Experimentalist & Founder at JEN_AI Human + AI Creative Lab. I’m challenging myself (and you too) to make ideas & dreams real - using new & retro tech, culture and media - as we work out what it means to be human in the age of AI.

Here’s one good thing about AI slop: it might finally be giving us the kick we all need to get off our phones.

Independent bookshops are seeing a revival. More people are choosing real live communal experiences. Media platforms are pivoting to more live events. Artists are selling via ‘Snail Mail Clubs’. Vogue magazines are even selling out (and I don’t just mean that they’re sponsored by Jeff Bezos).

But. Magazines are big, books are long and attention is short. Let’s bring back miniature serialised print storytelling like it’s 1899. But with a pocket-sized 1990s twist. (Let’s not forget why Charles Dickens novels are so long in the first place! They were usually first published in short regular installments, with illustrations. And ads. Authors had a chance to pivot future chapters based on reader feedback and get confidence in publishing the book for sale.)

So, this week’s experiment: take *a Substack newsletter* (or some pics & a dream) and turn it into something you can hold. A printed phone-size addiction-breaking mini-zine. Readable on a train with your phone left in your bag like some kind of Victorian. Add some blank pages to jot down your startup ideas?

Same content, three formats:

1. **Grab a post** or your idea & images

1. **Vibe-design it into a carousel** ask AI (e.g. ai.studio/build) to make a tool that will turn into a social media carousel (sized for LinkedIn & Instagram (1080 × 1350)) or printable zine in

1. **Print it into a zine** so the thing that lived on a screen now lives in a pocket

Here’s an example prompt for Google AI Studio to make you a zine machine:

I want an app that makes a LinkedIn carousel using current best practices whose design style is based on a brand style screenshot the user uploads. The carousel should include images the user uploads, and appropriate content extracted from a pdf of an uploaded Substack newsletter. Give me an option to download the carousel as a printable zine.

If you just want to use my app instead to make carousels or zines - no problem: comment / message me.

I went completely off the rails this challenge & turned into an AI-human zine machine. (well, not 97 - maybe 8)

First I tried making a carousel of my SxSW Austin experience that could double as a social media carousel and printed mini zine.

The “industry standard” tool is Canva - which is great, but ‘vibecoding’ your own tool with AI can offer something no mass-market app can give you: whatever you ask for. I used Google’s AI Studio but you could use Claude Code, ChatGPT’s Codex, Lovable, Replit etc. Vibecoded apps can be less reliable / secure, so don’t give them excessive access, use version control, and set payment limits etc.

I also had this crazy hope that I could write & video-record once per JEN_AI experiment, cut from that and cascadingly share the madness appropriately across platforms (great content system or plague? you decide), and also god forbid, share things with people In Real Life - as we break free from our smartphones and re-embrace the real world via print media and actual human beings.

This one was made with ChatGPT (note their Codex tool is much more powerful) using Google Gemini to analyze the announcements from their recent I/O conference. I didn’t post it on LinkedIn as some release dates were inaccurate - but I’ll let it slide here as product-hype presentations are infamously vague on dates ;)

I also made a “Start Here” Instagram story sequence and “MAKE IT”: a tiny eight-page field guide for people with ideas to get started and make something real.

..Also a colouring booklet as one of the party favours for my kids’ birthday party. That’s it. Almost. I also made a few old-school Instagram Stories and paper mini-zines with friends & family.

SXSW festival is in London this week, and I was able to sneak along for a day:

1. The clash of genres especially in Austin is INSANE: Music. Film & TV. Comedy. Art. Tech. Entrepreneurship. Brands. Creators. Wellness. Vehicles? (incl. self-driving taxis and joyriding Electric Monster Truck Rivians over mountains of dirt on historic Congress Avenue). I ended up following friends to a Drag-King-hosted fashion show at a fringe medieval renaissance fayre at one point. What can I say? Drag gon’ slay.

2. The unofficial parties, ‘houses’ sponsored by companies / countries and the cheap music wristbands are worth turning up for, so if your company won’t pay the $2000 ticket then don’t pay it! Half the people in Austin didn’t have a fancy ticket. Don’t worry: you can still leave with a free hat, mushroom coffee and 7 tote bags.

3. SXSW trends:

   1. the impact of AI including how cognitive labour & writing might become like going to the gym (yikes)

   2. the shift to IRL community events from social media (bias? ofc)

   3. ‘attention is the product’ - startups take note (and start a podcast, lol)

   4. The in-demand hire: ‘agentmaxxers’ (=people really good at using AI agents)

   5. wellness hubs as the new pubs

4. Meet your heroes. But first: meet the people standing next to you. Even in London I was surprised how open everyone was to chatting. Even the celebs.

The maddening thing was I got to hear from and then meet! some absolute icons that most of my friends had never heard of. Actors from the Clueless movie & Buffy the Vampire Slayer (/ Austin Powers) were launching a demon alcopop brand, podcaster Prof G posed for a selfie, and the epic lady content creators of tech (like @alberta.tech, @bytesofbree, @madeline.m.zhang) were out in force. I’m frankly relieved I hadn’t worked out I could actually go up to Paul Rudd at his movie premiere. Insane. Privilege.

Steven Bartlett hosts the “2nd most popular podcast in the world” - ‘The Diary of a CEO’, is a Dragon’s Den [=Shark Tank] investor, entrepreneur & bestselling author. I can’t tell you how reality-melting it is to actually meet and chat to (and HUG?) someone you’ve listened to for hours. His podcast has received its fair share of criticism, but it was the spark that inspired me to start my JEN_AI experimental AI/human creative lab and reclaim a little island of my life for myself since becoming a parent to 3 amazing kids. Steven and his team (esp. Georgia Gibson) were very kind, generous, and are also clearly walking-the-walk not just talking-the-talk in their use of AI agents.

Stepping back for context: I have 3 young kids, one of whom has additional support needs, so being anywhere in person, IRL, is a privilege for me. (I spent 5 hours solo in a hospital emergency room recently and it might as well have been a spa retreat.)

A day at SXSW London with friends was amazing. 6 days at SXSW Austin & visiting friends in California in March this year was completely insane.

I didn’t even care that Google pulled me from my own SXSW speaker gig just days before I was due to present the 2hr AI & Creativity workshop, due to my imminent redundancy. lol. I pitched that talk! BUT it worked out for the best as I got to enjoy the festival with more time and zero pressure.

It did mean that I didn’t get to make the ‘community zine’ I’d planned to create live with the participants at the workshop. Another time ;)

It was the pandemic that solidified my creeping sense that a ‘hero’ was not something you’d want to be. I wasn’t in the UK or Europe then, but I’m told that folks would stand outside their houses on Thursdays and ‘Clap for Heroes’ to show appreciation for the National Health Service and other frontline workers. It seemed like a lovely sentiment but a terrible deal: a hero was someone underpaid, overworked and doing the risky jobs the rest of us would rather not.

At least they got a thank-you, I guess? The real heroes are usually the ones nobody is clapping for. Parents and carers working the 24/7 shift. Assistants and juniors invisibly doing the work their betters are getting credit for. Any kid or adult stuck in school or work that is not working for them. And I won’t stress anybody out by mentioning women & minorities (like how attributing women’s scientific achievements to male colleagues has happened so systemically it even has a name: The Matilda Effect). You get the idea.

So. YOU. The Real Hero Is You. You deserve the credit, you deserve a break, you deserve the clap (ok forget that), and you deserve to live the life and dreams that matter to you. To anyone gritting through it - I see you. When you get a chance to escape from building someone else’s empire, take care of yourself and then make your own small thing with your name on it. I’m saying this because having something to myself saved me.

Hustle-culture frames failure as not working hard enough. Which misses the point; you already had the drive, but driving doesn’t fix a broken system. We all “leaned in” and guess what? We fell over.

If you have been a hero for far too long, I pray you get support, a few stolen moments to rest, and maybe later: some space to do your thing. Plus, forcefully reclaiming your attention (yes, from tech platforms just like this).

Care & attention - to your needs - is ‘all’ you need.

• ‘A Real Hero’ by College & Electric Youth, best known from the 2011 “Drive” movie starring Ryan Gosling as a getaway-driver saviour & Carey Mulligan parenting despite danger. (Both heroes, really.) Although the hero described in the lyrics is actually Captain ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, who famously landed a plane on the Hudson River saving 155 lives. All 3 heroes, real or fictional, did with calm grit what needed to be done.

🎧Playlist: The JEN_AI Mixtape

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Thanks to every stranger, internet person or friend who was so friendly at SXSW.

And thanks to YOU, for being part of making JEN_AI real. Side note: I know I promised more ‘service’ and less ‘self-promotion’: clearly I still need to work on that. Next episode’s guide to how to set up AI agents will be v useful for most people, for sure.

Jenni x