Earlier this year, Dr. Javier Ordás (Assistant Professor of geography at the University of León) shared a student-made urban geography zine, Transectos, with our archive. Below, we talked with Javier about bringing zines into the classroom and the relationship between geographic thinking and visual culture. The interview has been lightly edited for length and style.
Interview
GEOZONe: Tell us about the zine you shared, Transectos. Why did you choose to bring zines into your classroom?
Javier Ordás: I didn’t bring zines into my classroom because I was looking for an innovative teaching method. I brought them because I’ve loved zines since I was a teenager, and I’ve even made a few myself over the years. Although I’m an academic geographer, I’ve always been equally interested in cultural worlds that exist outside the university, such as punk culture or DIY publishing. Over time, I realised that the curiosity, critical spirit and desire to understand and communicate the world that attracted me to zines were also central to the way I understood geography.
When I was a child, I loved reading the comic books and magazines that my older brother used to collect, such as Tótem, Cimoc, 1984 and Creepy. Those black-and-white pages, the cheap paper and the fascinating stories completely blew my mind. Around the same time, I discovered cinema, art and, of course, punk, hardcore and metal music and then local fanzines. I especially remember one from my hometown called Mortaja, which focused on punk culture. It contained long record reviews, interviews with musicians, amazing illustrations, collages and hand-drawn lettering and, above all, a genuine enthusiasm for sharing culture outside mainstream channels.
Years later, in the early 2000s, while studying geography, I decided to make my own zine simply because I also wanted to be part of that world. I published four issues of a fanzine called Infernaliana. It reflected almost everything I was passionate about at the time: underground culture, DIY publishing, horror cinema, punk music and alternative artistic practices. Looking back, I realise that I was always interested in cultural expressions that existed outside mainstream culture. I’ve never accepted the idea that only certain forms of culture deserve to be taken seriously. Perhaps that is another connection between zines and the way I understand geography: both encourage us to look more carefully at places, people and stories that often remain outside the centre of attention, and to recognise that they deserve to be understood and taken seriously.
In Transectos, I use the zine format to introduce students to key ideas in urban geography and to encourage them to use those ideas as tools for interpreting the cities they already know. Instead of simply reading Henri Lefebvre, Jane Jacobs or David Harvey, students connect those texts with places, photographs and everyday urban experiences. The goal is not to memorise theory, but to understand it and discover that it can help us read the city from a geographical perspective, so that students can interpret and explain these processes in their own words.
GZ: How did your students respond to this new medium?
JO: None of the students had ever made a zine before, and most of them didn’t even know what a zine was. At the beginning, there was some uncertainty. They were familiar with essays and summaries, but not with this kind of self-published work. Once they understood that the goal was to communicate geographical ideas, their confidence grew quickly.
Their reaction surprised me—given the renewed interest in zines and the fact that today’s students spend so much time on visual platforms such as Instagram or TikTok, I expected at least some of them to be familiar with the format. Fortunately, once I introduced the history and spirit of zines, and showed them some examples, most of them responded with genuine curiosity, enthusiasm and creativity. Looking back, I find it striking that, for many of my students, their first encounter with zines happened at university. A few decades ago, I would probably have expected that first encounter to happen at a concert, in a bookshop or through friends. Perhaps that says something about how both universities and youth culture have changed over time. I hope that, after Transectos, at least some of them will continue exploring zines beyond the classroom.
At the beginning, there was some uncertainty. They were familiar with essays and summaries, but not with this kind of self-published work. Once they understood that the goal was to communicate geographical ideas, their confidence grew quickly. What I found most interesting was seeing students stop thinking of the project as just another university assignment. Because the zine was going to be printed, distributed around the university and published online, they knew they were creating something that would exist beyond the classroom. That gave them a greater sense of responsibility and a genuine interest in the final result. During the final feedback session, when I asked students to reflect on the project, one of them wrote: “The thing I liked the most was that I didn’t feel like it was just another class I had to attend. I felt that there was a bigger objective that I wanted to accomplish.”
GZ: What would you change if you repeat the project?
JO: The final publication still has plenty of room to improve, but I think the experience helped them discover a new way of creating and sharing geographical knowledge. If I repeat the project—and I certainly will—I would like to devote more time to the editorial process. Showing previous issues would help students understand the possibilities of the format, but I would also like them to spend more time discussing each other’s work, revising pages collectively and thinking about how design influences the communication of geographical ideas.
I also hope to involve students much more in shaping the editorial identity of Transectos. I’d like future issues to develop their own themes, incorporate new sections and open the publication to collaborations beyond the classroom. One of the things I enjoy most about the project is that it still feels unfinished. Like any zine, it has room to evolve with every new issue, and I’m sure future students will contribute ideas that I haven’t even imagined yet.
GZ: What are the strengths or drawbacks of using zines as pedagogical tools?
JO: I think an academic essay helps students develop a sustained academic argument, while a zine encourages them to build and communicate their own geographical interpretations through a combination of text, images, design and visual thinking. One of the greatest strengths of zines is that they give students a genuine sense of belonging to a collective project. That sense of responsibility changes the way they approach their work. Students also tend to make a greater effort because they know that other people will read what they have produced. Seeing their names in a printed publication, alongside the work of their classmates, makes the experience feel much more authentic than submitting a document that will only be read by the lecturer.
At the same time, zines also present challenges. None of my students had ever heard of zines before, so I first had to introduce not only the format itself but also the DIY ethos behind it. Self-publishing, experimentation and creative freedom do not necessarily come naturally to everyone, so students need time to understand that a zine is not simply a colourful document. Like geography itself, creating a zine is an exercise in synthesis. Students must decide what is essential, choose the image that best represents an idea, connect it to a geographical concept and communicate that interpretation clearly. The visual elements should help readers understand geographical processes rather than simply make the page look attractive. Once students understand this, the zine can become a powerful way of thinking and communicating geographically.
GZ: Today, the university faces a crisis in student literacy. Can zines help instructors respond? And, if so, what role might zines play?
JO: I think they can. Research on zines suggests that they can promote active learning by helping students make the language of a discipline their own, develop their own narratives and work collaboratively. My experience with Transectos points in the same direction. Geography is a particularly interesting discipline in this respect because geographical knowledge has always been communicated through different languages. Academic texts remain essential, but so do maps, photographs, diagrams, field sketches and many other forms of visual representation. Learning geography therefore involves much more than reading and writing essays; it also means learning how to observe, interpret and communicate geographical processes.
Today’s students are already immersed in visual culture. They constantly create and share images through their phones and social media, but they are rarely asked to use those same skills to think geographically about the places they inhabit. I think this is where zines can make a valuable contribution: they bring together careful observation, academic reading, photography, design and writing within a single project. One of the things that makes a zine unique, for me, is its rhythm. Social media often rewards immediacy, while making a zine usually invites a slower process of observation, selection, editing and reflection. It also creates a different relationship between its authors and readers. On social media, feedback is almost immediate through comments, likes or direct messages. A printed zine follows a much slower path.
Making a zine also forces you to make editorial decisions. You have to decide what deserves a page, how images and text relate to one another, and what kind of story you want to tell. Once it is printed, those decisions become part of a finished object. There is also something important about the physical act of making a zine. Even when digital tools are involved, zines usually retain a strong handmade character. Folding pages, cutting, arranging images or assembling copies by hand create a much more tangible relationship with the publication than simply uploading a file. Perhaps that handmade dimension is also pedagogically important because, when students hold the finished publication in their hands, it changes their relationship with what they have created.
At the same time, I don’t see these worlds as opposites. Today’s students already have remarkable visual skills through photography, graphic design and social media. What interests me is helping them transfer those skills into a context where images become part of a slower process of observation, interpretation and communication. In Geography, that means learning to look carefully at places, landscapes and everyday spaces before trying to explain them.
Of course, zines are only one possible approach. But, in my experience, they can help make classes more dynamic and help transform the classroom from a space where knowledge is mainly transmitted into one where it is discussed, created and shared collectively. More importantly, I think they can encourage students to use geographical ideas to interpret the world around them and, hopefully, to continue recognising geographical processes in the places they encounter long after the course has finished. If that happens, I think the project has achieved its purpose.
Transectos
Abstract: Transectos is a collaborative fanzine created as part of an urban geography course at the University of León, aiming to bridge academic knowledge and creative practice. Through short texts, visual essays, and critical reflections, students engage with key urban themes such as inequality, public space, mobility, and everyday life. The fanzine format encourages experimentation, accessibility, and situated learning, allowing students to reinterpret scholarly ideas in their own voice. This project also seeks to explore alternative ways of communicating geographical knowledge beyond conventional academic formats.