A Field Guide for Creatives Ready to Grow Outside the Grind
Field Zine Vol. 01 // Reclaim, Rewild, and Reconnect With Your Creativity
I made my first zine because I needed to find my way back to myself and to my creativity. Not the polished, packaged, content-calendar kind.
Not the kind that exists to stay relevant or feed the algorithm.
But the kind that feels natural. The kind that’s honest and real.
The kind that makes you feel empowered, tapped in, and free to create without the pressure of character limits or short attention spans.
Like so many of us, I’ve been swept up, again and again, by the pressure to perform and produce on cue.
To turn every idea into something monetizable.
To make sure it’s useful, scalable, and brandable.
As someone who specializes in brand design and development, I had to consciously pull myself out of the mind of a business owner and service provider and step back into the mind of an artist. A creative. A human.
So many of us have forgotten what it’s like to make something simply because we want to. Because it moves us. Because it helps us feel like ourselves again.
Instead of asking, “What will get engagement?” I started asking, “What do I actually want to grow and share with others?”
That question became the seed.
And Field Zine Vol. 01 grew from there.
About Field Zine Vol. 01
Field Zine Vol. 01 is an offering. It’s not content. It’s not a strategy. It’s not part of a sales funnel.
It’s a patch of creative soil for you to explore.
It’s part love letter, part toolkit, part resistance.
This is for the creatives who’ve felt burnt out by the constant push to package everything. For the ones who are saying no to hustle culture, no to creative extraction, and yes to slow, rooted, meaningful growth.
It’s for artists, advocates, thinkers, and edge-dwellers who are growing things in the margins, quietly, weirdly, beautifully.
It’s not here to make you more productive. It’s here to remind you that tending to your creativity is an act of belief. And that belief, especially in a world that asks us to prove and perform, is a radical thing that is needed more than ever before.
A Peek Inside the Pages
This zine is part creative manifesto, part interactive field guide.
It blends visual art, personal reflection, and gentle prompts into one tactile, liberating experience, created for folks ready to grow outside the grind.
These pages aren’t here to help you “optimize.” They’re here to help you return to yourself. To create for the sake of meaning, not metrics. To reclaim your creative practice as a source of nourishment, connection, and cultural contribution.
The zine moves through four organic phases, inspired by the cycles of nature and the rhythms of sustainable growth:
1. Compost: Letting Go + Returning to the Soil
This section invites you to slow down and take inventory.
What’s weighing you down? What’s no longer aligned? What parts of your creative life have been built on burnout, performance, or perfectionism, and what’s ready to be decomposed?
Through grounding prompts, visual metaphors, and space to reflect, you'll reconnect to your roots and make peace with releasing what no longer serves your creative ecosystem.
→ Mini Essay: We Are Not Machines, We Are Ecosystems
→ Reflective journal prompts + open space to write, draw, or collage
→ Creative Practice: Compost Your Inner Critic
2. Seed: New Visions + Quiet Beginnings
Here, we plant new intentions.
This section invites you to imagine a creative life beyond the algorithm. A life where you define success for yourself. A practice that aligns with your values and capacity.
You’ll explore what you want to grow, on your terms, and design a rhythm of work and rest that honors your humanity.
→ Essay: Sustainable Progress over Unchecked Growth
→ Creative Ecosystem Wellness Check
→ Creative Practice: Make a Vision Map
3. Tend: Care, Nourishment + Protection
In this section, you’ll explore what it means to keep showing up, without overextending yourself. You’ll play, make messes, and reconnect with the joy of the process itself.
Tending is a form of belief. It’s what allows ideas to root.
This section reminds you that creativity doesn’t have to be efficient to be effective, and that care is its own kind of momentum.
→ Essay: Tending is a Practice of Belief
→ Creative Practice: Create Your Own Garden Tracker
→ Invitation: Tend to Your Inner Field
4. Bloom: Expression + Sharing
We close with a celebration of expression.
Here, you’re invited to reflect on what’s ripening, name what you’re excited to share, and write a love note to your future creative self.
There’s no pressure to be “done.”
This section honors your growth as cyclical, seasonal, and ongoing.
→ Creative Practice: What Are You Excited to Share?
→ Letter to Future Self
→ Seasonal Reflection Page
Not Just Something to Read. Something to Return To.
Throughout Field Zine Vol. 01, you’ll find collage-inspired visuals, handmade textures, and earthy metaphors to support your journey.
This is not a scroll-and-forget kind of experience.
It’s a slow gift.
A living document.
Something to tuck into your bag, pin to your wall, or revisit whenever your practice needs nourishment.
This zine is for the creatives who are reclaiming their work from the grip of capitalism.
For the ones who want to build a creative life that’s rooted in joy, meaning, and mutual care. It’s a soft rebellion. A sacred return. A gesture of generosity.
Welcome to your field.
A Creative Ecosystem, Not a Brand
The zine is rooted in a question we come back to again and again at DoGoodBiz Studio:
What if your creativity wasn’t a brand to build, but an ecosystem to tend?
One with room for composting, rest, emergence, and wild new growth?
One where your contribution isn’t measured by metrics, but by meaning?
We’ve been taught to reduce ourselves to output.
To chase virality.
To create for performance instead of presence.
But this zine says: What if we created because it’s our instinctual nature?
Because it’s how we process, connect, heal, and contribute.
Because art… real, messy, heartfelt art… is a force for cultural change.
The Gift Is the Offering
Field Zine was made in the spirit of the gift economy.
There’s power in sharing your creativity freely, not to extract something in return, but because it’s your way of shaping the world you want to live in.
Because offering your voice, your expression, your perspective is a form of activism.
A kind of generosity that doesn’t sell out your soul.
So let this zine be a gift.
A way to liberate yourself from systems that forgot how to honor depth, slowness, and soul.
Final Words from the Field
This zine is for anyone reclaiming their creativity from the clutches of capitalism.
For anyone daring to believe that art can still be a portal.
A protest.
A prayer.
A seed.
Keep tending your ecosystem.
Keep growing what only you can grow.
And remember: real impact doesn’t have to be loud.
It just has to be rooted in truth.
To your liberation,
— Natalie | DoGoodBiz Studio
Similar Reading:
What it Means to Build a Creative Ecosystem
How to Build a Creative Ecosystem
How to Begin Again in Business
Happy Pride Month 🌈 ! This zine was created by a non-binary queer artist and designer. This month, I am encouraging our community to amplify, engage with, or contribute to the following organizations:
Let it be messy.
Let it be slow.
Let it be yours.
Exactly the words that took me years to accept. I am still sometimes fighting it...
Thank you for publishing this wonderful bundle of care! 😍
This might be nonsensical, but I LOVE YOU! And your kindness! You are sharing such a powerful and impactful message that really comforts us fellow creatives to hear. Burn-out is real. The feeling of hopelessness lingers sometimes. But then I remember, it's our journey as artists to discover ourselves and interact with the world in a way that nurtures others and evolves ourselves. I'm very excited to dive into this zine. I'm printing it out now (I assume that's the way it was intended?) The way you write is so positive and charismatic, truly. EXCITING SUGGESTION: You should try printing it through Mixam and selling it! (Even if this wasn't created to earn money.) The people who have been truly moved by your message would buy it to support you, including me. You can buy 5 copies of a zine you created that's A5 size for just 10$. I think you can even buy just 1 copy if you just want a physical copy for yourself. It's super affordable. I just made ordered some myself of my own work and they came out beautifully.