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Magazine Storage Box - The Week UK
How We Came About Making The Custom Magazine Storage Box
I have been reading the The Week UK since (I think) about 2004 when it was recommended to me by a customer of mine "It's Brilliant!" he said "You don't need to read anything else, you get all the news and what's more you get more than one perspective on a story" He was right!
Up until then I had been receiving every morning (or 'taking' as we say in Britain) a particular daily newspaper. Trying to get through it before going to work was nigh impossible and trying to finish it in an evening, no chance! An even greater challenge presented itself in the weekend trying too get through both Saturday and Sunday editions of a weekend paper. Married, family life with 2.4 kids and a house in the suburbs, makes keeping up with news and opinion, very difficult, and enough different paper titles to get a balanced perspective, impossible!
What is The Week?
For those reading this that don't know what The Week is, I will enlighten you. It is a magazine that is spilt into very easily digestible sections. It starts with the two or sometimes three important stories of the past week. It spilts those into what happened, what the various editorials said about them and the what various commentators said about them.
The following pages are then sectioned into everything else that happened that week, from brief spotlights on people, to talked about issues, sports, sciences, art, films, property, books, business - pretty much everything included in a daily or weekend newspaper.
Why Is It So Special?
Because it contains everything you need to know about what happened, what was talked about and what might happen all in about forty pages. You get it in Fridays post and by Saturday lunch time your up to date! Except if you are me, in which case, a bit like a favourite nibble or drink, you stretch it out... in my case over a period of, yes. A week.
That should really be the story of the magazine, but there is one more thing that makes The Week one of my few media crusades and here it is. Balance. The magazines contents are not written be a team of journalists at Dennis Publishing. Apart from the editorial on page 2 and possibly The Briefing (brilliant!) all the articles are either a compilation of opinions from all sides of the media spectrum (i.e. relating to a particular new story, Polly Toynbee in the Guardian said "..." and Max Hastings in the Telegraph said "...." And this is what I LOVE about the The Week, a balanced perspective! All I want now is for them to branch out into T.V!
Why Did I Start Collecting Them?
I could never face binning or recycling the magazine each week. Here was something that perfectly encapsulated what had happened in the 7 days and while I couldn't get any of the children in the household to read it, one day this issue was going to be an invaluable source of information to someone. Maybe not next month, next year or even in the next decade, but in 20, 50 or ?? years time, here was a glimpse into the past. Here is what we were talking about, what and who we watched, what we hoped for or were concerned about and incidentally, with the balance of hindsight, who was right and who was wrong.
So, I kept each issue. At first in a pile on the floor of a room, then in a photocopy paper box in the attic (I know, not paper paper friendly).
What I Really Needed Was..
A proper, archive safe, personalised magazine storage box for each year. When we started Hartnack & Co it was going to be my ambition to one day create such a storage box. I would line up each box on a book shelf somewhere, with each years spine facing me. Anyone could grab a box and the years news, views and issues would be laid out in 52 issues in front of them.
We started H&Co in 2013 and it was only in 2017 when we had a new employee, that I decided that part of her practise in making a clamshell box, would be in making my long anticipated magazine storage boxes. I brought my pile of the previous years magazines in and said, much in the same way our customers say to us. "These are very precious to me and I'd like to store them in something special"
Then we got busy again and Cara was given many more (paying!) jobs to complete, but a few months ago I pointed her towards my pile of 2016 copies of The Week that were still sitting a desk in the studio and she set about making me my first magazine collection box. She did really well! You can see her efforts in the example below. All I need now is another quiet spell and she can do 2005 - 2105 and 2017 - 2018 or '19 as who knows the project might get finished.
Specifications
Construction : Double walled laminated and step jointed grey board, Individually hand made.
Outside Cover: Ruby Red Library Buckram (acid free and can be wiped clean).
Inside Cover : Moreton Blue Windsor Book Cloth (acid free and probably should be black).
Personalisation : Gold foil blocking.
Size : 34cm x 25cm x 13cm
Weight : Including 52 Issues, 15.8 lbs - 7.2 kgs.
Our handmade clamshell boxes can be ordered here - Magazine Storage Clamshell Box
