When we get boxes and albums back from the printers I tend to have a little bit of quiet time with them, give them a stroke and sniff their new papery smell before everything’s carefully wrapped up and passed over to clients. It’s pretty normal for me to forget to even show Ian before everything’s boxed up (ooops, sorry Ian!) and I always forget to get my camera out.

We got a lovely couple of new Portfolio Boxes through this morning and this time I did remember to take a shot of one of them. And that got me thinking… we’ve worked pretty hard this year to make sure all of our boxes, books and albums have been designed to suit each individual couple. Ian especially, has gone out of his way to make each design unique; sampling colours from bouquets and putting together new graphics and sourcing fonts to get just the right look for each couple. We’ve even snuck in some sneaky personal reference points in some of them (can you spot the Jolly Roger and waves on one of them?)

One of the bits I miss the most from my old job is putting together magazine covers. It was a right pain at the times and sometimes frantic and a bit stressful, but looking through my old collection of magazines now it makes me proud to see each and every one of them knowing how much work went into them all.

The contents of the boxes and books are ultra important of course, but when it’s on your shelf or your coffee table it’s the cover that catches your glance every day. Getting wedding products back from the printers now gives me a similar, excitable feeling I used to get seeing a shelf full of mags in WH Smiths.

I’ve dug out a few of my favourite book and box designs we’ve put together for our couples over the past year.

And I’ve made a personal pledge to take more photos every time the postman brings a new box in 2012: