Design Porn: Wrap Magazine

Are you the kind of person who rips off the paper off their presents with great joy, dying to get to the present inside? Or, are you the slow and careful type of pressie opener, someone who delights in peeling off the tape, smoothing down the paper and putting to the side for another year? If you're the latter, I suspect you might also be a fan of Wrap Magazine.

Wrap Magazine is another in the line of great independent magazines that seem to have been springing up all over the place recently. The unique bit about Wrap is that it allows you to do exactly what its name suggests: the pages are held together with elastic, rather than stitches or staples, so you can take them out and use them as wrapping paper.

And what gorgeous pages they are! Lovely large heavyweight matt paper sheets which are each given over to a different talented illustrator. Each issue is based around a rough theme: this one is 'Dark Days and Bright Nights' so while the work is seasonal, it's not snowmen and santa. The work includes the likes of Andrew Groves's sad/creepy little woodland creatures and Lesley Barnes's rich folk-style forest (she's the lady behind this Belle and Sebastian video). The illustrators also gets their own interviews where you can find out more about their work, and there are a couple of general features too, in this case featuring Domestic Sluttery favourites Donna Wilson and the shop Smug.

The magazine is so beautiful the natural urge, rather than split it up for wrapping, is to keep it intact and perhaps just take it out for a little stroke from time to time (a feeling further enhanced by the fact each magazine only has a print-run of 2000). Or maybe put a couple of the sheets up to decorate your wall. But that's also a shame, as the whole thing is really designed to encourage you to use it as wrapping paper - the back of the magazine is covered with mini-versions of the illustrations, perforated so you can push them out and use them as your gift tags.

Each issue costs £9.50, and you can order it from their website, or get it at one of their independent stockists. And then you can make up your own mind about what you want to do with it.