A Handmade Newspaper Launches in 2008

If launching a newspaper in 2008 is risky, making the entire thing by hand is downright quixotic. But that’s exactly what the collective of artists behind The Manual, a new paper being handed out in London, have decided to do. Every word and image in the Berliner-sized publication is drawn by hand.

So why? According to the short statement on the paper’s website, “This one-off non-profit project was organised by Shakeup Media to make a point about the future of print. We hope to show that handmade qualities can transform newspapers from ‘junk’ to collectable.”

Newspapers aren’t unique in this respect, of course. A handmade anything is more valuable than its assembly-line counterpart. Maintaining a market for the handmade not only keeps the population of products in our world diverse and interesting, but also allows for people to make a living by mastering a craft. To those ends, we like The Manual’s raison d’etre and we’d love to get our hands on a copy to check out its contents.