Personalised Magazine for a 40th Birthday Present | Milestone Birthday Gift Idea

Read more about how the idea for this unique gift came about below, or find out about the process and how to commission a personalised birthday magazine by clicking here.

In the lead-up to my husband’s 40th birthday, I knew one thing: I wanted to get him the best 40th birthday present ever. Read on to find out how the idea for a birthday magazine came about, and what the birthday boy’s reaction was…

After a lot of research and thinking, I decided that a personalised birthday magazine would be the ultimate gift idea for Jon’s upcoming milestone birthday. The idea had several advantages:

• A birthday magazine is unique: I’d never heard of anyone else doing something like this, and the whole magazine would be about Jon (my husband), so it’s certainly one-of-a-kind, just like him.
• A birthday magazine would be portable: we were spending Jon’s birthday weekend in Bruges with a couple of friends. This gift idea was something that could be easily concealed inside my suitcase, then revealed at the breakfast table on the morning of his 40th.
• A birthday magazine is something to treasure: 40 years of memories, stories and loved ones would be captured in one place, for him to look back on for years to come.

I also thought that if Jon was feeling sorry for himself after tipping over life’s halfway marker, the magazine would remind him of all the things he’d done, all the fun he’d had, and all the people who love him. If that failed to cheer him up, then Belgian beer offered a back-up option for consolation.

A Printed Version of a Surprise Party

Before we booked the trip to Bruges, I was considering planning a surprise party for Jon. After we decided to go away instead, I realised that the magazine would be a way of bringing the party to Jon. Everyone he loved would show up in its pages, mainly poking fun at Jon’s age and retelling embarrassing stories about him, so I figured it would feel just like a real social gathering…

Inside the Birthday Magazine

There were three main sections:

• Section 1 | Photos of Jon from birth to today: these were arranged like scrapbook pages (see example above), with the images laid out in loose collages over a patterned background. Short captions in a handwriting-style font gave context, poked fun and added detail to the visuals.
• Section 2 | Stories from friends and family: every time I meet Jon’s friends and family, they talk about fun times they’ve had with Jon, and silly things he’s done (mainly after a beer or three). This section captured these myths, legends and anecdotes, securing them in print so they are never lost in the sands of time.
• Section 3 | Letters to the birthday boy: every contributor was invited to write a short birthday message to go on the last few pages of the magazine. These pages also provided space for a few extra photographs that I hadn’t fitted in anywhere else.

In addition to the above, there were some famous quotes about age, a longer article from one of Jon’s best friends, a world map with all the places Jon has been to, a mock-up of a Facebook page covered with Photoshopped images of Jon and image montages on both inside covers. In between each section were full-page images of Jon overlaid with funny things he has said over the years.

Jon is a very visual person, so I kept the text as short as possible, and let the photographs and illustrations steal the show. For example, the spread below shows Jon with his niece, Eliza. The box tells a short anecdote: Eliza was pretending to speak to Jon, whom she calls ‘ Uncle Badger’, on her toy phone.

She said, “Come to my party, Badger! Bring balloons, sandwiches, drinks… and the Gruffalo!” (aww!)

Bringing the Birthday Magazine Together

I invited 30 people to contribute to the magazine, including relatives, friends and former colleagues. I gave people an initial deadline and a few follow-up nudges, collating contributions into the relevant sections as they came in. Several people went well out of their way to help, digging up old photos and posting/scanning them. Special thanks go to Doug Wellstead, Jack Oxtoby, John Plater, Joyce Wellstead, Judith Plater and Lorna Wellstead.

An extra special thanks to Jeff Lewis for rebooting his Photoshop head-swapping skills for the images to go with his feature article on Jon (!):

Printing & Finishing

I used a UK printer who specialise in low quantity magazines to print the gift. From the start, I knew I wanted this to feel high quality, like an expensive glossy magazine, and definitely not a home-printed stack of sheets with a staple through one corner.

I opted for a gloss-laminated cover, to give a high-end feel and also protect against fingerprints and wear. The inner pages are on silk paper, which has a slight sheen but is easier to read than glossy paper. Rather than saddle-stitching (two staples through the middle like most weekly magazines) I chose PUR binding (glued along the spine). The magazine had 40 spreads (80 pages) and I chose a thick, good quality paper. This means it feels weighty and substantial in your hands, with a solid spine thick enough to have the magazine title printed along it.

The Reaction

After we ordered our breakfast, I passed two copies of the magazine in a sealed envelope over to Jon – with no explanation, just a smile. He opened the envelope, saw the magazine cover and looked up at me in confusion and surprise. He pulled the magazines out and went quiet as he turned them over and flicked through them, then said ‘wow’ and started taking a closer look. Soon he was laughing at the stories, exclaiming over photos he had forgotten about or never seen before and shaking his head in wonder at this being made in complete secret behind his back.

On our way back home from Bruges, I asked Jon what his favourite part of the trip had been. He talked about the beers he had tasted (20+!), the food we ate and the architecture of the stunning market square. Then he added: “The best bit of all, though? Looking through the magazine you made me for my birthday. That was the best gift idea ever.”

Awesome, I thought, job done.

If you are interested in creating a personalised birthday magazine as a gift for someone you love, please do get in contact using the enquiry form below:

Sarah Plater is a freelance designer based in Bicester, Oxfordshire.

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I’ve overlaid artwork from the magazine on Photoshop mockups to create clear, consistent images for this blog post. The mockups are used with the kind permission of GraphicBurger.