Every week, a new Dutch Flow Weekly appears. How are these pretty little notebooks made? Managing editor Caroline Buijs tells us about it. Only available in the Netherlands and Belgium.
How do you think of themes for the Flow Weekly?
“We have published so many great stories in Flow over the years; we use these as our points of inspiration for the Flow Weekly themes. And we look around us: many themes stem from issues that we were struck by ourselves. It’s funny how it works, after reading a Flow Weekly we, too, often get a kind of mini ‘Aha!’ moment.”
How long do you work on one issue?
“We bundle off four issues at a time to the printer, so it’s hard to measure how much time exactly one issue takes. Sometimes you are working on all four at once. We have a fixed group of freelance journalists who write texts, collect beautiful quotes and design worksheets. The text then goes to the chief editor for the headlines. When it’s all ready, designer Suzanne Nuis puts each week’s content together in one great looking little notebook. And the final round is done by the proofreader who reads the text in the layout carefully one last time, and then we check each Weekly one more time before it goes off to the printer.”
What can we expect from Flow Weekly?
“We just received the text for a notebook with the theme ‘Why nature makes us happy,’ and it really got us in the mood for spring. Another theme is ‘The beauty of consolation,’ it’s going to turn out wonderfully. And of course we want to include a lot of fun sketching lessons (how do you draw a vintage lamp, for example). We’re also busy thinking of a good way to collect Weeklies – something along the lines of a special storage box for stacking them into.”
What has been the most surprising or special reaction to the Flow Weekly so far?
“An English teacher posted a nice message about it: she hands out the Flow Weekly notebooks to kids in her class who have trouble concentrating. Often drawing and writing in the Weeklies helps them focus. Now she has a class full of paper lovers!”
Follow Flow Weekly on Instagram: @Flow_weekly .
