Twenty-four drawers, 140 years

This one started on our own inspiration wall: a navy rigid calendar with cream hexagons, copper foil, a leaping hare on the doors. People kept asking about it. So we asked a bigger question.

Twelve movements, roughly in order, from the 1890s to today. For each one we asked how its designers would have approached the object itself, not just its surface. The Wiener Werkstätte would have made a perfect cube. The Swiss would have let the numbers do all the work. Memphis would have refused to make a rectangle at all.

Two rules kept it honest. Every material had to come from our own library: Colorplan and Gmund papers, foil colours by their real codes, named Pantones. And every build had to be something a box maker can wrap, glue and fit, from 2 mm greyboard and paper. Some of these are simple. Some need a prototype before anyone prints a thing. We say which.

William Morris's people believed ordinary objects deserved real craft, and that pattern should feel grown, not drawn. So this one is a book: a triptych case that opens on two doors, dense bramble and thrush repeat on the outside, 24 drawers inside, the 24th wrapped in oxblood.

Colorplan Racing Green wrap with the bramble printed tone-on-tone in PANTONE 5535 C, so you feel the pattern before you see it. Rules, numerals and the ribbon banner in 176-2M, our matte antique gold, with a light registered deboss under the foil. Drawers in Colorplan Natural.

Art Nouveau hated the straight line. The doors here are die-cut so they meet in a rounded arch when closed, like a Paris Métro entrance, and whiplash lily stems climb both of them.

Sage green wrap (Gmund Colors Matt Sage) with the lilies and the lettering in 171M, our favourite matte gold. Drawer fronts in a warm pale grey with a single lily bud and numeral in plum, PANTONE 5125 C. Drawer 24 is the plum one.

Vienna answered Art Nouveau's curves with the square. A perfect cube, five by five: 24 drawers and, in the centre, the brand plate. Nothing on it is decorative that isn't also structural.

Colorplan Pristine White wrap. Checkerboard borders and tall narrow numerals in PY96M, a flat black pigment foil, which prints a deeper, crisper black on white uncoated stock than ink does. A blind debossed grid on the lid.

The Bauhaus would have asked why the drawers have to live in a box at all. So these are 24 separate small rigid boxes in primary colours, stacked on a white tray. Take one out on the day, and the tower changes shape all month.

Colorplan Bright Red, Citrine, Royal Blue, Ebony and Pristine White. Big geometric numerals in black ink on the light blocks and P92 white pigment foil on the dark ones. Honest note: 24 separate boxes is the most labour-heavy build on this page.

Deco was the architecture of the setback skyscraper, so the calendar steps back as it rises: six drawers at the base, then five, five, four, three, and a single tall drawer for the 24th at the crown, with a debossed sunburst behind it.

Colorplan Ebony wrap. Sunburst rays, chevrons, numerals and the name in 101, a bright mirror gold. Black and one gold, nothing else. Restraint is what makes Deco look expensive and not like a costume party.

Mid-century designers built modular storage furniture with coloured panels set in a timber frame. This is that idea at kitchen-counter scale: a low landscape cabinet, six across, four high, with atomic starbursts.

Colorplan Nubuck Brown frame, drawer fronts in Marrs Green, Harvest, Mandarin and Natural. Starbursts printed in a dark brown, PANTONE 7533 C, numerals in 172-1M matte soft gold, and a small gold foil plate for the name.

Swiss designers trusted the grid and a single grotesque typeface to do everything. A red slipcase carries one enormous 24. Slide it off and the inner cabinet is pure white with red numerals, flush left, on a strict grid.

Colorplan Scarlet slipcase with the type in P92 white pigment foil. Inner drawers in Pristine White, numerals in PANTONE 485 C. The easiest build here to produce, and maybe the most confident.

The concert-poster artists of the late sixties made type melt. Here the whole calendar melts into a round hatbox. The lid is a disc with one die-cut window; turn it each morning and the next day's compartment comes round.

Gmund Colors Matt Hot Pink lid and Tangerine sides, with two foils side by side, never stacked: 137-1, a metallic pink, and 116, a warm orange-gold. Purple compartments inside (Colorplan Purple). A rotating lid is real engineering, so this one is prototype first.

Seventies interiors painted giant stripes across walls, doors and furniture alike. So the 24 drawer fronts form one sunrise when they're closed, and the picture breaks apart as the month goes on. Generous rounded corners on the cabinet.

A cream cabinet in Colorplan Natural, the stripes in PANTONE 1675 C, 7409 C, 4625 C and 7579 C, knocked out under the numerals, which are in 115-1 copper. The trick in production is registration: the stripes have to meet across the seams.

Memphis was a rebellion against good taste, which takes a lot of taste to do well. A squiggle cube holds days 1 to 9, a yellow block holds 10 to 17, a turquoise wedge holds 18 to 23, and day 24 lives in a pink tube with a lift-off lid.

Colorplan Candy Pink, Marrs Green, Factory Yellow and Pristine White printed with black squiggles. Numerals in black ink and P92 white pigment foil. Four structures in one calendar means four prototypes' worth of fit-checking.

Nineties minimalism took everything away until only proportion was left. A white monolith, 24 flush drawers, and no print at all. The numerals are blind debossed, so you find them in the shadow, or with your thumb.

Colorplan Ice White wrap, blind deboss throughout, and one tiny word in 123M matte silver. Deboss needs an uncoated wrap like this one; it won't seat in a laminate. The cheapest finish on the page, and it looks like the most expensive.

Today's best packaging doesn't pretend to be from another era; it shows you what it's made of. PRISMA is 24 drawers, 24 different paper colours, stepped into one gradient, in a slim black frame. A calendar that is also a paper library.

The frame is wrapped in a printed soft-touch laminate with the name in a holographic foil. Foil bonds well to soft-touch; deboss doesn't, so there is none on the frame. Each drawer front is its own Colorplan or Gmund Colors shade, numerals in P92 white or PY96M black pigment foil depending on the colour underneath.

A 24-drawer calendar is really 25 rigid boxes: one case and 24 drawers, each wrapped and fitted by hand. So the price moves with the drawer count first, then the structure (a book or a cabinet is simpler than a tower, a round box or a pile of shapes), then the number of different papers, then the number of foil colours and finishes.

The good news is in the numbers themselves. All 24 drawer fronts are laid out on one sheet before they're wrapped, so one foil die strikes all 24 numerals in a single pass. Twenty-four different numbers don't cost 24 times as much.

See custom rigid boxes →

Tell us the product, its size and its weight before anything else, because the drawers are built around it. Tea sachets, chocolates, skincare minis, a key ring: each needs a different drawer depth and fit. Unwrapped chocolate wants a food-safe liner or tray inside each drawer; individually wrapped pieces don't.

Heavy items need heavier board and a tighter fit so the drawers don't sag or rattle. That's what the plain prototype is for: you hold the structure, open every drawer, and only then do we print.

Rigid calendars are made to order. Production takes about three weeks after you approve the proof, and there's a prototype before that, so start about eight weeks before you need them in hand, longer for the complex structures. Timelines are estimates, never guarantees, and December carriers are December carriers.

Turnaround and shipping →

Send us your brand, the product going into the drawers and how many calendars you need. Pick an era from this page if one feels like you, or tell us the one we missed. We'll tell you which build fits your quantity and timing, and show you a render before anything gets made.

Get a price on a custom advent calendar →