I was born to the sound of typewriters clattering and the scent of Spray Mount, Cow Gum and printer ink in the air. One of my earliest memories is of watching an A3 page of copy being meticulously laid out by hand, letter by letter, and my first job was styling a Joseph fashion shoot, shot by Clive Arrowsmith, at the age of 12 (oh, alright, I was a Saturday girl at Sainsbury's too, but you get the picture).
The first proper magazine I spent my pocket money on was Vogue Bambini, as a teen I scrawled the launch date for British Elle excitedly in my diary and I spent my gap year in Milan working for the photographer Bardo Fabiani on stories for Italian Vogue and Glamour.
I grew up in magazines; like it or not, they're in my blood. So it's a strange time to be living in when iPad apps, ezines, blogs and all manner of other icandy are threatening to replace the old-fashioned glossy.
Having worked full-time on luxury mags for around twelve years, I've been freelance for the last 5, so although I may not buy and eagerly pore through as many monthlies as I used to I will always be a print nostalgist.
While I love the immediacy of digital, the instant fix of visual stimuli and information that it offers, it will never compete with the languid, tactile pleasure of flicking through something non-virtual. Online, I skip from site to site, Twitter to Facebook, email to email. With the real thing in front of me, on the kitchen table, the sofa, train or flight, it's a more intimate experience. Just me and them.
I'm forever bookmarking on my Mac (hugely handy but so annoying when 'the page you're looking for does not exist'), however there's something pleasingly sentimental about finding an old folder of torn out, dog-eared images and articles, a little time capsule of where I was at and what I was about at the time I carefully peeled those pages from from their perfect bound spines.
Thank goodness, I say, for people like former Vogue picture editor, now writer and curator, Robin Muir, who seemed to live in the underground vaults of Conde Nast while I was there and was always such an inspiring and reassuring sight leafing through issues from bygone eras. And Angela Hill, the owner of Idea Books and most avid collector of vintage style tomes and magazines I've ever met, who lives for discovering forgotten piles of Interview stashed away in someone's attic.
Despite all the doomsday predictions, the digital revolution hasn't killed the printed journal just yet. In fact, I roll my eyes as much as the next person 'in the industry' about how many periodicals are still popping up. But, as I embark on working on another print title myself - and, coincidentally, start a new blog - I can't help wondering, more than ever, what the future holds.
Personally, I'd like to see certain magazines, along with books, become a cherished commodity, living harmoniously alongside the ever-growing glut of online publications.