We hit a very special milestone on 29 April, when we printed our 3,000,000th newspaper. As we print so many small runs of newspapers (often just one copy), there was great excitement in the office as we watched the orders come in, trying to work out which one was number three million.

We’re delighted to say that the winning newspaper is a digital tabloid designed by the London Chinatown Oral History Project. Their newspaper, written mainly in Chinese, is a collection of memories from 90 people who have lived or worked in London’s Chinatown over the decades. Their photos and testimonies create a picture of Chinatown through the years, with the sharing of the stories bringing a community together in the process.

The project, which is managed by the Chinese Mental Health Association and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, has been running for two years. The newspaper was published to mark the end of the project, and given to participants at a special event on 10 May as a lasting record of their participation. It is also available online through the Newsagent.

Thanks to Rebecca Tang and Tina Aileen Au from the London Oral History Project for printing with us, and for making our 3,000,000th newspaper such a special one.

We get some really smart papers added to our Newsagent every month. In case you haven’t seen it, the Newsagent is the part of our site where you can share your newspaper and show it off to the world. We pick a selection for the home page each week, and starting in May we’ll pick one to be Paper of the Month. If you fancy your chances, share your paper and you could win a £100 Newspaper Club voucher.

How to share your newspaper

Sharing is completely under your control. If you have a paper in your account, select it from your Dashboard and look for the ‘Share’ option on the top right. You can create a profile page with a bio and links, and choose to share the cover or the whole thing, depending on how generous you’re feeling.

Check out some of our recently published papers

Looking for some inspiration? Why not have a look at:

• Winter Plate – a seasonal food newspaper by Jessica Charlotte
• Art Summer – a guide to summer art events in and around London by The Art Collective
• Concrete Jungle – “A celebration of the dystopian town planning decisions that occurred in Croydon between 1960 – 1972″ by Rob Mowbray
• A Different Type of Circus – circus arts depicted in type by Mark Collins Design

It’s good to share.

The Hive May 2013 cheshirehive.co.uk by Frodsham Foundation on Newspaper Club

The Cheshire Hive newspaper is helping the Frodsham Foundation to create a buzz about their local Bee Festival this weekend (11-12 May). To find out what’s on, pick up a copy (a traditional tabloid, made with ARTHR, thank you for asking) in a local shop, or read it online.

Frodsham is half way between Manchester and Liverpool (J12 off the M56), so if you’re in the area why not pop in? You can have fun and help the bee population at the same time! More information at The Cheshire Hive.

The Engineering Dept have been hard at work on ARTHR (pictured above), and we’ve made a few improvements we’d like to tell you about.

First of all, you no longer need to make an account to get going with ARTHR. Just head over to the site, start making a newspaper, and when you’re ready, sign up and we’ll save your paper into your new account.

We encourage you to make an account as soon as possible after you’ve decided whether ARTHR is for you: not because we’re greedy for your details, but in case you move computers or change browser, and we can’t match you up with your newspaper any more – we don’t want you to lose your paper!

There’s also a lovely new homepage for ARTHR, so tell all your friends.

But that’s not all! We’ve also:

• Revamped the controls at the top of the screen, based on your feedback, making it clearer how to add and remove pages from your newspaper.
• Added a feature to be able to add an image to your newspaper directly from a URL. You can even give us a Flickr or Instagram photo page and we’ll do the hard work to fetch the image out of it.
• Made adding a new piece of content smarter, so it doesn’t overlap anything already on the page, picking the next suitable space in your newspaper.

And finally, a little reminder that the best paper in the Newsagent each month wins a £100 voucher. The Engineering Dept will even throw in a Twix if it’s made in ARTHR.

We get very busy at this time of year. In fact, this week is on course to be our busiest week ever. So due to popular demand, we’re adding a temporary extra print run on Mondays at 2pm. This means the print deadlines are:

Mondays at 2pm UK time
Tuesdays at 2pm UK time
Thursdays at 2pm UK time

When you place an order we’ll check it in time for the next print run and you’ll receive your freshly printed newspapers 2-5 days after that (in the UK, slightly longer for overseas).

There are a couple of bank holidays coming up on Monday 6 and Monday 27 May – we’re closed on those days but any other Monday, send us your papers!

UC.Quarterly is a stunning new publication from the talented hands of UnderConsideration AKA Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio of Austin, Texas. With a bit of ingenuity and a lot of hard work, UC have transformed a humble traditional mini newspaper featuring the best bits of UnderConsideration’s network of blogs: Brand New, FPO, Art of the Menu, and Quipsologies into a limited edition delight for print lovers.

Each mini is wrapped in a discarded makeready or test sheet reclaimed from a printer, then carefully trimmed. The covers are then hand-stamped and wrapped with another design classic, a red rubber band, for your reading pleasure.

This is the first in a series, so if you’d like to own a little piece of beauty, be quick as there are only 400 available.

Mentality Magazine from beth fielder on Vimeo.

It’s always good to see one our of digital tabloid newspapers in action, so thanks to Beth Fielder for filming the newspaper she printed with us. Mentality Magazine is a final major project for BA Hons Fashion Communication at the University of the West of England in Bristol, showcasing “contemporary, wearable looks for the image conscious reader”.

Nice work Beth! Thanks for printing with us.

There have been lots of lovely papers shared in the newsagent this week as a result of this.

The Post Office by Abbie Vickress on Newspaper Club

This is The Post Office by Abbie Vickress, a great read about the privatisation of the Post Office in Britain.

DAILY DEDAL #01 by Benoist BUTTIN on Newspaper Club

Benoist Buttin’s paper, Daily Dedal, mixes classic newspaper design with more forward thinking typography. Nice!

198 micro-publish workshop-2nd by paula roush/ msdm publica(c)tions on Newspaper Club

And here’s a photographic paper produced during a micro-publishing workshop for artists and educators, held in response to Dreaming through –on & into the exotic, an exhibition by paula roush and maria lusitano running until 18th May.

Pickles is a new publication combining football culture, design, illustration and wit. There’s a ton of lovely artists and designers involved in this issue, including Peter O’Toole, Paine Proffitt, Mike Arnold and The Illustrated Game.

You can get hold of a physical copy for yourself from their website, here.

I’d heard about this book a while back (please scroll down and read the reviews – they are brilliant), and had been eyeing it up as a potential christmas present for my mathematician sister. Christmas is a wild and exciting affair in my household.

So when I found out that you could download the text here, and Tom said he needed someone to test out ARTHR II, it was as though the planets had aligned.

As it turns out 1,000,000 digits in any order was a bit too much for poor ARTHR to handle at first, regardless of their irregularity. But we got there in the end, and now ARTHR can take as many thousands of digits as you care to throw at it, and arrange them for you quickly, easily, and beautifully.