House Industries' foldable storage boxes

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I like everything that House Industries makes. They started off in the early 1990s as a font design shop, and I have been following them closely ever since. They just announced a line of attractive foldable storage boxes.

House Industries designers completely re-imagined the classic corrugated document storage box, spending endless hours tweaking die designs to arrive at a bulletproof yet beautiful storage solution. With secure locking seams, robust construction, smooth tops, stackable flat bottoms and crisp artwork, House Archive boxes are designed to provide practical and affordable storage while working as complementary interior furnishings.

The first edition of the Archive Box feature s three different versions: a pattern based on House’s Neutraface Slab typeface, huge high-contrast numbers from Photo-Lettering’s Benguiat Montage alphabet and a typographic brace motif. Keeping with House Industries tradition, no expense was spared to reproduce the three distinctive designs.

House Industries Introduces House Archive Boxes

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Cory Trevor

Now I can hoard in style!!!
Donald Petersen

Never mind the boxes, where can I get those figures? Particularly the Gigan and Ghidorah ones… my son would defecate the same masonry I’m evacuating right now! Mark, are those yours? If so, where’dja get ‘em?!
- Ramone
  
  Agreed! I’ll take the toys!
- ashypete
  
  My son’s brain would explode if he got a box of vinyl kaiju. He wouldn’t even mind if he got doubles!
- penguinchris
  
  I have some spare vinyl Godzilla monsters if your son needs some. Gigan and Hedorah are my favorites but he can have Ghidorah and one of my Godzillas; maybe Mothra.
  
  They are not as cool-looking as the ones in the photos, which are probably from the 60′s, but the ones I have are also not collectibles worth a lot of money. Let me know because I’m driving out to California this weekend and can probably find room in the car for some kaiju :) Otherwise they’ll just be collecting dust in my parents’ basement.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/MNRM3AXED3WIRVGRTQ6TR4U2EA Patti Sundstrom
    
    Heck, I’m in California, and I’ll take you up on that offer (if nobody else does)! I LOVE Godzilla (and kaiju) and King Ghidorah is just about my favorite Zilla adversary – toy photography is one of my interests:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/zilladon2000/sets/72157626376357301/
    : )
Bob Knetzger

no expense spared indeed! Only $38 for a pack of three cardboard boxes
- for_SCIENCE
  
  But… design!
- A H
  
  But…able to stop bullets!
- Donald Petersen
  
  Come now. The Bankers Box® Stor/File™ 703® archive boxes that are currently stinking up my office may cost four bucks less for four times as many, but I can say from personal experience that they won’t even appreciably slow down a bullet.
Sqarr

I very specifically remember having that bottom-left one in my hands before the age of seven… Almost thirty years ago.
- ashypete
  
  You never forget your first Japanese Monster Toy…
  - Sqarr
    
    Of course, I had absolutely no idea what it was at the time.
    
    It’s a bit of a shock to see it again after so long.
    - ashypete
      
      I think I follow you. My brother and I had these diecast robots from Japan which we were given as kids. They quickly became our favorite toys. But we really had no clue to the backstories of these things as we hadn’t seen the cartoons from which they were based. It was only many, many years later I stumbled upon a listing on eBay that I actually learned what it was that we had.
      - Sqarr
        
        That’s pretty awesome.
        
        I still have no idea what that thing was, though. I think I vaguely remember it having a mechanism to spit sparks when you rolled it, but I’m not at all sure…
- ashypete
  
  Well if you’re talking about that weird space chicken with the claws in the lower left, that’s Gigan, a creature Godzilla fought in the aptly named Godzilla vs. Gigan. One of the goofier Godzilla films.
  - Sqarr
    
    Aaahhh. Thanks!
TombKing

Neat boxes, but I don’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed that I can identify all but one of those figures in the top picture.
L Camp

Although I might not use the same words as “AwesomeRobot” my thought was similar. As an artist I find joy in thought and care lavished on everyday items – the notion of craftsmanship in everything. As someone struggling in this economic climate just to keep a roof over my kid’s heads, – - well my cardboard boxes are found out back of the local grocery store I’m afraid.
http://twitter.com/Noddy93 Noddy Ninetythree

it’s the EULA that gets me…. $4,000 to actually store anything in one. $6,000 if you change the design with sharpie. $8,000 to move from one location to another.
Ronald Pottol

While I prefer the boxes Costco was selling 15+ years ago (still using a bunch for moving), the ones they sell today (I don’t recall exact prices, but certainly less than $20 for at least 6) are still very good.
pjcamp

When I think of interior furnishings, cardboard boxes are not the first thing that leaps to mind.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Not all of us are rich folks with their hoity-toity ways.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    I’ll give ‘em this: three pieces of interior furnishings for $38 fulfills the “affordable” part of their pitch pretty well in my demographic.
    
    I still question how well they hold up to prolonged gunfire, though.
    - Chentzilla
      
      The post definitely needs a video.
  - pjcamp
    
    Remind me to tell you about the time I furnished an apartment with an Eames chair retrieved from a dumpster.
    
    But first I have to figure out if that counts as a good eye or a step toward homeless.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Yeah, it depends on where you live. In Boston, you could trawl the dumpsters in the nice neighborhoods at the end of the school year and get cashmere sweaters still in their packaging from the rich college kids who just threw out gifts from their parents.
teapot

House Industries make some of the most striking fonts you will ever find. I just wish I had enough cash to buy them legit for use in designs!