The makers of Field Notes have actually journeyed to at least one country fair to promote their product: there they are in Onawa, Iowa in July:

Other field trips have included such hotbeds of authentic agricultural Americana as Brooklyn and Manhattan (NYC, not Kansas), where I’m sure the presence of hipsters hawking expensive, design-fetish-y memo books was a bit less incongruous.

Anyway, I can appreciate what they’re trying to do– their marketing is creative, their products (and website) look great, they’re supporting independent manufacturing in the USA, and from what I’ve read, the paper inside performs well. But although at least one reviewer finds these “less ostentatious” than Moleskines, my verdict is that Field Notes end up being a little too twee. I’ll stick to plainer notebooks that stop touting their own coolness once you’ve taken off the wrapper.

See more at Juan Rayos – Chinese Moleskine | Aqua-Velvet.

There isn’t any commentary, so it’s hard to tell if she’s truly an addict, but I think anyone who photographs a nice, worn-in stack of notebooks so lovingly must surely qualify!
See more on Flickr.

One Hundred (and three) Moleskine Notebooks

I have just finished writing my book on Moleskine notebooks titled “Moleskine: How to make use of the “legendary” notebook”.

I wanted to send a Moleskine notebook to each and every book reviewer and prominent reader of the book, so I bought a hundred of them.

It’s like Bruce Chatwin’s dream come true, isn’t it?

The book can be ordered here (in Japanese):

www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4478013268/

via One Hundred (and three) Moleskine Notebooks | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

The true notebook addict would probably say that it would be impossible to have too many notebooks, but I am not so sure.  I have been feeling overwhelmed lately by the number of notebooks that I am currently using, as well as feeling the need to simplify and use fewer notebooks.  Here are all of the notebooks that I am using right now:

The thing about opening your mind up to a new story idea is that you once you do it, there’s no going back. All of a sudden, everything seems like it has to do with the new idea. Songs and lyrics and billboards and articles and movies and books and people seem to come at me, out of nowhere, non-stop. It can be hard to breathe. I grab at all these things and try to capture them before they are lost in the noise and shuffle of life, and I do this with little notebooks.

I keep little notebooks everywhere — in my purse, in my car, on my nightstand. My favorite notebooks are the thin, soft Moleskine notebooks that come in colors, now (green and red and pink!) but they are expensive. I reluctantly bought several sets of Moleskine knock-offs at Forever 21 last year for about $1 each, which are nowhere near as inspiring, but they are serviceable.

Read more at Jennie Nash: Little Notebooks Everywhere: How the Idea for a Novel Grows.

The post made its way around the blogosphere so extensively that I never bothered to link to it here. But more recently, a reader asked me if I had seen it, and it got me thinking again about working these notebooks into a post. Now, I finally have a good excuse as there’s a video posted of Michael Bierut talking about how he uses his notebooks:

Michael Bierut on 86 Notebooks: Observer Media: Design Observer.

Check it out, it’s an interesting look at a designer’s creative process.

From Journal Junk, a great blog about art journaling.

More from Paul on his history with notebooks:

I’ve been a diarist since I was in fifth grade (I just turned 47). Unfortunately, all my diaries from fifth grade (1974) until I dropped out of college (1989) vanished when I stored them in a storage locker I didn’t keep paying for. Since resuming on New Year’s Day 1990, I’ve used legal ledgers, spiral notebooks, Write-in-the-Rain, and, more recently composition books (inspired partly, I admit, by JOE GOULD’S SECRET, SE7EN, and HENRY FOOL.) I turn 50 in 2013, and I have decided I will switch to bound legal ledgers (Boorum & Pease and/or Avery) at that point.

Here are various photos of some of Paul’s notebooks:

As for historical notebooks, Paul shared these, as well as some others I’ll feature in future posts:

These are in display cases on the first floor of the William Oxley Thompson Library at Ohio State University. These are notebooks included in this display.

The first two pictures (100_0283.jpg and 100_0284.jpg) are the work notebooks and rough drafts of William Vollmann’s gigantic novel Europe Central.

The other two are the field notebooks of Dr. Richard Goldthwait (1911-1992), professor of geology at OSU.

Many thanks to Paul for sharing his love of notebooks! You can follow Paul’s blog at Melville at the Customs-House.

But here’s what really sets it apart– thumb-indexed sections, like a dictionary!

One thing I don’t like about the notebook is that the cover overhangs the paper edges by quite a lot. The cover is very flexible so those corners would get bent pretty quickly with active use.

The inside cover is grey paper, with no printing on it.

The first page has one of those odd, somewhat nonsensical Japanese-English slogans: “THE-II : ALL PREPARATIONS ARE COMPLETED.”

There’s some index pages at the front of the notebook:

It’s not the best in terms of opening flat– I was a little worried the binding could fall apart.

From the font used for the stamp on the back, it appears to be made by the same Pilot company that makes pens.

A comparison shot, next to a Piccadilly notebook. The Pilot notebook is wider, approximately 3 3/4 x 5 1/2″.

In the shot below you can also see the difference in the paper color: the Piccadilly has a warm, creamy tone, while the Pilot notebook is a very cool white.

The paper is very smooth, and feels a bit lighter weight than most notebooks, with some bleed-through from various pens:

My second purchase was a very cute little loose-leaf binder by Maruman, again shown next to a small Piccadilly notebook:

This photo above shows something that often annoys me about looseleaf notebooks– the front and back covers are rarely parallel, as the spine has to be wide enough to leave room for the rings, and you can’t fit in enough paper to fill out the thickness. I’ve often tried to solve this by using post-it notes or something else to pad out the covers on the inside.

This notebook has a similar thumb-index look to it, but these are just cut-outs in the black plastic cover which reveal the rainbow-colored divider tabs within. First there’s a black page, then white dividers with colored tabs. I think these tabs must be a Maruman trademark, as I have another binder by them that is at least 10 years old and came with the same tabs.

The notebook includes a small amount of lined paper.

There’s also a clear plastic top-opening envelope.

The spine shows off the rainbow colors:

The looseleaf binding works in an unusual way, swinging to the side to open:

The paper is similar to that of the Pilot notebook: a cool white, nice and smooth but not the best for bleed-through.

The Japanese do make some great stationery! It’s been several months since I bought these and I’m already itching to go back to Kinokuniya and see what’s new there!