Notebook Stories

The folks at Cool Material sent me a nice batch of their recently introduced “Word.” notebooks. These are a staple-bound notebook in the vein of Field Notes and the Moleskine cahiers, but with a unique page format. First impressions: I love the cover designs, in cool colors and camouflage patterns. They came packaged very beautifully [...]

This is another notebook I bought about 3 years ago and then immediately shelved. When I first examined it after buying it, I pretty much hated it. I bought it because it was cheap and I’d never tried a softcover Piccadilly, though I’d liked using some of their hardcover ones with graph or plain paper. [...]

I bought this notebook almost 3 years ago and only just recently got around to unwrapping it. I almost didn’t buy it– though I immediately coveted it when I saw it at A.I. Friedman in NYC, it was priced at $17.60, discounted from an even more ridiculous $22! It’s just a pretty standard pocket size [...]

It’s taken me forever to get around to reviewing these notebooks, despite having basically had someone else write it for me! Below are some comments and photos from Ted, a former addict of the week: Got my order of Calepino today. Basically the french Field Notes. Right down to some of the wording on the [...]

I think I first came across this notebook on the Blick website. It comes in several sizes, and I was excited to see that one of them was 3.5 x 5.5″, a rare size for sketchbooks. I went to the Blick retail store in Manhattan to see if I could check one out in person, [...]

I’ve been rather fascinated by field books lately. I first owned one when I was in college– I forget where I bought it, but I stumbled on it in a store, thought it looked cool, and ended up using it for some art classes where its durability came in handy. I hadn’t thought about it [...]

It’s been a while since I actually reviewed a Moleskine notebook, and with all the concerns about quality going downhill, I thought it might be a good time to look at one I am currently using, a plain pocket size notebook (with regular paper, not sketchbook weight) which was purchased in recent months. This is [...]

I have a big to-do list for this blog. Here’s some of the notebooks and things I’ve got waiting in the wings for future coverage, some of which I’ve been meaning to get to for ages: Miquelrius Boarding notebook 0.00 Night and Young Guns Moleskine books Piccadilly Softcover Notebook Assorted Japanese notebooks from Kinokuniya Bookstore [...]

I’ve had my eye on Bound Custom Journals for a while. The company was launched in 2011 after a successful Kickstarter campaign, inspired by founder Joel Sadler’s desire for a customized travel journal. The result is pretty extraordinary: a website where you can build custom notebooks page by page, with all manner of page templates [...]

I spotted these at my favorite local stationery store (NYC’s Paper Presentation, on 18th St.) and immediately fell in love with them. I was thrilled when the nice folks at OrangeArt agreed to send me some samples to review. The format of these notebooks is hardly unique, but the letterpress tattersall design on the covers [...]