Notebook Stories

Fashionary is an interesting twist on the formatted-page notebook. It looks a lot like your typical Moleskine-ish notebook on the outside, but inside, the pages are set up with templates and reference material for fashion designers. From the product description: Dictionary + Sketchbook The name “FASHIONARY” comes from “Fashion + Dictionary + Diary”. The sketchbook [...]

This week’s addict is Sami, who blogs at Poor & Pretty. Here’s some of her journals: She says: When I was little, my Dad encouraged me to keep a diary so that I can record my thoughts during tough times. Though I have always been a vocal girl {my aunt loves to tell stories about [...]

Here’s someone with a realistic take on the Moleskine brand: “This is a company that took a famous novelist/travel writer’s (Bruce Chatwin) description of his favorite non-living travel companion (the brandless, black-covered, elastic-banded, ribbon-bookmarked notebook) and from it built a brand that is extraordinary in its implied history and prestige. …the company only came into [...]

NubbyTwiglet has an interesting idea for a visual journal/scrapbook: a Typography Notebook. I read a lot of magazines and find amazing type everywhere I look. Instead of keeping these images loose (and just waiting to get lost), I began gluing them into an inexpensive Muji notebook that I deemed my ‘Typography Notebook’ about two years [...]

I love this: From Make Something Cool Every Day 2009 on the Behance Network.

A couple of years ago, there was a great post on Design Observer about Michael Bierut’s notebooks: 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 [...]

I recently got an email from an Austrian designer named Konstantin Schmölzer, who asked me to take a look at his concept for a notebook. His idea is very cool: a notebook with multiple bookmarks that can link from an index page to anywhere in the notebook. Here’s an image of one of his prototypes: [...]

This week’s addict is a designer who wishes he could find one notebook that met all his needs: One important characteristic I require is that the pages have to withstand watercolour paints, as this is the most common medium used when adding detail and colour to my sketches. The Windsor and Newton sketchpad does this [...]

Here’s an interesting concept– using a separate notebook for every project you work on. Depending on how you work and what kind of notebooks you like, it could be unwieldy or impractical, but in this case, we seem to be talking about graphic design projects in small Moleskine cahiers or Volants, and the user says [...]

I’m sure many of us notebook freaks have often imagined creating the perfect notebook– something that would take elements of notebooks you like and combine them, or somehow correct flaws, or else customize a notebook that is perfect for your exact needs. Here’s an interesting series of posts from a designer who did just that, [...]