Moleskine Monday: The New Yorker on Moleskine

The New Yorker has an article on their website about Moleskine’s history and new products: When Moleskine Went Digital. Much of it reads like it’s straight from a Moleskine press release, except for this key phrase towards the end: “Moleskine is very good at telling stories. The question is whether people are interested in hearing this new one.”

To accompany the article, they re-used some of these charming little notebook illustrations that I had spotted in the print magazine a few months ago:

One thought on “Moleskine Monday: The New Yorker on Moleskine”

  1. The Moleskine users *I* know all fill in the “if lost, return to” line. It’s kind of a big deal among people who have used the brand for years. Moleskine has gotten so large and so popular now that their customers are mostly the public now, not mostly notebook afficionados like their smaller number of customers used to be.

    “Analog-digital continuum?” Um, what?

    Moleskine really had its’ moment back in 2006/2007 when the notebooks were particularly trendy among the urban young. Back when the Moleskinerie group on Flickr was active, back when there was Moleskinerie (before the company bought it) to share user feedback and quality control issues, and back when Moleskine was “just” a black notebook. Now there’s Moleskine travel tags and tech cases. Really?

    The brand keeps reaching out into other avenues, and is starting to lose its’ simple allure of being just a black notebook. Back then the Moleskine “story” and “history” made the notebook an object that felt vintage, historical, like your thoughts were important if you wrote in it. Back then the notebooks were a status symbol, felt luxurious. Now you can find Moleskine at Walmart or any store, and it’s not just a notebook- it’s tons of other Moleskine branded crap too. Nothing wrong with the other branded “crap,” but it’s diluting the very brand that became popular for being a “simple black notebook,” using the Chatwin story to conjure up images of the simplicity of the past.

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