Fun & Weird, productivity

Notebook-y iPhone Apps

1 Comment

I’ve noticed a couple of iPhone/iPad apps that very much mimic the look of paper notebooks– I guess they’re trying to be the best of both worlds!

Here’s a couple of screen shots from Egretlist, a to-do app that syncs with Evernote:

And here’s the icon and some screenshots from Do It Tomorrow, another to-do list program:

I guess it’s nice that they’re going for a very paper-ish, handwritten look, but I think I’d rather keep my electronic and paper worlds quite separate. I’ll take my own handwriting on real paper, and stick with plain fonts for digital text, thanks!

new products, Places to Buy Notebooks

Notes for my Daily Life Notebook by Mark’s Inc.

Leave a comment

A funky Japanese notebook, available online from a UK retailer:

A fabulous notebook to record “notes for my daily life”. Designed by Japanese company Mark’s Inc., it has a smooth bright orange cover and comes with an elastic closure band to keep your book safe in your bag.

It has 300 lined pages each headed with space for the date. Whatever you’re doing this week, record it in this cool notebook.

* 16cm x 23cm
* 300 lined pages
* spiral bound
* elastic closure band

See more at Mark’s Inc Notes for my Daily Life Notebook.

creativity, Exacompta, Links, Mead, Moleskine, Notebook Addict of the Week, Other People's Notebooks, Rhodia, Writing Notebooks

Notebook Addict(s) of the Week: She Writes

Leave a comment

“She Writes” is an online community for women writers, with over 9,000 active members from all fifty states and more than thirty countries. As you can imagine, these ladies love their notebooks!

Deborah Siegel asked “What’s in Your Notebook” and got these amongst her responses:

Response
by Tania Prputniewicz

Notebooks I Have Known
by Kelly Jo

My Journals and Notebooks
by Cheryl Wright

Deborah also mentions “a great little post last month on notebooks filled with book lists… What’s in Your Red (or Yellow) Spiral Notebook?.”
Read more at She Writes on Fridays: Notebook Mash – She Writes.

Black & Red, creativity, Journal, Other People's Notebooks, Writing Notebooks

Feeling Guilty About Notebooks

1 Comment

I loved this post I stumbled across, in which the writer ponders the different notebooks she’s been using for the “morning pages” exercise recommended in The Artist’s Way:

This morning, as I began writing I started thinking about my good old Black ‘n Red. I thought, maybe I should go back and start writing in it again. It was kinda unfair that I abandoned it for this beautiful spankin’ new journal. I sighed at the image of it sitting on my desk forsaken and unused. How utterly sad.

Then I stopped – I interrupted that ridiculous train of thought and was shock to discover that I felt GUILTY! Within 15 seconds I had almost convinced myself my journal was offended and felt cast-off and forgotten. With a quickness I told my brain, “Listen here – that notebook is an inanimate object. The only life it possesses is what I give it!”

But what rich lives our notebooks have, whether we personify them or not, and regardless of which kind we choose at any given time. As the writer finally concludes, “I can write in any flippin’ notebook that I want!”

Read more at Killing Superwoman: Guilty of Being Guilty!.

Clairefontaine, Miquelrius, Moleskine, Pen & Ink, Places to Buy Notebooks, Scientific, Whitelines

Questions from Readers

6 Comments

The readers of this blog continue to challenge my notebook wisdom, proving again that I’m more of an enthusiast than an expert. But maybe others will have suggestions, so I share these with all of you:

From Bobby:
I’m trying to find a notebook that is “normal” sized ~8.5×11 and is cream/light green colored like the computation pads, and have a grid that is very faint to the point where if you photocopied it, it probably wouldn’t show up. (not a deal breaker, but that’s the type of faint I’m looking for). I’d like it with either spiral bound or some other type of binding that allows for laying flat. I’d love some sort of classic retro-y looking cover, but really it’s the guts that count. I’m not really interested in the engineering computation notebooks that are available mainly due to the heaviness of the grids on those notebooks. I guess they figured since its a notebook and you can’t use the grid-through-the-back-of-the-sheet trick, they’d just make them normal darker grid.
This is a stumper! Whitelines notebooks shouldn’t show their grid lines when photocopied, but the greyish paper might not be pleasing compared to a cream/light green. I’ve also seen legder notebooks with greenish pages and fairly faint lines, but not spiral bound. Does anyone else have any ideas for Bobby?

From Howard:

Do you know if there are Moleskine like notepads with legal pad yellow colored pages?  It seems weird, but I find jotting my notes down on yellow tinted pages quite pleasing.

I’ve seen small notepads that have yellow legal paper, but never anything in a Moleskine-like notebook.

From Nena:

I am looking for a really thick notebook – i.e. it has many many pages that is lined. Do you have any suggestions?

I’ve seen very thick notebooks with unlined pages, such as this one, but the thickest lined notebooks I’ve seen are probably these ones from Miquelrius, which have up to 300 pages and are available in squared and lined pages.

From Jeffrey:
I am wondering if you know what the best best book for me would be. I mostly like to draw with technical pens or pretty much put the ink straight on the page. I have one of the Handbook notebooks, I like it, buts its just not quite there. If it had smoother paper, it would probably be it. I like the thickness of the paper in them. What other notebook would you recommend other than the Handbook ones?

If you want something with smooth but thick paper, I would try one of the Moleskine Sketchbooks, or the Pen & Ink Heavy-Weight Sketch Book. Either of those should work well with that kind of pen, I think. I like the Hand Book Sketchbooks best for watercolor, pencil, or magic markers, but with fine-point pens, I love the creamy texture of the Moleskine, and the heavier paper used in the sketchbooks bleeds through much less than the lighter paper used in their other notebooks.

From Claudia:
I am trying to find a softcover notebook with “wide rule” lines and can’t seem to find anything besides the old marble-composition books, and I have a ton of those. Any ideas?

Have you tried Clairefontaine notebooks? I think the lines are usually wide rule and they have various cover and binding options.

Whew! That’s a lot of questions, and I have more on hand that I’ll feature in future posts. Thanks for writing, everyone, and thanks to all the readers out there who may also have suggestions!

Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…