I love the caption: “they look like square oreos.”
moleskine pyramid on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.
New Products Including Ring Binder Coming from Moleskine!
Breaking news from the Frankfurt Bookfair, via Moleskiners:
New Moleskine products coming in 2010 will include some sort of refillable ring binder! That is a real departure for Moleskine, but one that should please a lot of people. They’re also introducing printable Moleskine paper in A4 size, which finally makes the MSK widget make some sense. There are also going to be some themed journals, which doesn’t excite me all that much, as I think more people might prefer using a free-form blank notebook to keep track of books or wine or movies, but it sounds like they’ll have some fun features like themed stickers included.
Here’s some excerpts from the full announcement from Moleskine:
The New Moleskine Passions and Six New Pieces in the Folio Collection
Press release
15 October 2009
Download PDF
A 2010 preview at Frankfurter Buchmesse: The New Moleskine Passions: Journals for the loves of your life.Moleskine Passions is a collection of six different journals to record and recall memories, thoughts and notes about six different passions: Recipes, Wine, Book, Film, Music and Wellness.
Moleskine lovers can use them to collect information and reviews about books they read, restaurants they visited, concerts they attended, dishes they tasted. And to share these information with others.
Each journal is a personal archive to fill in according to different needs and feelings:
- Pages divided by printed tabs, with a themed layout for supporting you in taking notes.
- Pages divided by blank tabs, that the user can personalize with the enclosed adhesive labels.
- Blank pages for freedom of expression.
- Enclosed adhesive labels, with words and icons.
- Themed charts, calendars, glossaries, listings.
The black cover, one of the icons of the Moleskine brand, for the fi[rst] time in the brand’s history is fully embossed with a tight texture of themed images and writings. Moleskine Passions will be available in bookshops around the world starting from February 2010.
You will soon be able to test the layouts with MSK, the online tool that allows you to print out different page layouts and paste them on your Moleskine notebooks. www.moleskine.com/msk….
A 2010 preview at Frankfurter Buchmesse:
Six New Pieces in the Moleskine Folio Collection.
Tools For Creative Professionals and Contemporary Nomads.…Folio is a collection of top quality large Moleskine formats, A4 and A3. Now 6 new items have been added, conceived for professionals who love to personalize their own desks and give value to them, in functional and aesthetic terms. It is also a set of tools Moleskine lovers can use to build their own “portable offi ce”, to represent themselves in all occasions and
meetings.Closely connected to the digital world through a network of websites, blogs, online groups and virtual archives, Moleskine brand creates always new connections between analogue and digital, paper and pixel.
With MSK, the online cut and paste tool, you can transfer digital content into Moleskine pages or print out different page layouts to paste them on your Moleskine notebooks to personalize the page layout of you notebook. See www.moleskine.com/msk
Now with the Folio collection you can also print on A4 Moleskine paper, with the typical cream color The paper of the Folio Collection is FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified.
The new items in the Moleskine Folio Collection will be available in selected bookshop, design stores, art supply and stationary stores around the world starting from July 2010.
Six New Pieces in the Moleskine Folio CollectionPost-it pocket (ruled and plain in one pack)
Card pocket (20 pcs in one pack)
Soft document holder
Moleskine printable A4 paper
Ring binder
Ring binder organizing Set
Expandable inner pocket
Dividers (6)
Adhesives for personalization
I’m very curious to see how these will look, (beyond the images above, which are from the linked PDF) but I guess we have quite a few months to wait!
Household Organizer Notebooks
Shelterpop suggests 4 household organizer notebooks, for those who like having a nicely designed binder with pockets, tabs and pre-formatted lists to help you organize household things like emergency contact numbers, medications, or appliance warranties.
Here’s their picks:
The Handy Household Helper: An Organizer for Receipts, Warranties, & Odds and Ends
Knock Knock Home Maintenance Organizer
Life.doc: Your Life Buttoned Up
The Ultimate Home Journal & Organizer
For those who prefer the DIY method, there are also some helpful hints and printable forms to use to make your own organizer.
Discounted Sketchbooks at Blick
Notebook Addict of the Week: Jonel
A reader named Jonel sent me a link to her Flickr page, where she has some great photos of her prodigious notebook collection:
This photo only captures about half the spread– it was too big to fit in one shot! (The Flickr shots are tagged with notes.) And it doesn’t end there, as Jonel added in her email:
These were taken over the summer and since then I’ve added these:
Stack of “noted” notebooks in 5×8 size
Several Notebooks from the company that makes the Traveler’s notebook
and several pentalic a la modeskin notebooks in a small sketch size (this picture was taken in-store).
I also got some free field notes a while back.
She has even more office supply photos on Flickr, and you can follow her on Twitter at JonelB. I loved seeing all these notebooks. Thank you for this great submission, Jonel! You are indeed a true notebook addict!
Pocket Filofax, Early 1990s
This is the first Filofax I ever bought, sometime in the early 1990s. I had not been out of college long and Filofaxes still seemed like the kind of expensive yuppie status symbol that I’d scoffed at… but then I got a job in a store that sold them, and I discovered that this pocket sized, thin, no-pen-loop version was available… I fell in love. Fortunately, no one else seems to have felt that way about it, as it had been sitting in the store for long enough that I was able to convince the manager to mark it down enough that I could finally justify spending a chunk of my meager paycheck on it– I forget how much I paid, but I think it may have been around $50-60. But that turned out to be just the beginning.
Have you noticed already that the shape of this Filofax seems a bit atypical? A normal pocket Filofax is a more squarish shape, not that lovely 3×5-ish golden rectangle that I adore. That squarish shape is what this Filofax had when I bought it, but it drove me crazy. Since there was no snap closure on this Filofax, I thought it might be possible to alter it.
I have probably never felt more embarrassed about my notebook fetish than when I walked into a tailor shop and asked them to cut a quarter of an inch off the width of my Filofax. The tailor didn’t want to do it at first– he said more or less “this is a nice little notebook, why do you want to mess around with it?” I couldn’t admit that it was just because it was not quite the perfect shape, so I made up what probably sounded like an even stupider reason, which was that it belonged to my father and he wanted it to fit in a particular pocket of his briefcase. In the end, the guy rolled his eyes, decided he could do it, and charged me about $25.
The result was pretty good– there was a slight flaw on one edge where the tailor may have cut a little too far, but otherwise, it turned out just as I wanted it. I used it as my wallet for a long time, as I could fit a couple of credit cards in the back and tuck a little cash in the front. As you’ll see in the photos below, I tucked lots of other things in the pockets, including a bandaid! Because the rings are quite small, I used a week-per-page calendar. I also kept some graph and plain paper in it for notes, and had a few other sheets with phone lists and to-dos. At times, I also kept a couple of maps in this notebook, but by the time I stopped using it the only other insert I had in there was a clear plastic pocket.
I loved this notebook– the leather is gorgeous and supple, and it really was the perfect size, so it just felt great in my hand. It still just begs to be fondled. I’ve used other Filofaxes since, but never one with such nice leather. I think the only reason I stopped using this notebook was that I fell in love with the Palm Pilot. Once all my appointments and addresses and even little memos and jottings had gone electronic, I didn’t really need a Filofax as much. I used paper only for journal entries and drawing, neither of which I wanted to do on loose-leaf paper. For the first few years of my love affair with Palm PDAs, my notebook obsession was in hibernation, and I felt no need to buy anything other than the occasional Moleskine sketchbook.
Every once in a while, I think about using a Filofax again– there are many things for which a loose-leaf notebook makes more sense than a bound one. In the end, I think I prefer the permanence of a bound notebook. I have stacks of old Filofax pages wrapped in rubber bands– even if I bought those little storage binders that Filofax sells, they would never be as pleasing to look back through as a stack of old Moleskines. But I’ll never forget this Filofax– it may not be quite right for how I use notebooks now, but it served me well for many years.
The Scout Book from Pinball Publishing
Have you ever wanted a customized notebook with your own design on the cover, to give away or sell or just write lots of notes in? You can do it for less than you might think!
Pinball Publishing is the Portland, Oregon-based company that makes the Doane Paper Utility notebooks. They also offer a similar small notebook called the Scout Book. On their website, you can choose paper, different colored covers, and upload a logo for printing. The minimum order for a basic notebook is $150 for 50 unlined notebooks with black printing on the cover. Other paper styles and ink colors cost a bit more. If you go through a lot of notebooks, or want to give something unique as gifts, these would be a great option.
Super-cheap Moleskine Desk Calendar!
A reader named Jennike tipped me off to another fantastic deal on Amazon, this time on the 2010 Moleskine Desk Calendar
I can’t say this is my favorite Moleskine product– I think it’s a bit too much of a stretch away from doing what they do best. After all, it’s not really a notebook! But if you love Moleskines and like having a tear-off page-a-day type calendar on your desk, you should snap one up at this great price! The last time I linked to one of these deals, so many people bought them that the price started increasing almost immediately, so don’t delay! And send good thank-you vibes to Jennike for spotting this!
The Days That Count Desk Top Calendar (Moleskine Legendary Notebooks (Calendars))
Sometimes I Can Resist: Ecosystem Notebooks at B&N
I went to Barnes & Noble today and finally got a close up look at their Ecosystem notebooks.
At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to resist buying one, but the longer I looked at them, the more I felt a bit underwhelmed. First of all, the Union Square store didn’t have a very wide selection of colors and styles. Then I decided that the prices really weren’t all that exciting– $9.95 for a pocket size softcover, $6.95 for a set of 3 small cahier-like notebooks, or $10.95 for a pocket size hardcover.
Then I started to read the packaging more carefully and got annoyed. I don’t know why people have to whip up all this mythology around a line of notebooks. Moleskine’s Hemingway/Chatwin thing gets tired, but I found the Ecosystem verbiage even worse. They name each style of notebook after a role that might be associated with it, and add these definitions:
Unlined paper = ARTIST: an individual who utilizes their imagination to produce works that are beautiful and kind to the earth.
Squared paper = ARCHITECT: an environmentally aware person who creates strength and order with lines.
Lined paper = AUTHOR: one who writes with well-being and sustainability of the earth in mind.
Planner = ADVISOR: an ecologically friendly provider of professional or personal advice.
I really don’t mean to belittle environmental causes, but for some reason this makes me want to barf AND run over Bambi with a Hummer.
But okay, I’m over it now and will continue to try to lead my low-carbon-footprint lifestyle… just without buying one of these notebooks.
I mean, as notebooks go, they’re fine, I’m sure. They come in fun colors, and you can buy little inserts that slip into the back pocket so you can add an address book, calendar, to-do list or extra notes pages to your notebook. (I think it frustrates a lot of people that Moleskine includes a little slip-in booklet with some planners, but doesn’t sell them separately.) And I was most tempted by the graph paper notebook because it’s somewhat unique in having a smaller grid than any of the other graph paper notebooks I’ve used.
The Ecosystem website also mentions a few more unique features. If you register, you can read all sorts of info about the carbon footprint of your notebook. You can also enter the unique number of your notebook so they can help you try to recover it if it’s ever lost. And there are detailed instructions about how to separate all the various components of your notebook to recycle them, if you should decide that you don’t want to keep them. If these features are of use to you, by all means buy one of these notebooks! But I’m afraid I had to pass.
Bright Ideas Notebooks by Albertine Press
Here’s some really cute notebooks featured at Design Inspiration– I love the colors & images.
If you’re in NYC, they sell these at ABC Carpet & Home, but be prepared to gasp when you see the price– I didn’t actually jot it down when I saw them, but it was either $23 or $26 (for the set of three)! At least at the Albertine Press Etsy page, they’re only $18, but that is still a lot. They are adorable, but I’d like them a lot better if they cost half as much!