I realized that my “using now” feature hadn’t been updated in quite a while, since October 2018. I finished all my main notebooks around the end of the year, so my daily carry is completely different. As usual, I have a few other notebooks in progress as well.
Daily Carry Notebooks
Daily carry notebooks I’m using now: Nolty and Moleskines
As noted in other posts, my 2018 Nolty diary was replaced with a 2019 Nolty Gold, the upgraded version with a leather cover. I’m enjoying using it, but trying to decide if the extra cost is worth it. I do love the leather and the additional supplemental booklet, but it’s more than double the price of the regular Nolty, and I am thinking I might go back to the plastic cover for 2020. We’ll see…
My catch-all journal/jotter/commonplace book is back to being a squared hardcover Moleskine from my stash of early 2000’s stock. I like trying other things in between but I’m always happy to come back to these.
My sketchbook is a Moleskine. Back in October, I’d been thinking I would try using a Bindewerk linen journal with plain pages for sketching, but I guess I forgot about that intention and just grabbed a Moleskine. I haven’t been drawing as much lately so it will take me a while to finish this one.
Frequently used notebooks: Decomposition Book, Moleskine Watercolor, Nolty
I’m also trying to finish a Moleskine Watercolor sketchbook that I’ve been using on and off for several years. A Pentalic watercolor sketchbook is also in progress, as I seem to find myself alternating between the two. (See review comparing watercolor sketchbooks)
The Michael Roger Decomposition book is still the repository of lots of home renovation notes. Including the “I’m trying to understand what you mean when you tell me my whole house is out of square” drawings. [Sigh.]
I bought an extra 2019 Nolty diary (regular, not gold) in the smaller size that fits in a passport Travelers Notebook. I haven’t put it in the TN, but instead I’ve been using it as a sort of visual commonplace book, pasting in random images that appeal to me, one per week.
I also occasionally use an old Hobonichi Techo for handwriting practice with fountain pens.
I have a few other notebooks that are incomplete but not active. I’m not sure if I should convert them to other purposes just to use them up, so for the moment, they’ll just kind of live in a limbo pile. This includes a couple of HandBook Artist Journals and a Conceptum notebook.
I haven’t talked a whole lot about the Bullet Journal trend on this site. If by some chance you found your way to this site but still don’t know was a Bullet Journal is, it is a system of list-making, logging and planning that frequently features elaborately designed and decorated notebook pages (but can also be very minimal). You can read more about it here. In the last couple of years, Bullet Journal images are all over Instagram and it seems like every notebook listed on Amazon has to include “great for Bullet Journal” in its description.
Bullet Journals are not the first (or last) trend or fad in the notebook world. Moleskine notebooks seemed to explode in popularity in the mid-2000’s and early teens. The Travelers Notebook (from Midori and other imitators) is another notebook format that seems to have gained a huge following. But here’s something that puts these trends in perspective:
Google Trends comparison of Moleskine, Bullet Journal and Travelers Notebook
This looks at web search trends 2004 to date, in the US. (The chart looks pretty much the same for worldwide.) I was surprised at how much bigger the spikes are for the Bullet Journal trend. In part, I’m sure that is because it is A) a somewhat cryptic term if you haven’t heard of it; B) a system that you have to learn ; and C) not tied to any one brand or format of notebook.
It is interesting to switch the results to focus on Google Shopping searches:
Google Trends Bullet Journal Moleskine Travelers Notebook
Here the data only goes back to 2008, but you can see how big Moleskine was a decade ago, more recently dwindling to a fraction of the shopping searches it used to have. This may also be due to familiarity– people know they can get them in big-box chain stores and on Amazon and don’t feel the need to shop around online as much as they used to. Although there is a Leuchtturm notebookco-branded with Bullet Journal, a “bullet journal” is more something you create than something you buy or shop for. The Travelers Notebook line here shows that they are a much more niche product in the wide world of online shopping searches, even if they have a big mindshare in the notebook/pen/journaling world.
Anyway, my inner statistics geek was quite fascinated by this– as someone who has been interested in notebooks for almost 50 years, the internet and social media have been a gratifying source of new information and like-minded community. The rise of Moleskine seemed to bring notebook addiction out into the open in a whole new way, but Bullet Journaling and its Instagram-friendliness have taken it to another level! Of course, it’s all relative:
Google Trends Bullet Journal vs iPhone
We notebook-lovers and bullet-journalers are still a small group of holdouts vs. digital domination!
Several years ago, while browsing on eBay, I came across a series of very unusual Moleskine notebooks that I’d never seen: Moleskine Zoom. I purchased two batches of these over the last few years, both times from international sellers where shipping was fairly expensive. (I “solved” that problem by making offers for combined bulk purchases, thus making the per-notebook shipping cost a little more reasonable!)
How could I not fall in love with these:
Moleskine Zoom notebooks Cameroon and Australia
Moleskine Zoom notebooks Iran and Antarctica
Moleskine Zoom Notebooks Polynesia and Morocco
The covers are a smooth material printed with zoomed in photographs of landscapes around the world. Seen all together, they have a lovely color palette, with elastic closures that match the hues of each notebook.
So what’s the story behind the Moleskine Zoom notebook series? There is not much information online about them, except for a 2007 post on Moleskinerie:
Apparently there’s a series of Moleskine called “Zoom”.
:::calling Milan:::
[Link to Moleskiner.cn, which is no longer active]
Update 4.18.07:
Our friend Silvia Trenta at Moleskine.com in Milan says this product was a special series produced in 2001.
Moleskine Zoom squared notebooks
Moleskine Zoom squared notebooks
Moleskine Zoom notebook back cover
The packaging is all in Italian, and doesn’t offer much info: “New albums and notebooks for photographs and collages, notes and drawings covered by the surface of the planet. Zoomed images of Antarctica, Australia, Cameroon, Iran, Morocco, and Polynesia.” There is an extra info sheet inside printed with color images on the back– these same sheets were cut up and glued onto on the translucent belly bands, as you can see when you look at the back.
Front of Moleskine Zoom info sheet
Back of Moleskine Zoom info sheet
Front of Moleskine Zoom belly band
Back of Moleskine Zoom bellyband
Modo e Modo appear to have produced pocket size Moleskine Zoom notebooks in ruled, squared, plain and sketchbook versions, as well as larger photo albums with white or black heavy paper and pockets for negatives. I’ve never seen the photo albums listed on eBay or anywhere else.
I love the colors and patterns. I love the evocation of some of the earth’s more striking features. I love the global wanderlust the images inspire. These notebooks kind of encapsulate everything that was cool about Moleskine’s mythology back then, whether it was marketing hype or not. To me, this is the kind of limited edition Moleskine should be doing, not goofy collaborations with Coca Cola or Pokemon.
What I also love about Moleskines of that era is the way they were constructed. Hardly any cover overhang. Precisely folded corners. Everything nice and square. Good quality control. Other than the covers, coordinating elastic bands and white ribbon markers, these notebooks are exactly the same as other Moleskines except for one small detail: the expanding back pockets seem to have paper sides rather than the contrasting fabric sides other Moleskines have.
Moleskine Zoom shown with regular Moleskine pocket notebook
Moleskine Zoom compared to regular Moleskine notebook
Moleskine Zoom back pocket paper sides
Regular Moleskine pocket with cloth sides
Like all other Moleskines, these don’t have the best paper– it is somewhat better than what they seem to be using now in the late 2010s, and as always, it’s okay with fine gel ink pens, but many fountain pens and other wet pens bleed through in spots. Show through is about average. I generally use pens that don’t bleed, so the paper is something I’ve always been willing to accept in exchange for the precise construction of these early Moleskines, but the more I’ve come to enjoy fountain pens, the more it makes me sad.
Moleskine Zoom notebook pen tests front of page
Moleskine Zoom notebook pen tests back of page
The first set of Moleskine Zoom notebooks I bought were all sketchbooks. I tucked them away and couldn’t bring myself to use one. Now that I also have more than a full set of squared notebooks, and almost a full set of plain notebooks, I’ll probably use a few for daily carry sometime soon. The rest will be saved for some future date, when I’ve run out of all the other Moleskines in my collection that seem less special.
There are still a some of these notebooks for sale on eBay as of this writing– search “Moleskine Zoom” and you’ll find listings from an Australian seller called Toysorigin, and an Italian seller called Mecspecthreepwood. Try just viewing those sellers’ listings even if the title search doesn’t work. Happy hunting!
According to this Fox Business article, there has been a big increase in people stealing office supplies from their employer.:
According to data from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiner, office Opens a New Window.stealing of noncash items — ranging from scissors and notebooks, to staplers and paperclips, has ballooned to 21 percent of corporate-theft losses in 2018 from 10.6 percent in 2002….
Hot items include scissors, notebooks, staplers and tape, especially during the gift-wrapping holidays. The uptick has even forced managers to routinely stock up on 20 percent more supplies in order to account for lost items right off the bat.
My first reaction was that the notebooks and pens at any office I ever worked in were not worth stealing, though I probably did hoard a box or two of Uniball Onyx Micro Points years ago when they were my favorites. But I always had trouble finding notebooks in the supply room that I even wanted to use in the office, let alone steal.
At one office where I worked, these National notebooks with pale green paper were the only offering. They were the 8×10 version, which was totally annoying, because you couldn’t tuck in letter size papers without the corners getting all bent.
Another office also offered steno pads, which I tried for list-keeping, but didn’t like. I ended up buying my own notebooks (you can see a few in this post), and after I discovered the Uniball Signo RT 0.38, my own pens. Hopefully I saved the company enough money to make up for the occasional roll of tape I took home!
How about you, notebook addicts? Do any of you work in places where they supply nice notebooks that are tempting?
A recent article in the Guardian talks about things people supposedly only do in the movies:
•Who keeps scrapbooks any more? Only the movie psychopath, who knows that the scrapbook will clear up any ambiguities when it is discovered in a drawer in the final reel. Recent culprits include the hostage thriller Berlin Syndrome. Seven is a special case: along with the killer’s newspaper clippings, there are 2,000 notebooks for the police to thumb through. That goes for photo albums, too, recently used in Hereditary: it wouldn’t have been the same if Toni Collette were scrolling through the cloud.
Morgan Freeman in Seven. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock
I’d say there are a few other people who still keep scrapbooks and notebooks, even if they aren’t movie psychopaths!
I first spotted the Kleid Japan 2face notebook on Instagram, where I had to do some enlarging and squinting and auto-translating to figure out what it was. This brand does not seem to have much of a US presence, but I was actually able to order a Kleid notebook from Amazon, where several color combinations were available. I decided to play it safe with black/red, but the brown/orange, navy/light green, and burgundy/blue versions were also appealing.
Kleid 2face Notebook Exterior
On the outside the Kleid notebook is pretty typical, with a soft, smooth cover material similar to a Rhodia Webbie. The red elastic closure and ribbon contrast nicely with the black. The only branding is the gold stamped logo on the front. I tend not to love logos on the front cover, but in this case it has a nice refined look and doesn’t bother me.
The construction of the notebook seems very solid and well-done, though I did notice that the edge of the back cover sticks out a bit more than the front. The front cover has very little overhang, so it’s a shame the back doesn’t match! The elastic is a slightly looser tension than I prefer, as it doesn’t sit snugly when you tuck it around the back cover, but this is pretty typical.
Kleid 2face Notebook Front Cover
Kleid 2face Notebook Back Cover
Kleid 2face Notebook Logo Detail
Kleid 2face Notebook edge detail
Kleid 2face Notebook Compared to Pocket Moleskine
Kleid 2face Notebook Moleskine Comparison Top Edge View
Kleid 2face Notebook Moleskine Comparison Side View
Kleid 2face Notebook Interior
Inside the notebook, you get beautiful red endpapers, in an unusual textured paper. There is an expanding pocket in the back. The ribbon marker is the skinny type found in Nolty and Daiso notebooks, narrower than most other brands use. There are six stitched signatures of paper and the pages open quite flat throughout. The last signature is perforated.
The pages have an almost yellowish tone with a 2mm light blue grid, which I love. Until I saw it in person, I didn’t really envision quite how small the grid would be. If the lines were any darker, this could be distracting, but the blue color on the off-white paper is actually very subtle and works well with large or small handwriting. I would love it if more notebook brands offered a tiny grid design like this. I like the way it looks on the pages edges too, giving them a slight bluish tone.
Kleid 2face Notebook Endpapers
Kleid 2face Notebook Back Pocket
Kleid 2face Notebook Opened Flat
Kleid 2face Notebook 2mm Squared Paper Compared to Moleskine 5mm Squared Paper
Kleid 2face Notebook Pen Tests
Unfortunately, what I didn’t love about the paper was its performance with wet pens. Quite a few bled through, and many feathered. Some inks also resisted the grid lines– this is normal with squared paper, but the one drawback of having such a small grid is that you notice it more. The paper has a soft feel, not as super-smooth as Moleskine. I will happily use it with my Uniball SIgno RT 0.38 pens, but will keep fountain pens far away.
Kleid 2face Notebook Pen Tests Front of Page
Kleid 2face Notebook Pen Tests Back of Page
Conclusion
I will put this in my “maybe use someday” pile, though I wonder if that back cover overhang would get on my nerves with daily use. And it’s a shame about the fountain pens. This is the first higher-end Japanese notebook I’ve used that hasn’t been fountain pen friendly, I think. (The notebook is made in China, but that is also the case for some other Japanese branded notebooks, such as the Daiso notebook I reviewed recently, which performed better with fountain pens despite costing a lot less than the Kleid!)
On Amazon, these “A6” size Kleid 2face notebooks cost $17-26, including free shipping from a third-party seller in Japan. If you must have this brand and this tiny grid design, I guess you’ll pay it, but otherwise, most people won’t want to pay that much for this combination of features and performance.
But I would be interested to hear from any readers whether they’ve had the same experience with the Kleid 2face notebook. In researching the Kleid brand, they seem to present themselves as having a premium paper in at least some of their notebooks.
They have done a collaboration with the Life notebook brand, which I thought was broadly respected as always having fountain-pen friendly paper– it’s hard to tell with auto-translated info, but it seems the Kleid contributions to the collaboration are just their 2mm grid paper in a section of the notebook and logo on the cover, while other sections of the notebook have Life’s regular paper in two different shades of white. Would Life want to put their name on something if not all the paper was fountain pen friendly?
Also, other Kleid notebooks claim they are fountain pen friendly and made in Japan. I’m left wondering if the 2face notebook is just their lower-end, made-in-China product, or if the brand is hot enough that someone would bother to counterfeit it, and I didn’t get the real thing!
I’d like to give a Kleid notebook another chance someday, and will be keeping an eye out for them in US stores.
A while ago, I wrote about Phil’s Stationery, one of the few remaining independent stores of its kind in NYC, selling new and vintage office supplies. When I stumbled across their midtown Manhattan store, I was in heaven.
Phil’s Stationery NYC, home of vintage office supplies
The sign alone is just so cool, and inside, there was a pleasantly dusty mess of notebooks, pens and assorted stationery supplies. I barely scratched the surface. I haven’t been back, but now I feel like I can get the same feeling from the comfort of my own home: Phil’s has a storefront on Amazon where they sell all sorts of stuff, including many virgin vintage office supplies. Some of these are Made in the USA items that are probably now produced in China. Here’s a few things that intrigued me:
You can click through the images to see more details at Amazon (affiliate links). They have quite a lot of other stuff that looks ancient– old ledgers, coding sheets, staplers, hole punchers. Try searching “vintage” from within their storefront to find more. Maybe you’ll find an old favorite you’d forgotten!
This week’s addict is a designer and illustrator who has filled a nice row of Moleskine journals:
What’s inside is even better: beautiful travel collages!
For the past several years, I’ve keep a sketchbook that I use for everyday notes, ideas, lists, sketches, as well as travel collages. I carry it with me everywhere and, recently, it has been filling up with new Japanese words I’m learning! Whenever I travel, I add collages of each city I visit. You know all those maps, brochures, and ticket stubs you collect while traveling? I have always hated throwing all that information away; I have this irrational desire to hang on to it all because I’ll want to look at it again one day! Of course, I never actually look at it again, so I’ve decided to save some of it in my sketchbooks by cutting it up and making collages.
