I’m Riccardo from Italy and I love your blog. I think I have a “problem” with notebooks and paper in general. I want every paper object to be perfect. Today I misspelled my email address in my personal info in my planner and… You can imagine what a rough time I had. Am I the only one? Is there anyone who is as “perfectionist” as me?Â
For many of us, the obsession with notebooks extends into some form of perfectionism. Lots of us search for “the perfect notebook,” that meets a very personal set of criteria. Then there is the attention to detail in the construction and quality of a notebook. It drives me crazy when a notebook is uneven, crooked, not square, sloppily finished. In the notebooks I use daily, if one corner sticks out a little more than the other, I find myself fiddling with it and pushing at it, as if I could whittle away the extra material to achieve perfect symmetry. I didn’t just get into this habit because I review notebooks on this site and have to look for all their flaws– I was this way even as a kid with 25 cent notebooks from the local newsstand. If one notebook wasn’t quite right, I’d try to fix it somehow, or want to buy another one. This obsession with perfection is also why I’ve stockpiled over 100 unused Moleskines from the early 2000s when their construction was slightly different and their quality control was tighter–a difference of a millimeter or two in cover overhang means those old ones are as close as I’ll get to “perfect” so I bought as many as I could.
As for the contents of notebooks, I am not a perfectionist at all. I’ve seen many sketchbooks displayed online that look “perfect,” in terms of having beautifully executed artworks inside, or impeccable calligraphy and precise handwriting. I admire that, and I’d like some of my pages to be more “beautiful,” but I don’t aspire to perfection. I scribble and cross things out and allow myself to make a mess. I’ve even done what Riccardo did, writing my email address wrong. But I just crossed it out and kept going.
I have also seen many people talk about how perfectionism holds them back from using notebooks– the notebook is “too nice,” so they are afraid to make a mistake and mess it up. And on another blog recently (I thought I saved the link but now can’t find it!), someone talked about his “DGAF notebook.” At first I thought DGAF was some cool new brand I hadn’t heard about, but it just stands for “Don’t Give a F**k.” It’s the notebook you allow yourself to use for pen tests, torn-out pages, taking notes in the bathtub, or whatever. A notebook with absolutely no need for perfection, and nothing to hold you back.
How do you feel about notebooks and perfectionism? Do your notebooks have to be perfect? Or are you more of a DGAF person?
I came across these images while searching for “Clipper” sketchbooks, after finding out that Richard Diebenkorn used them. The Clipper Sketchbooks below are from the website of Albert “Abby” Sangiamo, an artist who taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art for 50 years. He unfortunately died a few months ago.
I can’t decide whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that there is no Daiso store near me. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Daiso is a chain of Japanese dollar stores, with worldwide locations including quite a few in California. There are also US locations in Texas and Washington state. The stores are full of fun stationery, beauty, and houseware items and everything is dirt cheap. It is so cheap that their online store doesn’t even attempt to sell individual items– everything is in 6 packs or 12 packs or 20 packs just to get to the $15-25 price point where it even makes sense to ship things. When I went to their store in Alameda, CA, I was determined not to go nuts buying all sorts of doodads, but I couldn’t escape without a pack of post-it notes, some mechanical pencils, 2 packs of paintbrushes, and the Daiso notebook in this review. My total bill was $10.58, of which this notebook accounted for $1.59, I think? Maybe $1.99? Definitely under $2.
So, what would you expect to find in a hardcover, pocket size, under-$2 Moleskine clone notebook? Let’s take a look!
Daiso Notebook Exterior
The outside of the notebook is very typical of Moleskine clones. The cover material has a texture pretty much identical to Moleskine’s. What looks different is the vertical placement of the paper band with the branding. There is no branding stamped anywhere on the notebook itself.
Daiso notebook front cover
Daiso notebook back cover
Daiso Notebook compared to Moleskine notebook
The Daiso notebook is also noticeably thinner. I’m always saying I like chunky, thicker notebooks, but I actually like the slimness of this. The construction is quite good, though I seem to remember picking through the ones on the shelf to find one that was nicely square and even. The cover overhang is pretty big, though, and the corners are folded in with only a few pleats, which always makes the corners look a little angled and clunky.
Daiso notebook cover corner overhang
Daiso Notebook side view
Corner comparison of Daiso notebook (bottom) vs Moleskine notebook (top). Note that this Moleskine is an early 2000s example with very little cover overhang.
Thickness comparison of Daiso Notebook top, Molesine Notebook bottom
There is an elastic closure and it has just the right tension to sit easily around the whole notebook, or tucked out of the way just around the back cover without flopping loosely. My biggest question about the exterior is why the paper band has the word “flipchart” on it. I could not detect anything flipcharty about this notebook.
Daiso Notebook Interior
Inside, you get plain white endpapers, without any back pocket. There is a ribbon marker which is very skinny, like the ones found on Nolty and Design Y notebooks rather than the wider ribbons found on most other brands.
Daiso notebook inside front cover
Daiso notebook corner inside front cover
Ribbon marker comparison: Daiso Notebook at left, Moleskine on right
The five sewn signatures allow the notebook to open flat. The 80 sheets (or 160 pages) of paper are lined, with wide margins and the sides and space at the top and bottom. The paper is a creamy off-white, similar to Moleskine, but feels noticeably less smooth to the touch.
Daiso notebook opening flat
Daiso notebook inside back cover with elastic closure wrapped around
Daiso Notebook Pen Tests
With pens and pencils, you also notice the slight tooth of the paper. I’m guessing that the paper weight may be 80 GSM because that number appears among some Japanese characters on the cover, and the page count is already specified elsewhere. When I first started writing with fountain pens, I was feeling a little more feedback from the paper than I prefer, and I expected to see a lot of feathering and bleed-through. But the paper actually performed better than I thought it would. There was not much noticeable feathering, and bleed-through was limited to a few of my wettest pens. Show-through is average. I would not consider this a slam dunk for fountain pen users, but depending on your personal preferences for paper feel and pen/ink types, it could work. Let’s call it semi-fountain-pen-friendly.
Daiso notebook pen test front of page
Daiso notebook pen test back of page
Conclusion
This notebook cost less than $2, people! It’s an insanely good value for a notebook of this format. It may not be quite as refined as some of the competition, but the competition usually costs 7-10X more. It is made in China, but so is most of the competition. I can’t think of any other cheap (under $10) Moleskine clone type notebooks I’ve reviewed that are as good a value as the Daiso notebook– there was the Tops notebook that cost around $5 back in 2010, but I pretty much hated it. The Peninsula notebook I got for about $6 or $7 was just so-so. The Superior Maker notebook is probably the best “cheap” Moleskine alternative I’ve reviewed, but it costs about $9 for the pocket size. If you are on a tight budget and go through a lot of notebooks or if you have kids and don’t want to spend a lot of money on fancy journals for them, Daiso is a great option– if you live near a store. Unfortunately these notebooks don’t seem to be listed on their online store,** though they do have some other fun notebooks, stationery and art supplies if you are willing to buy in bulk quantities.
Loyal readers may remember that last year, I did a cross-country road trip, during which I had hoped to stop at various local independent shops to look at notebooks, including those that were mentioned in your responses to my call for suggestions. The journey was fascinating and fun, and in the end I didn’t really have time to do much notebook shopping because there was so much other great stuff to do! But I did keep an eye out for notebooks along the way, and about halfway through the trip, I posted a re-cap of what I had seen so far: Cross Country Road Trip Notes. At that point I had only bought one notebook, the Vinylux notebook below:
This was purchased at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, TN, but I have also seen them sold in NYC at the Bryant Park holiday market. The journal itself is pretty basic and I haven’t tested the paper. The front cover has a real slice of a vintage vinyl 45rpm record glued to it, with a Stax-branded thing-a-ma-jiggie in the middle. (If you’re under the age of 40, you probably wouldn’t know what that thing was if you saw it out of context, at least not before the resurgence of interest in vinyl records in the last few years. People my age know what it’s used for, but don’t know what to call it other than thing-a-ma-jiggie.)
After leaving Memphis, I didn’t buy another notebook until I got to California. At the Daiso store in Alameda, I bought this super-cheap Moleskine-clone. A full review is coming soon.
In Berkeley, I found this lovely fish journal at Pegasus Books. The cover is beautiful, and the endpapers and designed pages make it even more elegant and special.
On my way from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe, I stopped for lunch in the charming town of Placerville, CA. There were some cool antique shops, and in one of them, I just couldn’t resist this little vintage diary. The horizontal format is unusual, something I’ve since seen only in one of the diaries I bought on my European trip last fall. Only a few pages of it were used, and some may have been torn out. The first page has notes about the owner’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Another page listed some fellow military officers, performers from a USO team (not shown here, as there were personal details), and some scoring guidelines for marksmanship. The rest doesn’t seem at all war-related– just a few random notes about things like safe deposit box numbers, correspondence, and a list of apple dishes.
That was it for notebook purchases! That makes about one notebook for every 2,250 miles driven. I think I showed admirable restraint… but the other reason I was disinclined to spend money on notebooks was that I had busted my souvenir budget on an impulse pen purchase. I went into a pen shop just hoping to find a cheap mechanical pencil, but I ended up falling in love with a Pilot Justus fountain pen that cost over $300, by far the most I’ve ever spent on a pen (I know all you true fountain pen addicts are like “hold my beer…”). But it’s actually a great pen and a useful addition to my modest collection– the firmness of the nib can be adjusted between being soft and flexible for (attempted) calligraphy, and very fine and firm for everyday writing. It’s like two pens in one… two $150 pens. (You can find it for a lot less on Amazon.)
So I can’t give you the cross-country stationery shop tour that I’d hoped for, but honestly, if you ever have the chance to do a road trip across the USA, don’t spend too much time shopping! Take the back roads, go to national parks, wander through Route 66 ghost towns, eat the craziest food you can find and enjoy all the beautiful places and friendly people that our country has to offer. Fill the notebooks you already own with lots of memories! I sure did.
I wanted to ask your recommendation on a set of notebooks that I can use to journal my entire year so that I can carry them and write in them around one or two months’ worth at a time. I don’t like Moleskine’s thin paper but I am looking for that concept, a 6-pack of thin cover notebooks of identical size. Any suggestions? Thank you!!
Back in the day (2009), I reviewed Moleskine’s Color a Month Planner. I used one for a year and kind of liked it, though as noted in my review, each booklet had a lot of useless extra pages. I keep wishing they would refine this concept and create monthly journal booklets with dated, unlined pages on heavier paper that would work well for mixed-media art journaling. (See my recent post with other ideas for new Moleskine products.)
As for current products that are actually available, at least for the moment, the only set of monthly journals I could come up with was this Kate Spade Twelve Month Journal Set. These seem to be numbered rather than actually dated for each month, but I like the way they’ve made the box and tabs so you can easily see which notebook you’re pulling out. The size is 5×7″, which is fine for carrying around in a bag, but not in most pockets.
Here’s one fun alternative, if you don’t mind using a set of vintage journals dated 1912! (Available on Etsy) Save them for a year when the days of the week match up…
The best solution might just be to find your favorite pocket size stapled or stitched notebook and buy a batch of them, customizing the pages and covers to create your own set of monthly journals. Many notebooks in this style tend to have 48 pages so they’d fit one month at a page per day, plus some extra room for additional notes. Some brands may have enough pages to fit two months. If you want each page to have a certain layout, you might be able to have a custom rubber stamp made of your own page design, sized to fit the notebook page.
A notebook belonging to artist Larry Rivers illustrates an essay by Nicholas Martin about Rivers’ 1961 painting “Parts of the Face: French Vocabulary Lesson.”
Rivers responded to the prospect of making paintings for a living by skipping town to Paris in 1950 for ‘a half year of deliberating whether I should continue a life devoted to making art or write poetry’.
Although he never gained notoriety as a poet, Rivers’s devotion to the craft is obvious; the Larry Rivers Papers at New York University’s Fales Library hold sheaves of poems and stories composed throughout the artist’s life,10 and Rivers held an enduring preference for writers as companions and partners in collaboration. It is therefore no surprise to see Rivers, upon his return to Paris in 1961, engaging with language on the canvas in Parts of the Face. A notebook Rivers kept during his 1961 stay reflects this interplay: the first page includes French language notations and a sketch of a woman’s face
Image credit: Larry Rivers Notebook page with French language lessons and sketch, 1961, Larry Rivers Papers, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University
I’m very fortunate to have friends in Paris and Amsterdam that I’ve been able to visit a few times. I went in 2014 and bought quite a few notebooks. This past year, I went again, and also included Belgium on my itinerary. I wasn’t expecting to buy as many notebooks this time, but I ended up with quite a few! Sometimes it can seem like the world has gotten smaller and shopping isn’t that different between New York and Europe, but happily, that didn’t seem to be true on this trip and I found a number of things that I could not have bought back home in the USA.
Notebooks from Paris
At Esquisse (a small art supply shop in Paris, probably overlooked by most tourists in favor of the nearby and much more picturesque Sennelier store), I was quite captivated by a tiny little Hahnemuhle sketchbook. It’s a sweet little size (120 x 90mm, shown below with a pocket Moleskine for comparison), and at €3.20, not terribly expensive. I haven’t tested the paper inside, but it seems like a nice weight and texture. The same shop also had the lovely little quarter-pan Daler Rowney watercolor set I’d been hankering after ever since commenter Paul mentioned it in response to this post about my favorite watercolor sets. It’s a very elegant and slim metal box that can slip into any pocket, and the paints within are high quality. At 4 7/8″L x 1 7/8″ W x 1/2″D, it is amazingly small for an 18-color set– smaller than it looks in the photo below. Did I need it? No. Should I have spent approximately $85 on it? No, but I had to have it! (At the time, it was listed on Amazon for over $90 and otherwise almost impossible to find. You can currently get this set at Jackson’s for $79.61, but shipping from the UK will probably cost you another $7-10 if you’re in the USA.)
Hahnemuhle Sketchbook and Daler Rowney Quater Pan Watercolor SetHahnemuhle Sketchbook compared to pocket Moleskine
I managed to escape from France without buying any other notebooks except this one, a lovely Oxford softcover with smooth squared pages. It reminds me of some of Clairefontaine’s notebooks, and though I’ve only tested a couple of pens so far, it seems very fountain pen friendly. I have a hardcover Oxford notebook very similar to this one– I wrote about it briefly in a recap of notebooks I bought in Portugal, but I don’t seem to have ever done a full review. This red notebook was €3.99 at a FNAC store in central Paris.
My next stop was Bruges. It was my first time in Belgium and I was excited to see if I could add any unusual home-grown brands to my collection, particularly from Aurora, a Belgian brand I’d heard about back in 2010 from a reader. I only spent one day in Bruges, and visited several bookstores and stationery stores. I did see some Aurora notebooks but they were not the linen-covered type I was most interested in. I didn’t end up buying anything in Bruges except a set of journals from Dille & Kamille (such a cute store!) that were a gift for someone at home.
Journal sets at Dille & Kamille, Bruges
Notebooks from Amsterdam
Then I moved on to Amsterdam. I had made a list of office supply stores and some high-end stationery stores, and found some interesting things at each. On the basic office supply end, Gebroeders Winter seems to be a wide-spread chain, where I fell in love with this little booklet meant for tracking expenses.
Expense tracking notebookCash log pages
I also saw a lot of diaries from the Ryam brand. This format really caught my eye as something quite unusual, but practical. It lies flat and could be placed next to a keyboard for easy desktop reference. The €3.70 price seemed very reasonable.
Ryam horizontal diaryRyam Diary week view
At another basic stationery and office supply shop (Brugman), I found this notebook by Bekking & Blitz and felt like it was a perfect Amsterdam souvenir with its pattern of canal houses on the cover. The design continues on the endpapers. Unfortunately it has lined paper, which is not my favorite, but on the plus side, it was only €5.99.
Moving on to stylish lifestyle stationery shops, I visited Like Stationery. It’s beautifully merchandized, with a colorful selection of brands from Japan and Europe, mostly things I’ve seen at places like Goods for the Study in NYC. I only wanted to buy things I knew I couldn’t get at home, so I pounced on this Astier de Villatte journal, something I’d previously only seen online. It has an elegant patterned cover, gilded edges and creamy smooth paper inside. €24.50 was a ridiculous price to pay for this notebook and I almost didn’t buy it, but my traveling companion is the bad pixie who always says “just do it. You know you want it.” Don’t travel with an enabler, people.
Astier de Villatte notebookAstier de Villatte notebook gilded edges
I also purchased this interesting stitched journal made by Shapes and Papers. I’ve never seen anything like this– a lot of the page is taken up by the colored designs (two designs which repeat throughout). The colors are printed in a way that almost seems hypnotic, so perhaps you’re meant to meditate on them and then write whatever comes to mind. The company’s website (shapesandpapers.com) is not functioning as of this writing, so I can’t tell you if that’s what they intended. At €11, this was also overpriced, but I just thought it was cool.
Shapes and Papers notebookShapes and Papers notebook interior design 1Shapes and Papers interior design 2
My final stop was Misc Store, another shop with high-end, mostly Japanese stationery and lifestyle products. At this point I was feeling like my credit card was about to spontaneously combust, but I wanted to buy a little something because the selection and merchandizing were so nice and the shopkeeper was so friendly. This tiny little Penco notebook from Japan was €2, so that fit the bill.
Penco notebookPenco notebook interior
But then on the way to the register I also saw this lovely set of plaid cahiers from Le Typographe. The paper inside was unlined– yay. The set cost €15. Too much, really, but they’re lovely and definitely not something you see just anywhere. Sold.
Le Typographe notebooksLe Typographe notebooks
Most of my trip was spent seeing amazing sights and enjoying the cultural and historical vibes, not shopping for stationery. But it was a pretty fruitful trip for notebook collecting!
One thing I have been bad about on this site is following up on my notebook reviews to see how notebooks perform and hold up after being used daily til they are complete. My “everyday carry” notebook habits are pretty consistent and skew heavily towards the older Moleskines I’ve stockpiled over the years, but I have used some other brands. All of these Moleskine alternatives are more or less the same format as a pocket Moleskine: 3.5 x 5.5″, hardcover, most with a ribbon marker and elastic closure and back pocket. Some are thinner paper appropriate for just writing, and some have heavier sketchbook paper. Some were used almost entirely for writing, some have a mix of writing and doodles and sketches, and some were sketchbooks dedicated solely to drawing and watercolors.
Daily Journals
Bindewerk
I really loved the Bindewerk Linen notebook when I first bought it, and didn’t love it any less when I turned the final page. This is an exception in that it has no ribbon marker or elastic or back pocket. It also has a wider cover overhang than I like, but I was able to live with it. I love the cloth cover, and the high quality dot grid paper inside allowed me to use my various fountain pens with no issues. It came with me on a cross-country driving trip, during which it was stamped at quite a few national parks. Total usage period was a little over 3 months. It held up very well other than a little wear at the corners and top and bottom of the spine. I have a bunch more of these that will be used from time to time. Some have plain pages, so I’ll try using them more for drawing. I’ve been seeing the Bindewerk Linen notebook in some stationery shops and bookstores here and there, but they are at the high end of the price range for what most notebook buyers are willing to bear– about $20 usually.
Bindewerk Linen Cover Travel Journal
Piccadilly
I was really excited about Piccadilly notebooks for a while– so Moleskine-like, so inexpensive! Borders bookstores (RIP) used to carry them at bargain prices, I think $3.99 or $4.99 for a pocket size notebook . The first couple I bought were pretty good quality, even though after use the spine corners started to break. Cover overhang was not consistent. I still have a few more spares but I ended up disenchanted, thinking they felt a little cheap. Nowadays the prices are higher, at least on Amazon, so I wonder if the quality is any different. This particular Piccadilly notebook was used for about 3 months. It accompanied me to a ranch in Arizona, where I made a note that someone named Jared had told me “you should be plumb tickled” about something. Perhaps that I had succeeded in not falling off a horse.
Piccadilly Notebook
Pen & Ink
Though this notebook is technically a sketchbook, I used it mainly as a journal. The Pen & Ink sketchbook from Art Alternatives is a great alternative to the Moleskine Sketchbook if you like smooth, creamy heavyweight paper. (I also have some Pen & Ink notebooks with regular weight plain and squared paper.) It has a slightly more round spine, and there was no tearing whatsoever at the corners. Overhang was minimal and the paper was good for at least the two fountain pens I tested in it. I tried to buy more just in the last couple of years, but they’ve changed the design so the elastic closure wraps around the corner, which I really don’t care for. (On Amazon and elsewhere, you still see photos of the old version, but in my experience, what arrives is the new version, so beware.) I didn’t travel anywhere with this notebook, and it covers a 3-month period when I was stressed out at work and hearing a lot about a friend’s painful divorce, so it was a bit of a downer to flip through it, except for a few pages where I did doodle with watercolor, which still looks nice and vibrant.
Art Alternatives Pen & Ink Heavyweight Sketchbook
Daily Sketchbooks
HandBook Artist Journal
I’ve used several HandBook journals from Global Art Materials, and they are great little sketchbooks. The cloth covers come in nice colors and give them a nice retro feel, other than the not-at-all-retro elastic closure. The paper holds up fairly well to watercolors and markers. The ones I bought several years ago are notable for the complete lack of cover overhang– I really love notebooks where the pages and cover edges are aligned. Unfortunately, more recent examples from this brand that I’ve seen in stores seem to have more cover overhang. And they don’t seem as well-priced as they used to be (at least on Amazon). I bought some of mine for as low as $8 or 9 at the much-mourned A.I. Friedman store in Manhattan, which closed a couple of years ago. I also got some at Blick, where this model is currently $10.59. This HandBook is full of animal sketches done during a two-week safari in Botswana– it held up beautifully despite rather dusty and dirty conditions, without even getting the slight fraying of the corners seen on the Bindewerk notebook.
HandBook Artist Journal
Hahnemuhle
Another favorite Moleskine alternative: the Hahnemuhle Travel Journal. No cover overhang plus a thicker than usual shape made me fall in love with it at first sight. The traditional black cover is almost indistinguishable from a Moleskine, though if you look closely the texture is a little different. The paper inside is similar to the HandBook Journal, but I thought watercolors seemed a little less vibrant. This was another travel sketchbook, taken on a trip to the Galapagos and not much worse for wear even after some sketching in rainy and humid conditions. The Hahnemuhle journal wasn’t widely available in the US at the time– I ordered this first one from the UK. Later, I did manage to buy a couple more from Amazon (they do still seem to carry them, as do a few other places) but the new ones had more cover overhang– seems to be an epidemic these days!
Hahnemuhle Travel Journal Sketchbook
Leda Art Supply
Another great sketchbook– smooth paper, a bit less creamy-colored than Moleskine. The Leda works really well with pretty much anything– great for fountain pens. They are inexpensive and easy to buy via Amazon. The exterior isn’t as pretty as some other brands, but it’s flexible and durable. This sketchbook went to France for a couple of weeks, even though I only used two pages of it while I was there! But for part of the sketchbook’s 6-month active life, I was doing a drawing in it every day. I can’t help wanting to buy another one, even though I’m trying to stop hoarding so many notebooks! If I could get Leda paper inside a cover more like some of the other brands I’ve mentioned here, I wouldn’t hesitate to stock up.
Leda Art Supply Sketchbook
Is there a “Best Moleskine Alternative?”
Such a tough question. I haven’t really done any “top 5” or “best 10” type posts on this site, because when you love notebooks so much, it’s hard to pick favorites! And of course, different notebooks have different attributes that appeal to different people. But among these, the Bindewerk is probably the one I am craziest about. But I also really love the Hahnemuhle. And the HandBook feels so classic. And every time I take out a Pen & Ink, I feel like I’ve always under-appreciated them and wish I could buy more. And the paper in the Leda is so all-around good… see, I told you this was hard…
I’ve used some other brands over the last few years, but they were all for specific purposes: small stapled or stitched notebooks of the Field Notes/ Moleskine Cahier type, or sketchbooks with watercolor paper, or larger format notebooks for work. For a true comparison, I’ve limited this post to just the “Moleskine clones” that have actually been carried around in my bag all the time. I have several more notebooks in my stash that I do intend to try using as daily notebooks–TWSBI, Zequenz, Front, PaperBlanks, Black n’ Red, Pentalic, and others. I’ll report back in a few years and let you know how it goes!
Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…
