I was quite excited when the maker of these new notebooks contacted me and offered a sample. They take the common format of a 3-pack of staple-bound pocket notebooks and add a flash of color and a touch of travelogue.

Zettel Notebooks are made in Berlin, and each cover is a tribute to a part of the city. Artist and designer Martin Dixon created the cover art on his iPhone using the Brushes paining app. (He should really do tutorials on how to make the most of that app– I’ve tried using it on my iPhone and can’t begin to imagine how he achieved the beautiful effects in these images!) The notebooks I received are the launch edition of a planned series of sets, each featuring different covers.

In many respects, these are just like Field Notes– 3.5 x 5.5″ format, stapled spine. The pack comes shrink-wrapped, with a card with some brand info as well as a bonus postcard included. Each set has one notebook with grid pages, one lined, and one blank. The Zettel covers are all smooth heavy paper, with full color printing on both sides.

The inside front cover gives a little background on the cover image, and pinpoints the location on a map. The inside back cover has a space to put your contact details, and a handy metric ruler on the edge. They are made entirely from FSC-approved 100% recycled paper.

The paper inside is a cool white, with grey lines or grid. The grid is noticeably smaller and darker than the Moleskine paper shown for comparison, but not so much so that it’s distracting. It has a soft, pleasant feel, not quite as smooth as Moleskine or Clairefontaine paper.

All my usual pens worked quite well and there was no feathering with fountain pens. Show-through was somewhat better than average, but unfortunately several pens had slight bleed-through in spots. But if you’re using it with fine gel ink pens, you’d probably be quite satisfied.

At this point, it looks like the Zettel website is the only source to buy these– they are €9.95 but that includes VAT, I think, so as a US customer it showed me a lower price of €8.36, with shipping of €5.60, which starts to make them a bit pricy, unfortunately.

I will be keeping the graph paper notebook I tested, but will give the other two away to one lucky winner, chosen randomly from entries received in these ways:

On Twitter, tweet something containing “Zettel Notebooks @zettelberlin @NotebookStories”, and follow @NotebookStories and @zettelberlin

On Facebook, “like” the Notebook Stories page and post something containing the words “Zettel Notebooks” on the Notebook Stories page.

On your blog, post something containing the words “Zettel Notebooks” and “Notebook Stories” and link back to this post.

The deadline for entry is Friday August 7, 2015 at 11:59PM, EST. Good luck everyone!
And please remember to check my posts on Facebook and Twitter for an announcement of the winner. Please allow a couple of weeks for me to check all the entries and determine the winners.