Do you think you can out-geek me? Ha! This post will be a shot across the bow…
I have a large stash of Moleskine pocket sketchbooks and squared notebooks, as well as a various other formats. In a post from several years ago, I used some of them to trace the evolution of Moleskine’s packaging design .
Moleskine notebooks front
But now I’ve gone further. I took out every single pocket Moleskine sketchbook I own, and sorted them by the design on the front of the paper wrapper. And then I subdivided them even further by the details on the back of the paper wrapper. I found 16 different variations:
These are organized in what I think would be chronological order, starting at top left and ending at bottom right. In some cases the variation may not be chronological but driven by labeling requirements for certain countries. You can see that they used different ISBNs, slogans, bar codes, etc. in addition to the major design changes. A couple of these are distinguished by an additional card within the shrinkwrap, as seen in the 2001 sketchbook second from top left, and the “Writing” promotion sketchbook with the stickers. The “Writing” promotion actually featured a few different extras, so let’s take this another step that adds 3 additional variations:
And there you have it. Have I made the world a better place today? No. But I’ve satisfied some deeply nerdy desire to analyze and taxonomize part of my notebook collection.
I was reminded of this phrase by a marketing email from Plotter, linking to this post. Techo Kaigi means “notebook meeting,” and the idea is that you should have a meeting with yourself to contemplate your notebooking methods and make sure they are right for you. This is generally done in the fall, when planners for the coming year become available and you can decide whether to change what kind of diary or planner you will buy.
This will be a unique process for each person. For some, it may be a question of finding the one formatted diary or planner that meets their needs, while for others, it may involve reckoning with how you’ll use several different notebooks each for their own purpose. Here are a few examples:
For me, techo kaigi is pretty much a year-round activity! I’m always thinking about all the various notebooks and planners that are out there and how best to use them. But it does come to a head each fall when I’m ready to buy next year’s diary. For several years now, I’ve been very loyal and consistent in using a Nolty diary as my dated planner/logbook for the year. I also keep a pocket Moleskine sketchbook for drawings, and I keep a journal in (usually) a pocket squared Moleskine or a Bindewerk journal.
In the last year or so I have also added a pocket Filofax to my arsenal as a keeper of long term lists, but I’m not entirely sure this is really working for me. I’ve contemplated using it as a planner too, but I can’t give up the Nolty. I have various Filofax organizers and similar looseleaf notebooks that I really like, and I used to use them daily, but for the past 20+ years, I haven’t been able to find a solid place for them in my various routines.
But last year, I made one major change to my notebooking habits, and it’s going to evolve even further this coming year. This involves the notebook I keep for my job, which for decades has been totally separate from my personal notebooks.
When I placed my annual Nolty order for 2024, I threw in a dated Pagem diary. I kind of just wanted to check it out and review it for this site, but then I ended up liking it so much, I decided to start using it for my job. For years, I’d always used a larger notebook for work, just filling it with notes and to-do lists and moving to a new page when the old one was full. I always thought a pocket sized notebook would be too small for work notes, but my experiment with the Pagem diary this year proved that a small dated planner could work for me. But in other ways, I found the Pagem format constraining, and not adaptable enough to my odd schedule. The light bulb went off: my work notes could be the perfect opportunity to make use of a refillable looseleaf binder. So this time, when I placed my Nolty order, I added some items from their Petit Pagem and Bindex brands of “mini 6” inserts, which will be compatible with my pocket size Filofaxes and other binders. I also have various inserts from Filofax and Plotter that I can use.
So while my personal techo kaigi took me about 5 seconds to say, yep, I’ll do that again, I’m now looking forward to even more strategizing and testing on how I’ll set up a pocket sized looseleaf work planner. I have a couple of calendar formats to experiment with, various options for notes pages, and several appealing options for the binder itself. And what’s wonderful is that I can keep tinkering with it as I go along! Unlike with a bound notebook or planner, I won’t feel like I have to stick with it all year until it’s used up– I can adjust as I go along, and even if I find an insert system that works perfectly, I can change my mind about the exterior cover and move all the inserts into a different binder if I feel like it. This should be fun! Techo kaigi will continue, and I’ll keep you posted!
My recent post about the damage to my Miquelrius “Boarding” notebook reminded me that I had another Miquelrius notebook in my review queue: the Miquelrius Logbook.
The Logbook is about the closest Miquelrius comes to a Moleskine clone: it’s a pocket sized 9x14cm hardcover notebook with an elastic closure, a ribbon marker and a back pocket. Various designs have been available in the past couple of years (including a linen-covered version and this version with a cool marbled cover ), though it looks like the most recent catalog on their website just has them in pretty basic plain pastels.
But I was fortunate enough to come across this very cool design, which looks like a vintage composition book. Having a composition book in my favorite size has always been a fantasy of mine, so this was quite exciting! Miquelrius still offers a line called “Vintage Notebooks” that have this kind of cover design, but in larger sizes. The ornate label on the front cover makes it look less like an American-style composition book and more like a traditional European notebook, such as Emilio Braga‘s notebooks, or these Italian notebooks.
The Miquelrius Logbook is a bit thicker than a Moleskine, giving it a pleasantly chunky feel. The outside is a smooth paper surface– the black spine is just printed on, but the red and white label is an actual pasted-on label. I haven’t tried to remove it, but from tentatively picking at one corner, I don’t think it’s mean to be removable.
The cover overhang is bigger than I’d like, but not totally out of proportion with the notebook’s dimensions. The spine is quite squared off, so the notebook doesn’t open quite as flat as I’d like. It will get pretty far open, but over time I could see that the corners of the spine might get stressed by this and start to tear.
Inside, there are plain black endpapers. The first page has a little blurb about the company’s history, which I didn’t realize went back 150 years.
Then you get 100 sheets of creamy, unlined 100 gsm paper– at least according to the label. By my count, it’s actually 96 sheets! Or 192 pages if you count both sides– just like a pocket Moleskine. But unlike a pocket Moleskine, the paper is sturdy and fountain pen friendly! There was only a tiny bit of bleed-through when I pressed down quite hard with a flexible nib (and of course with the dreaded Super Sharpie). The paper is smooth but gives a little feedback– it’s a really nice balance.
This charming Miquelrius Logbook is still listed on Amazon but not currently available. Too bad! It may not be perfect in every respect, but the retro exterior and fountain pen friendly paper make it a winner for me!
Head on over to Philofaxy to read my guest post about an oddity from my collection of Filofax inserts: pocket size Lefax cash tracking pages. I was hoping someone from the Philofaxy community would have more information, and sure enough, they did!
Sometime last year, I started seeing a lot of mentions of Walmart’s Pen + Gear notebooks on Instagram. It seemed a little odd to me that people would be getting all excited about a very basic spiral notebook, but supposedly they were fountain pen friendly! So the next time I was at a Walmart, of course I had to buy one. At 97 cents, this 4×6″ spiral memo book was not a big investment!
I haven’t bought a 4×6″ spiral notebook in years. Even when I used lots of spiral notebooks, I preferred 3×5″ ones. (You can see more about my childhood spiral notebook collection here and here.) The Pen + Gear memo book is no different from any other spiral memo book in terms of its appearance: smooth cardboard front cover, brown cardboard back cover, lined paper… it is what it is.
But as for the paper inside being fountain pen friendly… yes, it is! It doesn’t feel thick or heavy, but it somehow manages to withstand bleed-through almost completely, and has better than average show-through. I’m impressed!
I do find it a bit funny to use a notebook like this with fancy fountain pens and inks that cost many multiples of the notebook’s price. Most people who care enough about writing to use a fountain pen probably also care enough about paper products to want something more aesthetically pleasing than a basic spiral notebook. But for those who like to use fountain pens or markers for everyday jottings, the Pen + Gear memo book will be perfect!
If you do want something that feels a little more upscale or sturdy, Pen + Gear also offers bound journals like this one:
It’s a typical pocket size Moleskine clone with a ribbon marker, back pocket and elastic closure. The exterior is a smooth paper wrapped over the hard cover, and the design is quite pretty, with color-coordinated endpapers and elastic. The branding info is on a sticker on the back, which peels off easily with no residue.
The pages are lined, with lines that don’t go to the page edges. Every page is perforated, which is unusual in these kinds of notebooks. The paper seems pretty similar to the spiral memo book, maybe a wee bit thicker. It is pretty fountain pen friendly, but not quite as bleed-proof as the memo book when I pressed down hard with a flexible nib.
The difference in the paper may be due to the journal being made in Vietnam, while the memo book is made in India. But at $2.68, the journal is still a great value! It’s nice to know there are some solid options out there for notebooking on a tight budget.
When you build up a collection of notebooks over the years, it’s important to remember that sometimes the stash may not stay as well-preserved as you’d like if you aren’t using or at least handling them regularly! I was recently going through some of my boxes of notebooks, trying to decide what to use next as a daily journal. As I was fondling all my precious beauties, I felt that two of them were stuck together. When I pulled them out of the box, and then pulled them apart, I realized how bad it was!
The victims were a Miquelrius “Boarding” notebook that I reviewed in 2013 and a TWSBI notebook that I reviewed in 2015. I’m not sure which one is to blame, but I think it may have been the TWSBI that kind of melted or dissolved or something, becoming stuck to the Miquelrius book in the process. Or perhaps the Miquelrius cover broke down and developed a stickiness, and the TWSBI cover wasn’t strong enough to stay intact when I separated them. Either way, parts of the TWSBI cover peeled away and stuck to the back of the Miquelrius notebook.
I was able to scrape most of the gunk off the Miquelrius, and it should still be useable, though it won’t look very pretty on the back. The TWSBI is also usable inside, but the front cover is a wreck. Its elastic is also a bit loose, but from re-reading my own review, that seems to have been an issue from day one. I do have a second TWSBI notebook in my collection (this one has plain paper, and the other one has squared pages), but it doesn’t show any signs of stickiness or deterioration. Either the Miquelrius notebook is to blame, or there was just some bad reaction between these two particular cover materials when they were left touching for a long time.
It’s unfortunate that this happened to notebooks I can’t easily replace… but I have plenty of other notebooks, so I’m not going to stress about it!
I do plan to go through my other boxes and keep an eye out for other sticky situations. Some of these faux leather cover materials don’t last forever– I had an old Dayrunner planner cover that I had to trash a couple of years ago because it had gotten flaky and sticky. I have a looseleaf notebook where the leather cover is stuck to a plastic insert. I have old Filofaxes where the plastic credit card holder inserts have become brittle with age. Basically, if it’s not leather or paper, it’s some sort of plastic or vinyl that can start to break down. I may start wrapping certain notebooks in some sort of paper to preserve them better, as contact between surfaces seems to make the problem worse. But paper itself can age badly if it’s not acid-free. Even leather can dry out or become sticky if it’s not cared for. Nothing lasts forever! But neither will I… I guess it’s just a race to see whether my notebooks outlast me… a few more decades, I hope!
Not exactly recent news, but I came across a 2020 series of articles on a Japanese lifestyle website where various fashion industry professionals talk about their use of paper planners. The auto-translated text wasn’t that exciting, but I always love seeing pictures of other people’s notebooks!
See more at Begin, including part 2 here, part 3 here, and part 4 here.
Trying to stick with the alliterative titles here! As discussed in my recent post Filofax Fever, I do have a soft spot for Filofax organizers, particularly the vintage ones made of nice leather. I’ve used several of them over the years, and have filled them with a wide variety of Filofax inserts– plain, grid, and lined pages, various calendar formats, maps, dividers, plastic pockets, sticky notes, address/telephone formatted sheets, you name it. I still have some blank Filofax inserts, but I’m not sure I’ll be using them. Why? Because the paper quality is not consistently good for fountain pens.
When I was most actively using my Filofaxes, I wasn’t using fountain pens, and I don’t remember ever having any issues with how the papers performed with the roller ball and ballpoint pens I used back then. Or I just wasn’t as conscious of preferring papers that wouldn’t show ink bleeding through. But in recent years, I got curious when I saw people in online forums talking about using fountain pens with Filofax inserts– some people said they were fountain-pen friendly and others said just the opposite. So I decided to do some testing myself. I went through my stash of Filofax papers, and pulled out some blank sheets from various years. I can’t tell exactly when I bought them, but they all have copyright dates on them, which Filofax updates from time to time, so I can at least roughly determine the dates. (I’ve written the copyright dates in pencil on each sheet to save you some squinting.) But they could be a little off– Filofax didn’t start selling 6-ring pocket organizers until 1994, so the sheet dated 1993 below is probably newer. (Never mind whether it seems absurd to have copyright dates on a sheet of plain paper.) My stock dates from 1991 to 2012, so it’s not totally up to date, but it is interesting to see the variations nonetheless.
The 1991 sheet seems to perform best on show-through and bleed-through. But the 2007 and 2012 sheets might be second best, so perhaps there is some hope that they’ve gone back to making them the way they used to?
Given how much I’ve talked about my continued use of Moleskine notebooks, which also aren’t good for fountain pens, you’d think I wouldn’t care about the Filofax paper. But I’ve discovered Plotter’s inserts, which work superbly with fountain pens. Since I’ve been using my Guildford Pocket Extra Slim Filofax as an organizer for certain long-term notes and lists, I filled it with Plotter papers. I always have fountain pens handy when I’m using it, and I like keeping it (almost) fountain-pen only. If I start using another Filofax organizer, I’ll probably try to do the same. I also like the look, feel, and size of the Plotter inserts, which are slightly taller and narrower than Filofax’s. The downside is that they don’t seem to be quite as widely available in the US, though it does seem like more and more online pen and stationery specialists are starting to stock them.
If you have been using fountain pens with more recent Filofax inserts, let us know how it’s going!
Half the fun of traveling (for me, at least) is hunting for unusual local notebook brands. It can also be very disappointing when the hunt turns up nothing but the same-old same-old: global brands like Moleskine and Leuchtturm and Rhodia, which seem to have crowded out smaller regional manufacturers. Fortunately, there are intrepid artisans everywhere, so it’s still possible to get lucky and find a notebook that you could never buy at home. And notebooks make great souvenirs!
When I went to Chile and Argentina several months ago, I knew I wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in the major cities, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up too much about finding notebooks. But I did manage to snag a couple of South American souvenirs nonetheless.
The first notebook I bought was from several days into my trip. I hadn’t seen any stationery stores yet, but when we stopped for lunch midway through a long drive, I noticed that there was a small store that seemed to sell children’s party supplies and school supplies. I went in and poked around, and discovered some basic school notebooks made by Colon. I didn’t see any pocket size notebooks of the type I usually prefer, so I got this one, which measures approximately 7 x 9.5 inches:
It’s staple bound, light weight, with pretty thin paper. I forget how much it cost but I think it was the equivalent of just a dollar or two. A made-in-Chile basic school notebook that local kids can afford. Not all that exciting, but definitely not something I’d be able to get at home!
My other Chilean find was at a craft market at Punta de Lobos, a popular surfing destination. I was so excited to see a table full of colorful handmade journals, where the friendly proprietor was very patient with my fumbling Spanish! The brand is called Confluye, and they had some really nice journals, photo albums, and watercolor sketchbooks.
I bought a nice little two-pack of pocket notebooks. (I don’t remember the cost of these either, but I’m sure they were more expensive than the school notebook.)
The Confluye notebooks have sturdy kraft covers, colorful stitching on the spine, and recycled paper within. The are somewhat similar to Field Notes or Moleskine’s Cahiers, but the covers are heavier, and the corners are angled rather than rounded, which would help them fit in a notebook cover.
The paper inside is an off-white, with little fibers– what I think of as that classic “recycled paper” look. It feels pretty light and I didn’t think it would be anything special so I almost didn’t bother to do pen tests. But I happened to have a couple of my fattest, juiciest fountain pens nearby when I was taking photos, so I thought, what the heck… and wow, what a surprise! The paper feels quite lightweight, but these fountain pens did not bleed through or even show through at all! No feathering either.
The brand name Confluye means “converges” and their slogan on the paper band means “so your ideas will always have a space to begin,” (more or less). I enjoyed that day at Punta de Lobos a lot, and I’m glad I have these nice little Chilean notebooks as a souvenir. You can find Confluye on Instagram: @confluyecrea
My trip eventually took me all the way down to Punta Arenas, where I had some time to wander around. I didn’t find a stationery store, but I did browse in a fascinating vintage shop called Vieja Patagonia. I was really excited when I saw some old pocket sized notebooks on display, but it turned out they were from the owner’s personal collection and not for sale. I guess this little notebook was used for recording grades or other information for a student’s parents.
Before heading home, I spent a day in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was not feeling great (and it turned out I had COVID!) so I didn’t do a lot of exploring, but I did plan a walking route around several stationery stores that I’d found in Google maps. Unfortunately, every single one of them was closed! I guess it was a holiday that day. It was so frustrating, as I spotted a notebook brand I’d never seen displayed in one of the windows. I didn’t take a photo and now I can’t remember what the brand was. (I did review a notebook sample from the Argentinian brand Brügge once, but I don’t think that was what I saw.) I consoled myself by visiting one of the world’s most beautiful bookstores, El Ateneo… and a pharmacy. I never did manage to buy a notebook in Argentina, but I hope to have another chance someday. I would love to go back and see more of Buenos Aires when I’m not sick! And Chile is worth another visit too.
Every once in a while I spot a notebook that I know would be totally wrong for my personal needs and preferences… but I salivate over it anyway. The Japanese Shibori notebooks below are a perfect example! The dyed patterns and colors are absolutely gorgeous. Alas, I know I’d never use a landscape format A6 size notebook with this kind of binding. But maybe you would!
