Some of the notebooks I’ve spotted on recent shopping trips, first these “Carnets de Poche” at a gift shop in Bethesda, MD. They’re a bit large to really fit in your poche, perhaps, but rather cute nonetheless, with a nice mix of papers inside:
I was quite intrigued by these Mead planners I saw at Staples. They have an attractive Moleskine-ish look to them on the outside, but with a bit more design and branding to it. Inside, the pages offer a couple different planner layouts, either a notebook with some monthly calendar pages, or a 2 day per page planner. I love that they’ve used the Moleskine format and styling, though I find the inner pages to be a bit much with all that orange and grey. And I think these pocket-size planners were $15.95 each, which seemed a bit pricy, though not any worse than Moleskine. (The price is lower on their website, so perhaps what I saw was a mistake. $12.99-13.99 seems more in line.) These “At a Glance” planners have been around forever, or at least it seems that way, but they always used to look kind of cheesy and downmarket, so I guess someone at Mead decided to redesign them in line with current notebook trends. (The old-style flimsy-covered ones with a wire-o binding are still around too. Perhaps someone will re-introduce them as a retro-hip notebook style one of these days!)
At Lee’s Art Supply in Manhattan, I spotted these nice cahier-style Fabriano EcoQua notebooks, in a colorful 4-pack:
Lee’s also had a range of notebooks made with translucent vellum paper, including this pocket sized one:
How about you? Have you spotted any new, unique or unusual notebooks lately?
Those At-a-Glance notebooks are definitely an upgrade. I might have to give those a spin. Do you recall the name of the Bethesda gift shop? Those carnets have a cool Victorian look. I’m in DC, so Bethesda’s in the neighborhood for me.
I think the store was called LouLou. It is on a pedestrian street of shops in downtown Bethesda.
I have one of the Mead page a day planners that I use as a journal. The three lines at the bottom are once as a specific place for recording the same info every day.
I recently wrote a review of the larger-sized Carnet des Poche. The papers are fun but the kraft was really only useful for collage and art supplies. It was too dark for almost every pen I own. Fun design though and would make a great travel journal!