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:
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:
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 notebook co-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:
We notebook-lovers and bullet-journalers are still a small group of holdouts vs. digital domination!
For me, the nicest thing about both the Moleskine craze years ago and the bullet journaling trend now is that they encourage better selections of good notebooks and other supplies, especially in brick-and-mortar stores that might not have carried them otherwise.
I feel like Moleskine indirectly brought us more, better-quality notebooks and introduced design features that have since become pretty common (pockets, elastic bands, etc.), and now bullet journaling seems to have driven more open-stock pens and supplies to the big craft and office stores. (It’s nice sometimes not to have to order everything online.) Plus it seems like I’m hearing about new dot grid notebook brands all the time lately, and some of them offer blank or ruled options too.
Yes! I totally agree, there are definitely more non-lined notebooks available now!