The Virtuo Journal is something I bought on eBay as part of a lot with other notebooks I actually wanted. I was curious about it anyway, because it was a brand I’d never seen before. Evidently Virtuo is a proprietary brand sold at OfficeMax… or I guess I should say “was,” as I can’t find any Virtuo products currently listed on their website. So let’s review this notebook that you won’t be able to buy unless another one shows up on eBay!

The Virtuo Journal reminds me a little bit of the C.R. Gibson Markings notebook, in that it’s a kind of crappy fake leather notebook with stitching around the edges. But I don’t think the Markings cover got all flaky and cracked like the Virtuo has.

The outside is pretty standard other than the stitching– black cover, totally plain. There isn’t even any logo stamped on the back. It measures about 9×14 cm or 3.5 x 5.5″. There’s no elastic closure but there’s a ribbon marker and a pocket in the back. A removable paper band has all the brand info. Photos below show it next to a squared Moleskine pocket size notebook for comparison.

Inside the front cover is where it gets a little different. The pinstripe design that’s on the paper band is also featured on the endpapers. I guess someone thought this should look “business-y” so they decided to use a pattern that would recall a grey flannel suit. They liked this motif so much, they even carried it onto the pages, running it up the outer edge of every single page. Odd. Other than that, the pages are lined in a pretty common way, with the lines not going all the way across.

The paper performed better than I expected given the low-quality feel of the cover. Fountain pens worked pretty well, without too much bleedthrough, at least with fine points.

But otherwise, there’s not that much else to say about the Virtuo Journal. I guess there’s a reason this brand has gone bye-bye! I’ll file this one in the part of my collection I think of as the graveyard of notebook mediocrity.