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 .

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.