Weirdest notebook story of the week: With Japan’s birth rate stuck in low gear, the Abe administration has come up with a new idea to make babies: convince the women to have a child earlier rather than later. It plans to give out notebooks to all young women – and perhaps also to young men … Continue reading Can Notebooks Help the Japanese Have More Babies?
I am sorry to say that I seem to have misplaced the name of the reader who tipped me off to this intriguing image, from an exhibition called “Souzou,” featuring the work of 46 self-taught artists living and working within social welfare facilities across Japan: Untitled by Shingo Ikeda Undated, artist’s notebook, collection of the … Continue reading Notebook Page by Shingo Ikeda
I love this idea– writing and drawing a blog in a notebook and then scanning the pages into an online blog. I’ll have to try it sometime! Takashi Betsui’s day job at an ad agency in Tokyo is decidedly digital, but his blogging life is much more analog than you’d expect. In fact, … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: Blogging on Paper
Grab a tissue before you click through to this link, because you’re going to drool: Design.Y, Handmade Leather-bound Notebook. I just found Design.Y via the Pencil Talk blog, and I had to sit on my hands to keep myself from immediately clicking the buy button for a few of these VERY expensive notebooks. At a … Continue reading Design.Y Handmade Leather-bound Notebook from Japan
The PH notebook came to me from the folks at Yaginoyama, a very cool online store that sells a variety of Japanese goods. This notebook is another example of the precision, minimalism and attention to design that’s evident in many Japanese notebooks. It’s totally plain, with the PH logo and a code number stamped in … Continue reading Review: PH Notebook
Gabriel Campanario is the Seattle Sketcher I featured a few weeks ago in this post. He’s also the founder of Urban Sketchers, and was interviewed for a Japanese book called 61 Ways to Put Your Life into a Moleskine: Yoko Nakamuta, who knows how much some urban sketchers love their Moleskines, invited me to write … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: 61 Ways
The About:Blank notebook is an interesting and pleasingly minimal notebook. From their website: “About:Blank is the pursuit of emptiness that is full of possibility,” which is a great way to describe notebooks in general. Let’s take a closer look at the sample the company sent me. The sample I received came nicely wrapped in tissue … Continue reading Review: About:Blank Notebook
One of these days I’m going to buy one of the Midori Traveler’s Notebooks. I personally prefer the size of the smaller “Passport” version– and I don’t keep my passport in any sort of case, so there’s a good excuse! But meanwhile, this still had me salivating a bit: The Journal Shop is featuring a … Continue reading Midori Travelers Notebook 5th Anniversary Limited Edition
Imagine buying 100 at a time! From a Flickr user: One Hundred (and three) Moleskine Notebooks I have just finished writing my book on Moleskine notebooks titled “Moleskine: How to make use of the “legendary” notebook”. I wanted to send a Moleskine notebook to each and every book reviewer and prominent reader of the book, … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: One Hundred (and three) Notebooks
Here’s a new brand of notebooks from Japan that I hadn’t heard of before, available at Need Supply Co. I like the stripped-down, utilitarian look. Found via StreetLevel.com. (Also spotted at Uncrate.com, via The Pen Addict)