Moleskine notebooks
I have preferred notebooks with squared paper, ever since I first encountered Clairefontaine notebooks in Brussels in 1990. I found that the paper was good for using a fountain pen and the squares made sketching designs easier. On my return to Australia, however, I found that I could no longer buy these handy notebooks – in fact it seemed an almost impossible quest to locate a pocket-sized notebook with squared paper! Rare visits in intervening years to London and Paris renewed my supply of these notebooks, but they were soon to run out.
Enter the Moleskine! After stumbling into a specialist paper store in Canberra I found the perfect notebook – it even had a handy elastic to keep it closed, and a stitched-in bookmark. Above all, it had squared paper 🙂 It has become my favourite hard-copy medium. It fits in a shirt pocket, takes fountain pen ink well (being left-handed, I find a fountain pen glides over the page, rather than digging in as ballpoints tend to) and has a sufficiently sturdy cover to allow writing while standing, and it opens flat – unlike most bound notebooks.
I carry my trusty moleskine now wherever I go to jot down ideas, thoughts, sketch designs to remind me of interesting ways of constructing things (like joints on a bench) or ideas on using mouldings for bookcases (see below). For me, it is the perfect format! – even though the small format notebook is not cheap at around AUS$25.00 each – they are well made and last for ages as the paper is really fine – so you get more pages for less bulk.
It seems that others are equally taken with these notebooks – such as the delightful Moleskinerie – a blog devoted to tales of this notebook 🙂 It is great to see good design recognised!
Here is an entry from before the Great Fire of Canberra in which I began designing the built-in book cases for what was to become our new home.
Cheers
Jerry
