I few days ago received an unexpected delivery: the Cloud Book by brandbook. It’s an unusual notebook that brandbook sent to several bloggers to promote it [1]You can also read about the Cloud Book at re:duziert..
The company behind it
Brandbook‘s main business is manufacturing custom-made and designed notebooks. Their notebooks are mainly for business customers, but last year they launched their notebook line nuuna, aimed at consumers. The Cloud Book is one of nuuna’s products, not intended to be used as an ‘orderly notebook’, but as a notebook that is supposed to help your creativity. To support this task the pages sport different cloud photos.
The notebook
The notebook itself is sky blue with a bright orange elastic band. I was told that the cover is made from Cutoron and that the paper used is Tauro paper [2]I found some further information about these materials on the web, but wasn’t sure how much of that information is manufacturer dependent and whether the descriptions I found apply to this … Continue reading. The first thing to notice when using the Cloud Book is that erasing graphite from the pages will also remove some of the colour used for printing the background picture. Some erasers are better than others. The dust-free erasers I used were particularly good at keeping the background photo ‘undamaged’. Another thing, the Tauro paper isn’t exactly what I would call ink loving: it absorbs ink more easily than many other types of paper. This means that wet fountain pens will cause some bleed-through, but the dry fountain pens I tried were safe [3]To my surprise De Atramentis’ document ink, which tends to feather on some papers, behaved rather well on this paper.. The paper feels a bit rough, but graphite and ink are easily visible on the paper. I mention this because some papers with a similar feel need fairly soft pencils to produce a dark line, but this paper will also be satisfied with harder pencils.
Conclusion
I really like the idea behind the Cloud Book, but at work or at home I’d usually only write something in a notebook if I want to keep the information I write down – so the concept of using a notebook as a tool for creativity or to satisfy your play instinct is slightly alien to me – I’d usually use the reverse of an old calendar sheet or of an old sheet of paper if I want to scribble around… but now that I have the Cloud Book I’ll try to use it as intended.
The Cloud Book‘s RRP is €17.90 (~$23.30; £15.50) and it’s made in Germany, like all brandbook notebooks.
Price and exchange rates: March 2013.
I’d like to thank Carlos Monteiro Lanca from brandbook who sent me the Cloud Book free of charge.
The rare-ish GW nib of the Pelikan fountain pen used for the second picture has the honour of being shown on Werner Rüttinger’s Pelikan page.
The bought both, the Faber-Castell Guilloche fountain pen and the De Atramentis document ink, for an amazing price. The fountain pen was only a bit more than €20 at Amazon, but after I ordered it the price nearly doubled. The De Atramentis document ink was very cheap at Pure Pens, much cheaper than what you pay at the manufacturer – probably a combination of it being the old price before the price increase and a good exchange rate when they imported the ink.
One last thing: users of the Cloud Book can send a photo or scan of their favourite scribbles to brandbook / nuuna for a chance to win a a selection of notebooks from nuuna.
References
| ↑1 | You can also read about the Cloud Book at re:duziert. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | I found some further information about these materials on the web, but wasn’t sure how much of that information is manufacturer dependent and whether the descriptions I found apply to this notebook. |
| ↑3 | To my surprise De Atramentis’ document ink, which tends to feather on some papers, behaved rather well on this paper. |
Thank you for showing it – it looks really nice. However, since I have tried to contact brandbook twice to inquire for an order of custom notebooks but haven’t received a reply I am somewhat reserved towards their products.
It’s a shame that they didn’t reply – and it’s even surprising when thinking about the fact that their business is based on custom notebooks. Even if the numbers you had in mind didn’t add up for production (i.e. not enough notebooks) they should have replied.
Unfortunately ignoring customer emails is a trend I’ve seen too often. In my case with Lamy, Online Pen and others. I guess you might get an answer if you’re lucky and get an employee who’ll follow it up. According to my experience once an employees forwards information to other employees and more than one person is involved no one takes responsibility and it doesn’t get dealt with…
I’m not sure the move to social media is too useful either. I think you are more likely to get an answer there, but it will be an acknowledgement of your interaction more than dealing with your question or statement. If I think about the posts I see from some companies (not stationery companies, luckily) they definitely give the impression of not thinking too highly of their customers and the same theme is repeating again and again: trying to force customer interaction by asking simple questions without then actually reacting properly to the replies.
Of course there is always the possibility that my emails haven’t reached them (e.g. because they were deleted by a spam filter). – I have the impression that getting a reply nowadays is more the exception than the rule. It is also possible that the one in charge for these inquiries can’t cope with the number of emails or is annoyed by the tone of some of them. Anyway, it is disappointing for the customer. And there is a saying that the customer who is turning away from a comany takes seven others with him …
I think you are right about social media. To me, interaction (and for companies advertising) is at its core, not a two-sided communication about facts. Well, at least at its best – most of the time the whole caboodle is nothing more than a silly circus to me.
The resellers are doing so much better than most big companies, but there is some randomness to it as you had some good experience with companies I had bad experience with and the other way round.
About the Cloud Book: I just noticed that Stone Marketing is selling the Cloud Book in the UK for £15.
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