The good folk from Goodone have contacted me to tell me about their product on Kickstarter: belted notebooks. What I read did sound quite interesting so I thought I mention it in a blog post.
It’s basically a leather notebook that comes with a strap so that you can wear it like a bag. Two of the points I liked most: The leather used is from upholstery left overs and the strap you use to hang it over your shoulders comes with a pen loop.
I was told that any loose sheets of papers you might insert into the belted notebook, called YOU, will be held firmly in place thanks to the notebook’s elastic band.
Arnie, the guy behind Banditapple, just sent me a message telling me that he wants more people around the world to write at least once on his Banditapple Carnets – so he is currently giving away free samples worldwide to anyone who requests them – for a $3 postage contribution.
If you want to request a sample (limited time only) please fill in this request form.
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.
How many shibbloths can you find when you enlarge the picture. I think there are at least three obvious ones.
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.
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.
I tried to get hold of an Atoma notebook for a while now. Atoma notebooks are quite common in Belgium where they were first produced in 1948. Despite their popularity in their home country they are not very well known outside Belgium, not even in the neighbouring countries. I haven’t seen them in shops in the UK or Germany and some Dutch friends I asked haven’t seen them in the Netherlands either. No wonder: 80% of more than a million notebooks produced every year stay in Belgium. The company behind Atoma did not extend their patent when it expired in the Nineties, so copies are now available from many companies: There’s Levenger’s Circa, Aurora’s Adoc, Clairefontaine’s Clairing, Elba’s Vario-Zipp, Staples’ Arc and there’s Rollabind.
Atoma
Arc
How do they work
The pages of the Atoma notebooks are being held together by plastic discs. The discs are holding the sheets of paper through special Atoma shaped ‘holes’ [1]They aren’t really holes, but I’m not sure what to call them so that it’s obvious what they are.. You can remove sheets from the notebooks or swap the sheets around, just like you can in a ring binder. One advantage of this system over a ring binder is that the notebook can be folded over. Another advantage is that an Atoma notebook, compared to a ring binder, is using less space because you don’t need the surrounding folder. The ring binder will also take away space even if empty [2]By the way, the ring binder and the hole puncher were invented in 1886 by Soennecken, a company previously mentioned in this blog.. One disadvantage of the Atoma system is that you cannot label the spine of a notebook.
Atoma and Arc paper
Where to get them from
There are two shops in the UK selling Atoma notebooks: Craft & Party Direct and Manufactum, but I didn’t order my Atoma notebook from either of them. Craft & Party Direct charge a lot for shipping and Koralatov and Iain pointed out that they had bad experiences when ordering from this company in the past. Manufactum charge too much for shipping, too, and they have a ridiculous conversion rate for their UK prices, charging UK customers 35% more than for exactly the same product from their other online shops – that is on top of their expensive prices in the first place. Manufactum’s other online shops in Europe are set up in such a way that UK customers cannot order from them – very annoying. This plus other bad experiences [3]Delivered item not as described, security issues with their web site, … with them made me avoid Manufactum in this case. In the end I ordered my Atoma notebooks from the International School of Brussels (Link updated). The notebooks were only €2.50 (~ $3.07; £1.96) each and shipping to the UK was free, so I only paid €5 for the two notebooks I ordered. The same order with Craft & Party Direct would have cost me £10.45 (~ $16.40; €13.35), five times as much. Manufactum’s Atoma notebooks are made of more expensive materials, so a direct price comparison wouldn’t make sense. I also bought one of M by Staples’ Arc notebooks in my local Staples [4]I’ll refer to it as ‘Staples’ from now on, not as ‘M by Staples’. With a price tag of £5 (~ $7.85; €6.39) it was more than twice as expensive as an Atoma notebook.
The discs: Atoma in blue, Arc in black
Atoma versus Arc
The Atoma A5 notebook is made in Belgium and came with 72 sheets (144 pages) of “ink-loving 90g/m2 ledger paper”.
The A5 Arc notepad is made in China and came with 60 ruled sheets of 100g/m2 paper. I like the fact that it came with a name/index sheet, but I am not keen on the white border on each page.
There is a lot of choice when it comes to covers and cover material, for both, Atoma and Arc. The cover of the Atoma notebook I bought is made of cardboard, while the Arc cover is made of polypropylene.
The paper of the Atoma notebook is rougher. Writing on it is nice and the paper absorbs the ink quickly. The surface of the Arc paper is smoother, but ink takes longer to dry than on the Atoma paper. The ink doesn’t show through the reverse of the Arc pages as much as it does on the Atoma paper, but both papers are suitable for ink.
The rings of the Arc notebook are bigger, which means they will probably be able to hold more sheets of paper, but that also makes the notebook bigger, even if you don’t use too many sheets of paper. Aesthetically I find the Atoma ring size nicer and more suitable for the number of sheets of paper these notebooks come with.
Atoma (left) and Arc (right) paper
Conclusion
Both notepad are nice. I like the disc binding mechanism as it has several advantages over ring binders. If I had to choose between the Atoma and the Arc I’d go for the Atoma notebook. Not because it’s cheaper, but partly because I am not a big fan of polypropylene covers and prefer the Atoma’s cardboard cover. I also prefer the size and therefore look of the Atoma’s discs. Paper-wise the Arc’s paper seems to be better quality than the Atoma’s paper, but I haven’t used it long enough to be sure. My last reason for preferring the Atoma is that I prefer sheets without such a big white border.
