Posts Tagged ‘journals’

Guest post: Sketchnotes

Posted February 25, 2013 by
in Pens, Paper & People, Planning Tips | 2 comments »

SXSWi 2008 Sketchnotes: First Spread

Today’s guest post by Kate Marshall should appeal to all the art journalers out there… an interesting twist on the idea!

Did I tell you all about the Best Magazine Ever, also known as Strange and Charmed? Well now!

Back in the fall, my friend Alexis came up with the idea for an online magazine for women of the Millenium, who are as comfortable with paper products as they are with electronics, and also enjoy the geeky, the chic, and all things quirky. Recently, Alexis wrote about sketch-note supplies on our companion blog.

I wanted to throw it out there to QV readers: have you tried taking sketchnotes instead of regular notes? The concept is basically what it sounds like: instead of just strictly writing notes about a topic, you can sketch them out with doodles, drawings, etc. Blogger Mike Rohde recently wrote a book about sketchnotes, which I can’t wait to read. I always feel like I can’t draw but learning about sketchnotes seems doable. And yes, I would totally use my fountain pens to do it :-)

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Art book, notebook, scrapbook, journal

Posted September 26, 2012 by
in Beautiful Creations | 1 comment »

I’m still playing catch-up on all the pen-and-paper related things that I missed on maternity leave, so it wasn’t till yesterday that I read this post by artist (and friend of QV) Marie Johansen on hybrid journals. In it, she describes how she decided to merge her writing and art journals and give herself permission to let them not be perfect:

By simply allowing my journal to be an everything journal I feel so much more free to add silly things like receipts and color splashes, envelopes that hold a challenge instruction of feathers I found along a walk. Brilliant. So much more fun and colorful to leaf through as well!

Do you mix media in your own journals?

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Paper and Digital Journals

Posted February 7, 2012 by
in Editorial, Pens, Paper & People | 8 comments »

Do you agree with the following description of a paper journal?  Have digital journals caught up?

“A journal is personal.  I can play with margins, draw doodles, and make corrections in my own way.  When I go back and look at my marks on the page, I can even follow the train of thought that led to the changes.  The paper is mine, and I can skip pages or even fold them.  Words pour from the heart to the brain through the hand and pen onto the paper. This is the process of writing. Palm pilots and computers are excellent for logical order, planning and things, but not the free flowing emotion that is the centerpiece of a journal.” (by Robert I., college student, about 8 years ago.)

What do you think?

 

 

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Guest post: Nostalgia

Posted April 12, 2011 by
in Pens, Paper & People | 9 comments »

Guest blogger Kate Marshall takes a trip down memory lane with a post on Mead’s iconic black-and-white composition books…

Regular readers may know that I’ve been journaling for a long time. I started out using Mead composition books and Parker Vector “cartridge” pens. After a few years I switched to all sorts of random books. A few weeks ago, though, I used a regular composition book for the first time in about 15 years. The paper was not that much fun to write on. Had it always been like this when I was an awkardly-dressed middle-schooler who clearly didn’t know better about paper quality? Or had copybook paper quality just deteriorated since the early ‘90s?

Well, I did some lazy experimenting and found: it’s a little of both. My current pens (“quality” stuff like Lamys and Pelikans) were not big fans of my 1993 and 1994 journals: feathering, bleeding, and the writing experience just felt scratchy. Then I found some Parker Vectors on eBay and tried them in a new copybook, along with the “fancy-pants” pens. Aaannd it was not great. It’s like writing on cheap copy paper: lots of show-through because the paper’s thin, some feathering, etc. It made me sad. When I was little, I never worried about how the ink interacted with the paper or the nib wasn’t playing nice with the ink. As much as I love using good tools now, I sometimes wonder if it’s possible to write twenty pages on a scratchy legal pad with a 99-cent ballpoint and not care.

Nah :-)

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Travel writing

Posted January 12, 2011 by
in Pens, Paper & People, Where to Go? | 7 comments »

Do you keep a travel journal? I ask because we’ve noticed some travel stores carrying Clairefontaine for the purpose, and we’re curious about people’s habits.

Do you keep a separate notebook just for travel? If so, what do you look for in the notebooks that you use?

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Cole’s notebook

Posted May 18, 2010 by
in Beautiful Creations, Pens, Paper & People | 1 comment »

How cool is this: reader Cole Wardell, whose lovely cursive doodles we featured back in April, just made herself a new journal with four different types of Clairefontaine paper: a Graf It sketch pad, DCP paper, a Calligraphy Art Pad, and the Ingres Pastel Pad. “All the papers serve very different functions,” she writes, “so binding them into one journal is a way … to keep me artistically on my toes!”

You can read more about Cole’s journal and the different papers that she used over at her blog.

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Keeping a nature journal

Posted April 9, 2010 by
in Pens, Paper & People, Planning Tips | 1 comment »

We’ve gotten a couple of emails lately from people who use our products as nature journals, keeping track of special outings and recording what’s around them at home.

One reader in southwest Wisconsin uses a daily undated Exacompta Forum journal to track birds and other species. “I had been looking for one with dates but not days to use year after year,” she writes. The undated Forum, “while it wasn’t what I thought I wanted, works perfectly… It’s the right size, it has a lovely feel, and the lines are not too far apart.”

Greg Davis, a Milaca, MN based attorney who switched back to paper planners after a courtroom ban on cell phones, has been using a Habana to keep track of fishing outings. “I have been bitten by the Steelhead fly fishing bug and need to keep track of the outings so I can see what works… temperature, weather, water levels, water conditions, etc.,” Greg writes. (That’s his 26″ Hen in the photo above.)

It helps me see where I went wrong with the birding journal I started last year, then abandoned. I’d been using a day-per-page Notor, but after a while it seemed foolish since we don’t get a lot of variety here in Brooklyn on a daily basis, and the rest of the journal was sort of just going to waste. Still, it *is* nice to keep track of dates as well as species. I suppose it should have been obvious, but I’d never thought about using an undated journal or notebook, and keeping it for years to come!

Do you keep a nature journal?

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What makes a good engagement/wedding journal?

Posted March 12, 2010 by
in Pens, Paper & People | 3 comments »

A reader from Texas has a great idea for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, and he’s looking for advice:

I want to give journals to both my daughter and her fiance to record their thoughts and feelings while their hearts and brains are still mushy and creative. To be read at their anniversaries and low points. Do you have any suggestions?

What kind of a journal would you recommend? Something with a bit of structure, like a daily diary, or a more free-form notebook like the Habana or the Webbie? Any other ideas?

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Journaling your hobbies

Posted April 3, 2009 by
in Pens, Paper & People | Add your comment »

club_group_1

I don’t keep a daily diary, but I’ve recently started a journal for one of my favorite hobbies: backyard bird-watching. Since I live in an urban environment, I don’t get many species—sparrows, mourning doves, and grackles are my dependable regular guests—but there’s also a downey woodpecker who shows up from time to time, a couple of finches, one cardinal, and two bluejays. And then, just two days ago, a beautiful red-winged blackbird! I couldn’t get a good picture of him, but I’m still thrilled that he stopped by.

At any rate, I have a lovely RLH Notor that I’ve been meaning to put to good use, and birding suddenly seemed like the perfect thing to do with it. For now, I’m just going to record the species I see each day, but I suppose I might eventually supplement that with other facts and information. Later on, I can flip back through the journal and remember all the wonderful birds that I’ve seen. I just wish I’d had the idea earlier in the year!

Do you use a journal to keep track of any of your hobbies?

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How many notebooks are in your regular rotation?

Posted February 20, 2009 by
in Editorial, Pens, Paper & People | 4 comments »

clairefontaine-notebooks

As I mentioned earlier, I have a bunch of different notebooks that are dedicated to various work-related tasks— to do lists, special projects, clients, and so forth. But I can’t even begin to fathom how to count or categorize the other notebooks that are lying around the house.

Like many writers, I carry a notebook with me pretty much wherever I go to jot down thoughts and ideas or remind myself of things I want to look up when I get home. Most times, it’s a black engraved Domo Habana, which sits in my bag, but I have a bunch of tiny Clairefontaine and Moleskine staplebound books that live in smaller purses, too, along with a Memoriae that I keep in my backpack when I go hiking.

I don’t keep a journal, but I dedicate at least one or two other notebooks around the house to random non-work musings. And I’ve had an irrational fondness for those black-and-white Mead composition books since high school (awkward size! flimsy paper! but so clunkily charming, somehow), which I keep on a table near the armchair that’s in my office. Still, there’s never a single notebook that’s the *only one* I use at any given time.

One of the nice things about this distributed system is that I rarely “finish” a notebook, which means I don’t have to worry about whether or where to “archive” it (though I was quite impressed by Biffybeans’s crated collection). Of course, it also means I may have to hunt for a half an hour to locate something I’m sure I jotted down somewhere.

How many notebooks do you use?

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