Category Archives: Paper

Review of the Pencils.com Palomino-branded hardcover notebook

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About a month ago, Alex from Pencils.com was kind enough to send me a box of new paper products Pencils.com is selling — I wrote about them on this blog previously.

It’s been a month, and I’ve been using a few of those products pretty thoroughly. My very favorite is the hardcover Palomino Luxury Notebook, sized medium.

A contemporary of the Moleskine and its kin, I lament the passing of Black Cover, the blog in search of “the perfect little black notebook” that gained so much momentum in its fairly brief existence and its even briefer re-appearance early this year. Nick, the blogger, is a tremendous reviewer — I wonder if he ever got one to try!

In order to appreciate these little hardcover notebooks, you have to embrace the subtle differences. Relatively speaking, almost all of the $15-$20 5×8″ notebooks are generally the same quality, serve generally the same function, and are styled generally the same. I’ll try to highlight the differences here, as I see them:

Style and Features
The Palomino Notebook’s most obvious, and to me, the best difference between it and others is the orange stripe that runs along the spine. I love orange, and I especially love Palomino Orange (and Golden Bear orange). When I’m using one of those pencils, it makes a great match. When I’m not using one of those pencils, it still looks great on its own. What a difference a splash of color makes!

I love the orange spine on this notebook.

The little stitched pattern on the sides are nice, too — I’m not sure if it is a tribute to something, or is a style all its own, but it gives it the look of an old, hand-sewn Italian stitch.

Like a Moleskine it has a cover page spread where you can put your name and contact information in case you lose it. It’s on a really lovely heavyweight paper that just drinks in your ink (Yes, I used a pen to put my name on this page, since it should be permanent) and doesn’t bleed through.

Also like a Moleskine, it has a pocket in the back! It’s made out of what looks like folded-over tear-proof paper, so you can put some stuff back there (sometime I hoard cash in it, but don’t spread that around) without tear.

One feature lament: I really, really like gridded pages. I’d love to see a Palomino notebook sporting that option, besides the lined or plain pages currently offered.

Quality
It is of superb quality. It has more of a hardcover book-like binding the Moleskine, and though it’s a bit stiffer when I lay it out on a tabletop, it’s getting better, and I don’t feel like I’m pulling the paper out while doing it.

The paper itself is nice. In a discussion with John at PencilWrap.com, he mentioned that the paper was really smooth. Agreed. (Also, go check out his review of the “flex notebook” cahiers, because he took way better pictures than I did, and compared them side-by-side to the Moleskines!)

Though it’s very smooth, I felt like it had a bit of tooth, since it’s supposedly optimized for a pencil. A pleasure to write on, at least with a Palomino Blackwing 602, a Dixon Ticonderoga, and a Golden Bear, all three of which I’ve had with me this week.

I also think that the cover of the Palomino is better. It’s a bit more leathery, a bit more supple, and does not bubble up like some of my Moleskines have been known to do.

If, say, the Moleskine was the standard of which people use hardcover notebooks, and if we set that value at 10, I’d give the Palomino notebook a solid 13. It’s a great price, at $17.95, exactly the same as a Moleskine. Admittedly, Moleskine has a better variety of pages (they have formats for storyboarding, music composition, etc.), and currently offers a special Star Wars collection, which would clinch me right there if I was actively in the market for a notebook.

However, I love the California Republic brand, and the Palomino line, so I’m excited to have a notebook in this brand, too.

Coming soon(ish): Thoughts and photos of some of the other notebooks!

Disclaimer: As I’ve written before, I am formerly an employee of Pencils.com. I no longer work there or receive any money from them, so this review is not being funded by them. This product was sent to me free, however.

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Gridbooks: bring digital and analog together

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Sometimes when you’re creating something as physically intangible as a website, you need to be able to piece it out longhand. Paper and pencil (or pen) gives you a chance to run your hands along the lines of the elements, feel the length and width under your fingertips, and give yourself time to conceptualize it.

The good folks at Gridbooks recently sent me some samples of their product to try out. They produce really good quality notebooks with flexible grids for ad design and webpage layouts.

I was excited, though I quickly realized that since I’m not a web developer, I couldn’t fully utilize their intricate grid. I needed a better, more experienced opinion.

I handed the samples over to my friend Josh Tuck, a talented web designer and food blogger at The Quest for Zest, a great high-class local food blog. He produces some of the best, boldest, simplest grids I’ve seen. And since he’s the one from whom I learned about Gridbooks in the first place, I knew he’d be interested in giving them a try.

Josh says:

When I was in college, print design on computers was just beginning to crawl out of its infancy into toddlerhood. Our school couldn’t afford speedy new Mac 9500s, so we learned paste up with actual paste instead of “cmnd+v”. I carried this pencil-and-pad approach to laying out ads into my career in advertising. I noticed that when I sketched ideas, for ads or websites, the final result was always better then when I started designing on the Mac.

So, from an old-school designer’s point of view, Gridbooks are spectacular. Halfway through testing – with markers, pencils, and circle templates scattered on my desk – I wondered, “Why the hell wasn’t there something like this years ago?” They give you just enough guidance to make concepting easier without getting in the way of the creation process. They are surprisingly versatile, effortlessly usable, and beautifully minimalistic.

That beauty is only “so” nice though, and I like that. As any proper pen and pad snob will eventually confess; if the product is too nice, it risks never being used. I have a stack of sketchbooks and a mug of like-new pens because I am terrified I will ruin them by scrawling something unworthy of their perfectly designed form. Not so with Gridbooks. While they are attractive enough for any designer to carry into a brainstorming session they aren’t so good looking that they will never get used.

The cover of the Ad Book is a toothy 80 lbs. cover stock. It’s folded over on itself for added weight and it’s discretely printed in silver ink. The paper for the interior pages is an 80 lbs. text weight with just the right finish for pencil or pen. The grid lines and dots are just visible and all but disappear under your sketching; a feature I wish I could get from a certain Milan-based notebook company whose products I covet more then my next breath.

Gridbooks also use an ingenious technique of overlaying many grids on the same sheet. All the key ones are there; banner ads, skyscrapers, and big boxes. Each one is color coded for easy identifying and they are all pixel accurate. The same is true of the web layout pad with it’s 960 pixel 8, 12, and 16 column grids in addition to 3, 4, 5, and 6 column grids.

I tried a variety of pens and was pleased to find that they did not lose their edge or bleed through the page. You can truly use both sides of the sheet without fear of blotting up past ideas.

Gridbooks are worth every dime of the purchase price. I firmly believe that sketching is still superior to jumping straight into Photoshop, Fireworks, or even Balsamic. Sketching forces you to focus on the big picture and not get bogged down in the details and Gridbooks make that process faster and more painless then ever.

All photos by Josh Tuck. (In fact, these are the best photographs this blog has ever seen! I need Josh to take all my pictures.

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Orange fever: The classic Rhodia notepad

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NOTE: This post originally appeared at the now-defunt PencilThings blog on July 9, 2007. See it, sans CSS or images, at the Internet Archive here.

I first discovered this wonderful little orange notebook back in 2003 when I was watching one of my favorite shows, Good Eats. The host, Alton Brown, was writing a grocery list on a Rhodia notepad. It didn’t process with me, until a year later when I attended college at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. There is a great little store there called T.I.S. that sells textbooks, college apparel, and office supplies. Yes, a plethora of pens, pencils, and paper.

One shelf had a shoddy little orange display. Though it was in disrepair, the orange-ness and the stylized European look lent itself to hipness and — what immediately attracts me to almost any consumer product — a cult following. That episode of Good Eats sprung into my mind, and I realized: if my hero Alton Brown has one, by gum — I need one too.

Fallacious though my reasoning was, it was one of the best purchases I ever made. Yeah, it is cool looking. (Aesthetics count for a lot, just read some of my pencil reviews.) The bright orange and the crisp black  go so well together, you don’t even think of a Halloween theme. Immediately upon opening the cover, you know you’ve reached notepad nirvana. The satin-finished paper is think, luscious, and smooth. If writing on a standard notepad is like driving down the street, writing on Rhodia paper is like cruising in your hovercraft across a giant swimming pool on a calm day. Take a look at the paper:

Isn’t that nice? (The image is not mine.)

Notice that both pictures feature graph paper in their notebooks. Chill out, man, that’s the way the Europeans do it. I personally like it. That way, you can write with the notebook turned portrait or landscape. For your American purists out there, they do come in lined versions.

I can tell you what my favorite size is — the 3″ x 8.25″. It is extremely long and skinny and fits in the palm of your hand very well. Perfect for making lists and, if you are a reporter, taking notes on the go. I spent some time working for a newspaper and this was my best friend.

Unfortunately, yes — Rhodia is expensive. An 8.5″x11″ pad with 80 sheets will cost you about $9, as opposed to less than a dollar you might spend on a Mead notebook from Target. But it is worth it. Trust me.

Find Rhodia notepads at Pencil Things and many other fine stationary retailers. Also, one of my favorite blogs, Rhodia Drive, is devoted to their full line of products.

Overall rating: 4.5 out of 5 points.

UPDATE 09/27/10: I’ve been using Rhodia notepads every day since then. Often when I review a pencil, it provides a white background on which I base the blackness of the graphite. I have discovered, as John from Pencil Revolution mentions in his review of Field Notes, that for some pencils, the creamy, smooth paper of Exaclair products sometimes doesn’t “catch” the graphite as well as something more fibrous, like Field Notes. But for high-end pencils and — gasp — ink pens, Rhodia is king in smoothness, bleedlessness (which I’m pretty sure isn’t a word), and quality.