With many stacks of notebooks, sketchbooks and blank books I’ve acquired, and the fact that my day job is about making pictures, I thought it was time to get back into the regular habit of keeping a sketchbook or visual journal of some sort. I figured that I couldn’t possibly be the only person who might need a little inspiration and creative idea to get me started so I thought I’d share some of the prompts, ideas and tips I found.
Optimizely’s Design team is a diverse bunch, ranging from researchers to coders to designers. In the course of working with them, I noticed that everyone has their own unique note-taking style. Some people draw detailed sketches, some encode their notes with symbols, and some use a combination of doodles and words. Some people scribble notes in one big sketchbook, some carry around Field Notes in their pockets all day, and some use a combination of post-its, notebooks, and scrap paper. In noticing these idiosyncrasies, I thought it would be interesting to document everyone’s unique style.
There are few things I enjoy more than peeking at other people’s notebooks. I find it endlessly fascinating.
Much like Field Notes, you get four editions a year for $100 (plus $12 for shipping). Each shipment includes a dozen pencils in fancy gift boxes, plus a pencil sealed for archival purposes, (which is a nice touch for us hoarders, er, collectors). And, to further appease collectors, each pencil will be numbered
The three new products are part of the Ink Bottle series: The Main, The Writer, and The Workspace. The goal was to create elegant desk pieces that allow you to keep your favorite ink(s) close at hand as well as pens and possible notebooks.
These look fantastic! I’m putting one on my Father’s Day list.
This is great! A brief interview with friend of the site J. Robert Lennon about his current favorite notebook, The Seven Seas Writer (which he has also covered here before).
Carbo is before anything else about handwriting. For people who love using pen and paper.
Our goal was to make a simple and approachable app that would take the essence of handwriting, and at the same time would allow useful digital-world features (cloud storage, tags, annotations, styling…).
I think something like this works better for drawings, diagrams, or sketches than for handwriting but, still, a compelling options for people who may have need.
The longer I spent roaming the stacks, the more I became convinced that this store holds the key to understanding that deeper connection. I also felt like I was falling back in love with the printed word myself, which came as something of a shock?—?I’m a self-confessed, early-adopting, SIM card-swapping travel geek, currently on my seventh Kindle. This was not a nostalgic, Luddite moment, but a response to five specific principles that became increasingly clear to me as I wandered, browsed, read, and reflected.
Since early this year, I have been compiling a Commonplace book I’ve called Core. The idea was taken and slightly modified from one Shawn Blanc floated called Core Curriculum. The idea is to develop a book of core knowledge, passages, articles, books, quotes, recipes, instructions, and conversations that have shaped us, helped us, taught us, had deep meaning, or otherwise inform the core of who we are and what we believe. This is a living document, formed slowly and intentionally, and one meant to be reviewed every year or more often as needed.
I have found the very act of compiling this book to be enlightening and refreshing. I am, of course, writing it by hand. Therefore, when I wish to add a passage from a book, a quote, or a favorite poem — anything that is not my own — I must transcribe it. To make sure I get it right, I force myself to do so slowly, making sure to capture every punctuation and nuance, doing my darnedest not to err.
What I have found is that this process allows me to see these things I thought I knew in a way I may not have before. For instance, I notice a semicolon my eyes had rushed past before and now a sentence has a whole new meaning. A poem I remembered being about one thing, once written out in my own hand, now takes on a different meaning.
In all, it is a practice I wholeheartedly recommend. What it amounts to is in many ways a "users guide" for living an intentional life.
Nick Barnes is a football commentator for BBC Radio Newcastle. For each match he does, Barnes dedicates two pages in his notebook for pre-match notes, lineups, player stats, match stats, and dozens of other little tidbits.
