Oxford 3" x 2 1/2" Mini Index Card Review

Part of being an addict is sometimes buying things you don’t need. I knew good and well I didn’t NEED these Oxford Mini Index Cards but I was a Staples and gosh darn it, I was leaving with something. I know, just take a pair of scissors to my stack of 3 x 5’s and boom - mini index cards! As it turns out, that would have been the right call.

One of my biggest pet peeves in the world is bad line or grid alignment on paper. It is so off-putting that I cannot use the product. That is the case with these Oxford Index Cards. Just take a look at the picture. Awful.

Even if the lines were spot-on this isn’t a great card. The paper is flimsy and rough. Next time I’m tempted I think I will take my scissors advice. Or, just light a dollar bill on fire and watch it burn. That would have been more fun.

The Hallmark 3 x 5 Index Card

Ana Reinert of The Well-Appointed Desk is a long time friend of the blog. I remember talking to Ana as far back as 2007, right after I started The Pen Addict, and our friendship has continued ever since. Knowing my love for index cards, she sent me a package recently that knocked my socks off. I’ll let her explain:

These are “official” Hallmark 3 x 5’s. The story goes that the founder of Hallmark, J.C. Hall, asked the pressman to trim down the waste bits of paper into 3 x 5’s for him to write notes. He was seldom ever seen without a handful in his pocket and soon others were asking if they might have a stack.

Now, there is no place in the company where you will not see a stack of these. Conference room tables always have at least one pile. Every desk has a stack so people can leave a note when you are away. Writers start ideas on cards and throw them in a bowl at writing review meetings so each bit of editorial is “anonymous”. Designers fold them in half and make mini-card thumbnail drawings.

So, welcome to the world of Hallmark 3 x 5’s!

What an awesome story Ana! Thank you so much for sending me these cards and allowing me to share the story behind them.

I hope to do the cards proud!

Helvetindex Cards Review

I have followed Aaron Mahnke for a while now, either directly via his Twitter feed, through his Read & Trust network, and even through his design work and various blogs. He is quite prolific - and I didn’t even mention that he writes fantasy novels! That would be enough to keep a normal person busy for years, but not Aaron. His latest project - the Helvetindex Card - has recently launched, and Aaron was kind enough to send me a pack to review.

If you have been around these pages for any length of time, you know I am a fan of the index card. I find them useful for a wide variety of tasks - notes, to do lists, brainstorming, mind mapping - just about any task you can throw at them. Best of all, they are highly portable. Throw them in your pocket, toss them in a bag, rock a Hipster PDA, and you are good to go! So, how do the Helvetindex Cards stack up?

The first thing that grabs you is the design. I love the layout, especially the room allocated for headers and footers. Regardless of the paper I write on, I always have a header of some type - either the date or topic - so I love this aspect of the card. The writing space has a white background with tiny plus signs in a grid pattern, very similar to any dot grid pad you have used. They are unobtrusive, but still provide a guideline or framework if you need them.

The paper stock is 3” x 5” premium 100 lb. uncoated cover stock, but to me, the cards look and feel like they have a coating on it of some type. This caused some inks not to work very well with the Helvetindex Cards, while some did just fine.

Unsurprisingly, fountain pen ink performed poorly. The card stock essentially rejected the ink, giving it a washed out look and taking forever to dry. You can see the Lamy Safari and Kaweco Roller (which uses fountain pen ink cartridges) writing samples on the card above.

The ink type that caught me off guard though were the hybrid ballpoint inks, and not just one of them. Every single one I tested looked like I was laying down the yellow dashed line down the middle of a freshly paved road. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. Take the Uni-Ball Jetstream 0.5mm for example. I made sure the pens were primed before writing on the card, and even tried multiple cartridges out, but they still did poorly. I could write the same text on any other scrap paper and it worked fine, but then I would go back to the Helvetindex Card and it would skip. Similar pens like the Pentel Vicuna and the Pilot Acroball performed the exact same way.

The saving grace for me is that gel ink works just fine, especially since that is my ink of choice. There was no skipping, and the drying time was reasonable. The colored gel inks remained bright as well. I was worried that the large tipped liquid ink pens like the Bic Z4 would be a problem too, but there were no issues to speak of there.

Despite the various ink issues I had, I still love these cards. The design and layout is perfect for me - I just have to pay attention to which pen I am using.