Posts filed under Notebook Reviews

Cognitive Surplus Notebook Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter.)

Science without art, art without science--no good. They need each other. And If you were to draw a Venn diagram of where they overlap, you'd probably want to draw it in a Cognitive Surplus notebook.

These notebooks are truly beautiful. With cover designs inspired by scientific illustrations from anatomy to entomology to astronomy, there's bound to be one or five you can't resist. When I first found them a few years ago, I had some kind of notebook-induced blackout and I regret nothing. I had just started working in my last book from that wee binge when Cognitive Surplus announced their new designs and new paper. Even better, they asked me to give their new paper a try.

The new notebooks still have the gorgeous scientific illustrations on the covers, and now they have illustrated endpapers as well. They come in a variety of sizes and line formats, hard and soft cover, grid or dots or lines or blank, or a combination. My favorite are the larger hardcover books, which also include a ribbon bookmark. But for maximum design options, you can get a pack of smaller notebooks in different sciency themes. Really, you can't choose wrong.

Cognitive Surplus is a dedicated green company. Check out their webpage on sustainability to see just how much care they put into operating in an environmentally responsible manner. I'm impressed. It makes me want even more notebooks.

The paper that CS used to use was extremely fountain pen friendly. I used all sorts of inks and pens in it with no trouble at all. It was crisp white and showed off the subtlety of ink colors and never bled or feathered. But the folks at CS thought they could do better--environmentally better. So this summer they replaced their paper stock with a newer, greener option.

Of course, they were concerned about whether or not it would perform as well as the previous paper--and unfortunately it doesn't. Like a lot of recycled papers, it has a warmer tone to it that doesn't show colors as well, and it doesn't hold up as well when in contact with liquid inks. There's some bleed-through and feathering, and with wetter inks, it looks almost as if the paper fibers are separating as they soak it up. With fine point pens and dryer inks I had no problem, though. So you can still use fountain pens in these notebooks--just not the firehose pens.

Pencil, ballpoint, gel, and rollerball all did great. If you've got a non-fountain pen that you love, then you are totally golden with these notebooks.

Is this paper going to delight fountain pen enthusiasts? No. It works in so much as I can still read what I wrote, but it doesn't perform in any spectacular way with liquid ink. It doesn't show off color or shading or sheen, or any of those other papery tricks we pen addicts swoon over.

I think this paper does something better than that, though. Cognitive Surplus has prioritized the environment over fancy features and I commend them for it. They make beautiful, functional, responsible books and my initial disappointment in the paper led me to question my own priorities when it comes to my paper needs. It's not the end of the world if my broad/wet nibs/inks bleed through the page a little, but it literally is the end of the world for species losing their habitats to deforestation and climate change. So take a peek at your papers and your priorities and maybe give a greener option a try. Because small actions do add up. Plus, in the dystopian wasteland, there's nowhere to wash your pen, anyway.

(Cognitive Surplus provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on September 27, 2018 by Sarah Read and filed under Cognitive Surplus, Notebook Reviews.

Kunisawa Find Smart Notebook Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

A couple of weeks ago, Susan posted a review of the Find A5 notebook, and I also wrote about the Find Pocket notebook, both of which are produced by Kunisawa.

To round out my own experiences with these notebooks, I have the Kunisawa Find Smart notebooks. These notebooks are a unique offering because of their size. They don't fit a standard ISO paper size, but it's similar to a slim version of a B6 notebook. At only 95x167mm, it's a size that will easily fit in a pocket or pouch, but affords you some extra vertical space for writing. It's about the same width as a standard Field Notes book, but you get an extra inch on top.

Another unique attribute of this notebook is the cover. It's a nicely constructed hard cover with an elegant gold-debossed logo on the front. Apart from the company slogan in the inside front cover ("I do not seek, I find") and the additional logo in the inside back cover, there is no other branding on this book. It's delightfully minimal.

The binding is well done on all three books I have. It's a stitched binding that's also glued into a spine and covered with the hardcover. It seems incredibly durable and feels great. The book has no trouble laying flat and closing properly.

The notebook also features gold foil on the page edges, but I'm not a fan of gold foiled pages. It does match the front logo foil, so that's nice. If I had the option, I'd go with plain white paper edges over gold foil any day.

Once you open the notebook, you're greeted with some polarizing graph paper. It's a small 2.5mm grid, which can take some getting used to if you don't use it regularly. I don't use it very often, so my eyes struggled to cope with the small squares the first few times I opened the book. After writing for a bit, I figured out the sweet spot for my writing, but I don't prefer this kind of graph paper. I'd rather have a standard 5mm graph.

Unlike the other Kunisawa notebooks we've reviewed here, this paper is a noticeable cream color. I'm not a huge fan of the color of the paper, as it can alter the appearance of some inks. Again, after using it for a bit, I stopped noticing.

Once I started writing with this paper, I was pleasantly surprised. It's a decent paper, but not as fountain pen friendly as they claim. It can certainly handle a wide variety of inks and pens, but you can kiss the back of the page goodbye. In some instances, there is heavy feathering depending on the ink you use. The show-through to the back page is significant. Depending on the pens you use, the back page won't be useful.

Despite the "meh" performance, it's a very smooth paper and is pleasant to use. It's comparable to Field Notes paper in how it handles different inks, but it's a tad smoother.

On the Kunisawa website, the Find Smart notebook goes for 1,000 yen (each), which translates to about $9. At this price, I can't recommend the notebook when I know what other options exist in the stationery world. It's a decent notebook, but I'm not sure it lives up to the price.

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Posted on September 19, 2018 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Kunisawa, Notebook Reviews.

Maruman Into-One Binder Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter.)

It's probably hyperbole to say that ring binders have changed the world, but is it, really? They've certainly changed the school supply world, and the basic technology is so simple and effective that they themselves have remained almost unchanged for as long as I've been around. As with any technology, if you can't improve it, make it smaller. The Maruman Into-One Mini-Sized Binder is the perfect example of a classic product made useful in whole new ways just by making it wee.

The binder has a flexible polypropylene cover with a light texture. It's very light and thin, so it keeps the binder's profile slim enough that it can fit in a back pocket. The spine is held together with rivets to the ring plate. The rings are plastic and have a pinch-to-open mechanism. They work well, though I worry about the durability of the clear plastic. The binder lies perfectly flat when open. The cover does bow a bit when lying closed.

For being so small, it holds a surprising number of sheets. The paper is available in 5 mm grid, lined, scrap paper, or drawing paper. As with other Maruman papers I've tried, it behaves very well. It's smooth, holds a crisp line of writing, and doesn't allow for feathering or bleed-through. The paper is strong enough that it doesn't tear away from the rings easily, so I've had no trouble with pages falling loose. The sheets are slightly larger than a 3 x 5 card. They'd make great flash cards or study notes.

There are also card and zipper pockets that fit into the binder, much like those for Traveler's Notebooks. And with the different papers available, these could easily be a customizable journal or planner system. I've been using mine primarily for making lists and writing down reminders--like a commonplace book where I can decide how much of each sort of paper I need. It's like an auxiliary planner. A place to dump my raw brain data before I organize it into my actual planner.

I think this is a great little product. I love being able to customize my notebook and the small size makes it easy to carry around. I can scribble down an important address, grab a stamp from the pocket, and store the post office receipt all in one place. Oh, hey, that's probably why they call it "Into-One". I love it and I'll get good use out of it until one of my kids steals it.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on September 13, 2018 by Sarah Read and filed under Maruman, Notebook Reviews.