Maruman has been a great supporter of The Pen Addict, and their latest care package included a wide range of goods we will be exploring soon. To begin with, I wanted to get a giveaway going for the Maruman Into-One Mini Binder, with a pack of 100 lined sheets for inserts.
This off-white and red combo looks fantastic, and the overall size of the Into-One would made a great portable notepad. To enter this giveaway read the rules below!
(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
I purchased the Maruman Into-One Binder Mini in light blue, thinking it would be a handy replacement for loose index cards. It's the perfect size for a purse or backpack pocket, and the loose-leaf sheets make it quite versatile.
The binder is made of flexible, textured plastic, and the rings are attached with metal posts. The rings and opening/closing mechanism are made of clear plastic. To open, you simply pinch the mechanism with your fingers. Push the rings together in order to close the rings.
Unfortunately, one of my binder rings is out of alignment, so it doesn't close properly.
The binder is 5.9 inches/150mm wide, 3.6 inches/92mm tall, and 0.63 inches/16mm deep (where the binder rings are).
The binder comes with twenty pages of 80gsm lined (front and back) white paper. It is B7 size (130mm x 87mm = 3.4 x 5.1 inches) which is slightly larger than a 3 x 5 index card. Each sheet has nine holes, but the binder only has five rings. I'm not sure what the additional holes are for. Blue lines at the top and bottom of each page act as margins. Dots and dashes at 0.5mm intervals provide guidance if you want to draw vertical lines on the pages. The binder can accommodate up to sixty pages.
Considering how thin the paper feels, I was pleased by how well it stood up to various writing instruments. In my fountain pen test none of the inks feathered or bled through, with the exception of the wet flex nib in my Opus 88. There's some show through, but it's negligible enough that you can write on both sides of this paper.
The paper handled ink swabs with ease--I used very wet swabs but no ink bled through. The inks exhibited shading and pooling, but no sheen.
I also tested various pens and one pencil. The only bleed through was with the Sharpies (both ultra fine and regular).
The Maruman Mini Binder could be used in many ways. I listed several possibilities and created examples of some of them.
The Maruman Into-One Binder costs $7.25 on JetPens. You can get it in light blue, dark blue, and pink.
There are multiple options for filling the binder, including various print styles (ruled, graph, blank, to-do, and time planning) and colors/paper styles: white, pastel colors, croquis (for sketching), and scrap. You can also get a zip case, tabbed dividers, and paper protectors.
I love this little binder and plan to use mine for reading notes and memorization purposes.
(I purchased the Maruman Mini Binder and lined paper refill with my own funds.)
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The Maruman Glyphy notebook line is a new offering that hasn't quite hit US shelves yet, but you should see it arriving soon. Like all new notebook options, everyone's first question is usually something along the lines of "what kind of paper does it have, and does it work well with all types of pens and pencils?" Maruman might be most known in the US for producing the luxurious Mnemosyne notebooks — which are incredibly well-made and perform quite admirably. Does the new Glyphy match up to the high bar that Maruman have set?
The Glyphy comes in two sizes, but I have the B6 size (175x144mm) with 60 gsm art (blank) paper (the other size options is A6). There are 88 pages in the glue-bound, hard-cover notebook, and they are fairly thin. There's a prominent texture on the page that reminds me how fancy cotton resume paper looks, except this paper is incredibly thin and doesn't behave like thick absorbent paper. Unfortunately, this paper suffers from a pretty significant amount of feathering and show-through. It's certainly not unusable due to this, but you do have to be careful about which pens/inks you use with the notebook. As you can see in the writing samples, similar pen/ink combos work better than others. I attribute this to the ink characteristics more than anything, but I'd certainly test a pen with this notebook before writing for any significant amount of time. With many pen/ink combos, the back of the page is unusable (for me, anyway).
Does that mean you should avoid this notebook? I don't think so. It works great for gel and ballpoint pens, and I've really enjoyed using it with pencils. The paper texture reminds me of sketchbooks, and I think that's really how it's going to be marketed when it hits the shelves in the North American region. It takes graphite marks really well and provides a satisfying amount of feedback due to the paper texture. This is mostly due to the paper being uncoated (and also why it suffers from feathering).
The cover of the notebook is nicely done. It's a fabric cover that has a nice tactile feel, a solid binding, and opens and closes easily. The only branding is on the top right corner of the notebook — a bold white "Glyphy" to announce the name, but it's also quite helpful in determining which way is right-side up before opening it. I love it when manufacturers decide to take a minimal route when it comes to branding their products. They Maruman Glyphy does an excellent job at producing a strong aesthetic appeal without needless and excessive graphic art additions.
The B6 size isn't one that I use very often. Every time I do, I feel foolish for not using it more often. It really is a perfect size for a lot of what I do. It fits into places easier than an A5, but you really aren't sacrificing much in the way of paper real estate. If it were just 30mm shorter, it would be square. It's a fantastic size, and the hard cover will protect the pages from a lot of abuse.
Once the Maruman Glyphy notebooks are widely available, I encourage you to try them out. I'm really interested to try out the other paper type options to see if they handle fountain pens inks differently than this particular variant. According to the Maruman product catalog, the other versions have either 90 gsm or 126 gsm paper, with blank or grid formatting, so it should be interesting to compare all of the options.
(Maruman provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!
