In our day jobs, we run a print shop. Organization is key when you deal with other people’s deadlines, and we need to guarantee we won’t drop the ball. To keep ourselves on track, we use to keep notes & to-do lists on our own promotional notepads.
Of course, notepads have limits. For starters, you only ever use the top sheet—flip too far in and pages start falling out. And when you print your own supply, it’s easier to grab a fresh pad and start a new list than to refine one you already have.
We’d end up with stacks of notepads on our desks: one for long term projects, one for daily to-do lists, one for customer projects, one for phone messages, one for long-term projects… the list of lists went on, and each pad had multiple post-it notes cross-referencing other pads, and loose scraps of paper with individual notes scribbled on them tucked in between sheets.
And what happened when we’d completed most of a list? Naturally, we’s tear off the top sheet, (after copying over the few things not done yet), wad it up and toss it in the recycling. But, wait… did I transfer that phone number into the customer file? Er…
If we had a nickel for every time we went digging through recycling bins for an old note…
It was clear we needed a better system, something that incorporated organization and archiving.
We tried out other notebooks—spiral bound books, steno pads, leather-bound journals—and we found fault with all of them. The nice ones were too nice, the generic ones too generic. They didn’t fold flat, they were too expensive, the paper was too thin, and the basic ones didn’t help keep us any more organized than our old notepads.
So we started designing our own. We wanted to combine the organizational features of the fancy ones with the price point of the cheap ones. If it felt too fancy, we were afraid to use it. It needed to feel a little disposable in order for us to start using it like a scratch pad and writing down everything—but it also needed the page numbers, the indexes, and a good storage system in order to keep us organized.
We arrived at 36 pages for a couple of reasons: for starters, it only uses one tower on our collator/stitcher. With our equipment, it’s less setup to make two 36-page books than to make a single 40-page. We preferred staples in the spine because they fold flatter than a glued spine and store flatter than a spiral—but they also can’t get too thick. We didn’t want to skimp on the thickness of individual pages. We found 36 pages of 70-lb. stock gave us space for a month’s worth of to-do lists with a few extra pages in the back for notes.
We tried to pare it down to the features that we found useful. Round corners keep them from snagging on pockets and getting dog-eared. The “easily misspelled words” serves the same function as that ubiquitous dotted red line to which we’ve all become far too accustomed (acustomed? accustommed?) while typing. But embossing the cover or gilding the pages, as far as we could tell, served no purpose other than to drive up the cost of production.
We also needed a box. A bunch of loose notebooks would only be a slight improvement our old stacks of notepads. If had a box they could fit into, those boxes could store neatly on a shelf, and it would be easy to organize years worth of notes into a few inches of shelf space. Why re-invent the wheel when dozens of companies have spent decades printing tested and true designs? We used the same sleeve pattern as old VHS cassettes—it’s a solid design and everyone over 30 can imagine exactly how much space it will occupy.
So our notebooks have reached a point where we’re ready to share with the world. We’ll continue to update and refine, of course—there are a few features we’d still like to explore.
If you have questions or suggestions, drop us a line! We’re all ears. We hope you get as much use out of them as we do.
With thanks, from the crew at: