Arnie, the guy behind Banditapple, just sent me a message telling me that he wants more people around the world to write at least once on his Banditapple Carnets – so he is currently giving away free samples worldwide to anyone who requests them – for a $3 postage contribution.
If you want to request a sample (limited time only) please fill in this request form.
I few days ago received an unexpected delivery: the Cloud Book by brandbook. It’s an unusual notebook that brandbook sent to several bloggers to promote it1.
The company behind it
Brandbook‘s main business is manufacturing custom-made and designed notebooks. Their notebooks are mainly for business customers, but last year they launched their notebook line nuuna, aimed at consumers. The Cloud Book is one of nuuna’s products, not intended to be used as an ‘orderly notebook’, but as a notebook that is supposed to help your creativity. To support this task the pages sport different cloud photos.
The notebook
The notebook itself is sky blue with a bright orange elastic band. I was told that the cover is made from Cutoron and that the paper used is Tauro paper2. The first thing to notice when using the Cloud Book is that erasing graphite from the pages will also remove some of the colour used for printing the background picture. Some erasers are better than others. The dust-free erasers I used were particularly good at keeping the background photo ‘undamaged’. Another thing, the Tauro paper isn’t exactly what I would call ink loving: it absorbs ink more easily than many other types of paper. This means that wet fountain pens will cause some bleed-through, but the dry fountain pens I tried were safe3. The paper feels a bit rough, but graphite and ink are easily visible on the paper. I mention this because some papers with a similar feel need fairly soft pencils to produce a dark line, but this paper will also be satisfied with harder pencils.
How many shibbloths can you find when you enlarge the picture. I think there are at least three obvious ones.
Conclusion
I really like the idea behind the Cloud Book, but at work or at home I’d usually only write something in a notebook if I want to keep the information I write down – so the concept of using a notebook as a tool for creativity or to satisfy your play instinct is slightly alien to me – I’d usually use the reverse of an old calendar sheet or of an old sheet of paper if I want to scribble around… but now that I have the Cloud Book I’ll try to use it as intended.
The Cloud Book‘s RRP is €17.90 (~$23.30; £15.50) and it’s made in Germany, like all brandbook notebooks.
Price and exchange rates: March 2013.
I’d like to thank Carlos Monteiro Lanca from brandbook who sent me the Cloud Book free of charge.
The rare-ish GW nib of the Pelikan fountain pen used for the second picture has the honour of being shown on Werner Rüttinger’s Pelikan page.
The bought both, the Faber-Castell Guilloche fountain pen and the De Atramentis document ink, for an amazing price. The fountain pen was only a bit more than €20 at Amazon, but after I ordered it the price nearly doubled. The De Atramentis document ink was very cheap at Pure Pens, much cheaper than what you pay at the manufacturer – probably a combination of it being the old price before the price increase and a good exchange rate when they imported the ink.
One last thing: users of the Cloud Book can send a photo or scan of their favourite scribbles to brandbook / nuuna for a chance to win a a selection of notebooks from nuuna.
About Atoma
I tried to get hold of an Atoma notebook for a while now. Atoma notebooks are quite common in Belgium where they were first produced in 1948. Despite their popularity in their home country they are not very well known outside Belgium, not even in the neighbouring countries. I haven’t seen them in shops in the UK or Germany and some Dutch friends I asked haven’t seen them in the Netherlands either. No wonder: 80% of more than a million notebooks produced every year stay in Belgium. The company behind Atoma did not extend their patent when it expired in the Nineties, so copies are now available from many companies: There’s Levenger’s Circa, Aurora’s Adoc, Clairefontaine’s Clairing, Elba’s Vario-Zipp, Staples’ Arc and there’s Rollabind.
 Atoma |
 Arc |
How do they work
The pages of the Atoma notebooks are being held together by plastic discs. The discs are holding the sheets of paper through special Atoma shaped ‘holes’1. You can remove sheets from the notebooks or swap the sheets around, just like you can in a ring binder. One advantage of this system over a ring binder is that the notebook can be folded over. Another advantage is that an Atoma notebook, compared to a ring binder, is using less space because you don’t need the surrounding folder. The ring binder will also take away space even if empty2. One disadvantage of the Atoma system is that you cannot label the spine of a notebook.
Atoma and Arc paper
Where to get them from
There are two shops in the UK selling Atoma notebooks: Craft & Party Direct and Manufactum, but I didn’t order my Atoma notebook from either of them. Craft & Party Direct charge a lot for shipping and Koralatov and Iain pointed out that they had bad experiences when ordering from this company in the past. Manufactum charge too much for shipping, too, and they have a ridiculous conversion rate for their UK prices, charging UK customers 35% more than for exactly the same product from their other online shops – that is on top of their expensive prices in the first place. Manufactum’s other online shops in Europe are set up in such a way that UK customers cannot order from them – very annoying. This plus other bad experiences3 with them made me avoid Manufactum in this case. In the end I ordered my Atoma notebooks from the International School of Brussels. The notebooks were only €2.50 (~ $3.07; £1.96) each and shipping to the UK was free, so I only paid €5 for the two notebooks I ordered. The same order with Craft & Party Direct would have cost me £10.45 (~ $16.40; €13.35), five times as much. Manufactum’s Atoma notebooks are made of more expensive materials, so a direct price comparison wouldn’t make sense. I also bought one of M by Staples’ Arc notebooks in my local Staples4. With a price tag of £5 (~ $7.85; €6.39) it was more than twice as expensive as an Atoma notebook.
The discs: Atoma in blue, Arc in black
Atoma versus Arc
The Atoma A5 notebook is made in Belgium and came with 72 sheets (144 pages) of “ink-loving 90g/m2 ledger paper”.
The A5 Arc notepad is made in China and came with 60 ruled sheets of 100g/m2 paper. I like the fact that it came with a name/index sheet, but I am not keen on the white border on each page.
There is a lot of choice when it comes to covers and cover material, for both, Atoma and Arc. The cover of the Atoma notebook I bought is made of cardboard, while the Arc cover is made of polypropylene.
The paper of the Atoma notebook is rougher. Writing on it is nice and the paper absorbs the ink quickly. The surface of the Arc paper is smoother, but ink takes longer to dry than on the Atoma paper. The ink doesn’t show through the reverse of the Arc pages as much as it does on the Atoma paper, but both papers are suitable for ink.
The rings of the Arc notebook are bigger, which means they will probably be able to hold more sheets of paper, but that also makes the notebook bigger, even if you don’t use too many sheets of paper. Aesthetically I find the Atoma ring size nicer and more suitable for the number of sheets of paper these notebooks come with.
Atoma (left) and Arc (right) paper
Conclusion
Both notepad are nice. I like the disc binding mechanism as it has several advantages over ring binders. If I had to choose between the Atoma and the Arc I’d go for the Atoma notebook. Not because it’s cheaper, but partly because I am not a big fan of polypropylene covers and prefer the Atoma’s cardboard cover. I also prefer the size and therefore look of the Atoma’s discs. Paper-wise the Arc’s paper seems to be better quality than the Atoma’s paper, but I haven’t used it long enough to be sure. My last reason for preferring the Atoma is that I prefer sheets without such a big white border.
Prices and exchange rates: August 2012.
I would like to thank Sean for the Blackfeet Indian Pencil seen on the last photo.
You might remember my blog post about the Carrefour Bloc-notes. Today I want to talk about another Rhodia-style notepad, the Oxford Bloc1. I bought this notepad for €1.05 (~ $1.39; £0.85) at J. A. Hofmann Nachfolger in Würzburg, Germany. I haven’t seen it in any other brick and mortar shop yet, but I have seen several online shops that sell this notepad.
The company
Despite the British-sounding name Oxford belongs to Groupe Hamelin, a French manufacturer of paper and stationery with roots that go back to 1864 and with plants in nine countries.
Rhodia Oxford Carrefour
Just like the Rhodia and the Carrefour notepads this notepad is made in France and just like the Rhodia and the Carrfour notepad, the Oxford notepad is held together by a staple, too, and features a orange fold-around cover. The notepad is available in the same common formats – the one on the photo is the 74 x 105mm version.
The paper
The paper feels less yellow and more purple than the Rhodia paper and less grey than the Carrefour paper. The grid printed on the paper is similar to the one on Rhodia paper, much less blurry than the Carrefour grid. The paper feels very smooth – no wonder the name of the paper has satiné in it.
It is a fantastic paper for fountain pens and ink, the inks I tried don’t show through on the reverse side at all, even though one of the nibs was rather wet. For pencils it is a different matter though. The paper is so smooth that the graphite from the point of the pencil doesn’t seem to want to stick to it as much as on most other paper. As a result the line from the pencil feels slightly lighter than on other paper. Lines also feel lighter than on the previously discussed Oxford Black n’ Red polynote notepad. Both Oxford products use Optik Paper, but the Black n’ Red’s paper has a density of 90 g/m², compared to the orange notepad’s 80 g/m². Just as with the Black n’ Red it is also easy to erase graphite from the Rhodia-style notepad’s paper, but there is a chance that you will still be able to see the indentation where the pencil line used to be.
Price and exchange rates: April 2012
As mentioned in the Black n’ Red blog post Hamelin / Oxford doesn’t react to query sent through their web site’s “Contact Us” form, therefore I’m unable to provide more information about the Optik Paper used.
In a previous blog post from 2010 I had a look at Banditapple’s notebooks (carnets). What happened since then? Banditapple released a few limited edition carnets. Another interesting development is that the manufacturing process of the next generation of Banditapple carnets uses less chlorine while VOCs were reduced, too … and the new version of these notebooks is out. The current generation (2G) of notebooks is available in three colours: Gingerbread, Manuka Honey and Finland Pine.
Since I’ve been very happy with the 1G carnets and use them regularly at work I asked Arnie, the man behind Banditapple, whether I can order a few of the 2G carnets directly from him as he does not have an online shop yet. To cut a long story short, in the end he send me four of the new notebooks and I only had to pay the postage (€5, ~$6.65; £4.20). The package he sent to me last year only took a few days to arrive, but unfortunately it wasn’t treated very well by one of the postal services involved. Luckily, after storing the maltreated 2G carnets under some heavy books, they were (nearly) back in shape. I specifically asked for the tablet sized notebooks as I find this to be the most suitable size for daily use, at least for my purposes.
The peewee sized notebooks (9×14 cm) are ₩2500 each (~£1.40; $2.20; €1.70).
The tabled sized notebooks (13×12 cm) are ₩4000 each (~£2.30; $3.60; €2.70).
CdA edelweiss, Stabile LeftRight, Staedtler Wopex, M&G AMP33701 and Pelikan Souverän 605 on a 2G carnet
The new notebooks are still sewn, not stapled and the cover is still made from coloured paper, something I like very much as this enables me to label the notebooks using a white pencil1. The paper quality of the 2G carnets is possibly even better than the quality of the previous generation. It copes very well with ink and I cannot think of a paper that is better in terms of erasing graphite without leaving traces.
1G Hanoi Red (used) and the new 2G colours
Conclusion
A great, but difficult to get notebook.
Prices and exchange rates: February 2012.
Paperandco, an online shop from Paris still has a few of the 1G carnets in Hanoi Red and Saigon Black in stock.
The official Banditapple website and blog can be found here.
This previous Bleistift blog post has more information about the 1G carnets.
You can find a review of the 2G carnets at Okami Whatever.
I would like to thank Arnie Kim for the Banditapple 2G carnets.
Work is keeping me more than busy, so wasn’t been an update to this blog for a while. I hope I’ll be able to switch back to weekly blog posts, but at the moment I am not too optimistic I will be able to do that. For now here is an update on my notebook:
Introduction
Out with the old, in with the new.
After I got rid of my old Brunnen Kompagnon A7 notebook last month I was looking for a new alternative. If you read the Kompagnon blog post you might remember that I had three favourites (Samsonite, Staufen and X17). More alternatives were suggested in the comments to the blog post, but the suggested notebooks were unfortunately bigger than A7 and therefore too big for my shirt pocket, so I ruled them out.
The X17
In the end I decided to get the X17 and am quite happy with it so far. I picked the Mode or ModeSkin version. X17 described the Mode version as being made from bonded/regenerated leather. One of the names this material is known by in Germany is Lefa (Lederfaserstoff – leather fibre). It is a very nice material and this version of the X17 notebook is also available in A7 size for two inlay booklets. Let me explain how it works with the booklets: the paper of the X17 isn’t glued to the cover, but is instead removable. You can buy covers, made form different materials, that can hold between two and four booklets. There is also a version for one booklet to be released soon. Booklets are available plain, ruled, squared, as a calendar plus there are a few rather unusual versions, too, e.g. for pilgrims or for teachers. I ordered 2 ruled and two squared inlay booklets. The squared version did, however, surprise me. While squared paper squares in most parts of Europe1 have sides of 5 mm length the X17 has sides of 2.5 mm length. To my surprise each page has a white border, too. I definitely would have preferred “standard” squared paper, but can live with this paper.
Overall I am quite happy with the X17 notebook.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Conclusion
Including shipping I paid €24.50 (~ $33.70; £21) for the two booklet version of the X17, this price includes the elastiX rubber bands, and four booklets. Not cheap, but not too expensive either, keeping in mind that the X17 feels very well made. I am sure I will be able to use it for many years to come, hopefully longer than than the Brunnen Kompagnon.
Price: October 2011
Exchange rates: November 2011