A recent post on composition books received a relatively large amount of attention. I thought it might be interesting for some to see the “Hilroy exercise book”, which has always been widely used in Canadian schools.

The map on the cover is a little different that the one I grew up, as it now incorporates Nunavut Territory:

Nothing fancy, but I’m sure they bring back memories for many.

See also:

Flickr photo of an old Hilroy office

Official Hilroy website (Slow to load, but contains a nice company timeline.)

Quo Vadis Canada has kindly sent pencil talk a few back to school themed items. Let’s take a look at them over the rest of the week.

First, we have the Rhodia Leatherette Holder. In an attractive orange that matches the famous stapled notepads, the refillable cover protects the No. 11 pads.

The cover itself has Rhodia’s famous logo embossed, and is a nice way to protect and house a pad.

The cover was quickly appropriated by a family member who is making daily use of it!

One more thing. QVC also sent a large black version for the No. 13 pad, which will be given away via random draw. (The photo below shows the sealed item.) To enter the draw, just leave a comment on this post before Thursday, August 26, 20:00EDT. Thank you Quo Vadis Canada!

The Draw

Following the same method as used in the previous draw, we have …
>>> random.randint(1,41)
12

The 12th commenter, k, is the winner! k, I will contact you by email. The package will be sent by Canada Post. Thank you very much to Quo Vadis Canada for supplying this great item!

These books are single signatures of 50 pieces of paper, sewn and folded in half, creating 100 sheets. The cover is cardboard and fabric. The standard dimensions are 190mm/7.5″ width, 247mm/9.75″ height.

The Mead Composition seems to be the classic. Also shown here are a few others that I found at a university bookstore. They are:

Mead Composition, MeadWestvaco Corporation, made in Vietnam
Environotes Recycled Comp Book, Roaring Springs Paper Products, made in USA
100% Recycled Composition Book, Top Flight, made in Taiwan
New Leaf Composition, New Leaf products, made in Brazil

All except the Mead proclaim the use of partial or majority recycled materials. The Environotes stands out slightly with the muted colour scheme, square corners, and 80 (rather than 100) sheets. The New Leaf book easily had the brightest paper.

All have tables for class schedules on the front inside covers. The back inside covers have “useful information”, mainly weight and distance measurement conversions. The Mead is alone in having a grammar section.

I have to note something about the price: each is $C4.29. The same bookstore sells a large Moleskine notebook for $C21.00. (Right now, one Canadian dollar is $US0.96 or €0.78.) They are not the same products at all – but the almost fivefold price difference surprised me.

The Mead composition book may in fact be magnitudes more successful than fancier fare. It doesn’t have an active PR department or online marketing team; it does seem to have wide distribution, being available in big box office supply stores, the stationery corners of department stores, and even the small university bookstore I visited.

Some online reviews suggest these books are not great with fountain pens or fibre tipped pens. I won’t dispute that. But trying a nice pencil, there is no problem at all. That is a typical pencil advantage – many paper types accept graphite quite easily.

I like the fancy brands, but the composition book still seems appealing for many purposes.

What do you think?

Letts of London have origins dating back to 1796. Today a part of the Letts Filofax Group Ltd. (notably the owner of Yard-O-Led), such an established brand is amazing to contemplate. How many of today’s new brands will be around in two hundred years?

The name is among the most known in the stationery field. I’m not sure of their worldwide market, but the association with diaries and datebooks (at least in Canada) is historically very strong. Do you know Letts?

A past post mentioned a trip to Laywine’s. One of the items I found was a general purpose squared black notebook, the noteletts L5:squares.

Not a standard size, the hardcover notebook offers 192 pages of cream colour 172mm x 232mm paper with 5mm squared ruling. Though less common as a notebook size, it is almost exactly the same size as many hardcover books, and is fine with me.

The notebook was wrapped in plastic and very reasonably priced at $12.95 – much less than many products from competitors.

There was a big surprise, and I didn’t discern this before removing the plastic – it has a linen fabric cover. I would never have bought the notebook had I known this, as linen books strike me as being hard to maintain. I imagine dust and day to day activities overwhelming this type of cover. Maybe I am wrong. Are you a user of linen covered notebooks?

The individual pages feature a nice place to write the date.

They also have that dreaded branding.

The endpapers are grey, and the back has a pocket. Long term lime storage not recommended.

Not perfect for me, but definitely a nice product that was reasonably priced.

A previous post mentioned a successful stationery shopping trip. One of the brands I picked up was “doane paper”. I had definitely heard of these fine folks via The Pen Addict. The Addict uses doane paper in all his reviews. It may be an addiction. The paper’s grid combines traditional lined ruling with squared (graph paper) ruling.

While the doane paper website offers online ordering, the economics of their flat rate shipping to Canada aren’t too appealing to potential customers who just want to try a pad of paper. It may make sense for large orders.

So count me lucky in that I stumbled across one of their few brick and mortar retailers – Laywine’s in Toronto. I picked up packages of the 8.25″x11.75″ and 5″x8″ paper pads and the 3.5″x5.5″ stapled notebook. (1″ = 25.4mm, and I’ll continue to use Imperial measurements here because they turn out to be integral to the product format.)

The paper immediately struck me as appealing in design, as well as offering a nice heft. What I wasn’t so pleased with were the thin cardboard backing and the bright shiny blue top section. The thin back means the pad can only be used on a desk or other solid surface, and the super glossy blue section struck me as being a distraction.

While the paper and layout are very nice, there are a lot of elements that are so “just right” that I have to presume they are the results of careful and thoughtful design.

The paper pattern in based on 1/8^th inch squares rendered in fine blue ink. The small pad is 36 squares wide and 54 squares long.

Let’s note two paper design items here:

First, the smaller squares are almost unique. 5mm squares are a stationery norm, from high end Clairefontaine and Rhodia to generic office supply store paper, and the 1/8^th inch (about 3.2mm) squares, with fine line rendering, have much more of a precision engineering look and feel.

Second, the squares are contained, and don’t bleed to the edges (see the top two photos). This addresses another problem – quadrille/square/graph paper almost always has the issue of randomness of the application of the ruling pattern. Even Exacompta Record Cards have this issue. (Japanese manufacturers such as Correct seem to have solved the problem, and can consistently apply the square pattern across a given paper format.)

What this means is that is that the grid layout looks more centered and even more precise than almost any other paper most of us typically handle. The doane paper pad appears so precise and exact because it uses smaller squares, and because the squares don’t bleed to the edge.

Next, every third horizontal line is thicker – these are the normal horizontal rules of most paper. The number of vertical squares (54) is of course is divisible by three, so that there are 18 normal ruled sections created by the 17 thick rules.

The pièce de résistance is the thick red vertical margin rule. Something in me says it should be six squares in to balance the three squares of the thick horizontal rule section in a 2:1 ratio. But of course it shouldn’t be! It is five squares in – for a 5:3 ratio, approximating the golden mean.

The 5×8 pad in particular, which has 50 perforated sheets, with a detached sheet being 5×7.25, really is a compelling offering.

The large pad, which I also like, is 62 squares wide and 84 squares long. The margin line is seven squares in.

The above stated, I’m neither a designer nor a design critic. I was taken with the paper and wanted to try and learn what elements made it so interesting and special. I hope some or much of the analysis is correct.

The ‘utility notebook’ was less interesting to me. The cover is very thin, making it unideal as a travel companion. As well, the graph bleeds to the edge and there are no red margin lines – all the elements which seemed most interesting in the pads are absent in the notebook.

There are other formats as well, but I didn’t see them at Laywine’s.

Now the paper itself seems to handle graphite really well. The sturdy bright white paper and blue lines combine very well with graphite – either ceramic or polymer. A super high quality pencil like the Tombow Mono Mark Sheet just pops on the paper.

I recently used the small pad to help prepare for a presentation, and I found the format to promote conscious, organized note taking. Speaking to an audience, where content and time management are parallel tasks, was a challenge ably addressed by this format. I said to myself, “Content goes on the lines, timing and technical notes on the grid”. I really didn’t have to think about it – it just worked.

For many readers of this blog, I think doane paper is well worth examining. Have you seen it?

Between online selling and big box stores, many types of smaller businesses are feeling the pinch today. The independent stationery store is unfortunately a relic in many places. One exception may be New York City. (See these posts at Pocket Blonde. New York looks great!)

One way of fighting back is to move up the food chain and specialize in higher profit areas like custom stationery or fountain pens. Yet even that is getting tougher as online selling grows. I often read that the Lamy Safari is a great $20 fountain pen. But every retailer in Canada that I’m aware of charges between $42 and $46 for this pen. At $46 plus 13% sales tax, that is $C51.98 (or $US51.08 at today’s rate). So is it a great $51 pen? And just where is it sold for $20? Well, online. Yes, it might actually be $21 or $25 plus shipping, but that’s still nowhere near $51.

So you can see the challenge that a brick and mortar retailer might have. Now think about $200 vs $500 for a pen. (I think this ratio continues to hold up, from what I’ve observed.)

Laywine’s is a store in Toronto that I recently visited. I think they’ve found one good way of competing with online retailers – by comprehensively stocking a broad array of all these brands that we see promoted online. In fact they had many products that I’ve not previously heard of, despite my keeping up with several stationery websites and blogs.

I’m not mentioning looseleaf paper, agendas, fancy journals, or correspondence oriented stationery – and trust me, they have plenty of items in those categories as well.

So let me mention some of the notebook brands and items they have:

Clairefontaine and Rhodia – they’ve always stocked these brands, and comprehensively – the Rhodia pads from the tiny jotters to (my favourite) the mighty A3 sized No. 38. The ring-bound Clairings and Pollen paper and new tobacco-coloured (age bag) 9cm x 14cm formats were standouts for me.

Moleskine – This store was selling this brand when they had fuzzy faux animal print covers and we thought they were made in Italy. They still have a full line, including the new A3 and A4 formats.

Field Notes – Here it starts to get interesting. Laywine’s has this brand in regular and “special edition” formats. I bought an orange pack and three-colour pack. Much cheaper than mail order as well.

Doane Paper – another brand that I associated with online marketing. I learned of them from the reviews at the Pen Addict blog. I wasn’t aware that they had a retail presence. I walked away with several formats (and wish I had bought more).

Behance – we’ve looked at Behance in the past. Laywine’s again has the full range, as far as I could tell.

Letts – I was not aware of a new notebook line from this established name, and picked up a notebook in a very pleasing and unusual dimension. (172mm x 232mm).

Leuchtturm – there were even more formats here than I’ve seen for sale online (including thick/thin versions and dotted/lattice versions).

Canteo – the first time I’ve seen this fantastic Swiss brand at retail. (I love the 4mm grey squared paper.) The offerings were limited, but they said that more is on the way.

Whitelines – Apart from the many versions I’ve already seen, they had hardcover and glued pad formats that were new to me.

Miquelrius – I’m afraid this was my biggest disappointment. All the Miquelrius notebooks I saw (some in a pleasing composition book format) looked poorly finished, and I’ll have to wait to try out their line.

Apica – another line that Laywine’s has stocked for several years.

There are other Japanese brands they stock, but whose names I’m not sure I can accurately identify.

So by bringing all these brands together, this store is creating a powerful and compelling counterforce to online ordering. They’re benefitting from the online hype without selling online. And, what a great store it is! The photo shows some of my purchase.

I don’t think any single online source has such an array – Clairefontaine, Rhodia, Moleskine, Canteo, Leuchtturm, Apica, Rhodia, Field Notes, Doane Paper, Behance, Letts, Whitelines, Miquelrius, Apica, all side by side.

So if you happen to visit Toronto and like stationery, I do recommend a stop at Laywine’s. Maybe there is a great stationer in your locale that you’d like to recommend?

Internet sensation Field Notes probably need no introduction. Seen here with another agrarian rooted stationery supply – the bullet pencil – the notebooks are quirky, fun, and useful.

What they don’t tell you is that these alternate versions like “Just Below Zero” don’t just have different colour covers – they have different colour rulings!

To all those celebrating, have a great Christmas!

A collection of twenty rolls of masking tape from mt masking tape of Japan.

The tape itself is an amazing gift that delights.

The ability to reinvent an everyday item so that it can bring smiles, laughter, and enjoyment, is humbling.

I asked Leuchtturm about this, and the ruling differences represent different generations of the product, not regional variations. The light rules are the new format, and are being introduced first in Canada and the US.

My thanks to Leuchtturm for their assistance.

Talk about long accordion folds of paper! The Moleskine Project Planner is essentially a long zig-zag folded piece of paper inside the familiar Moleskine exterior – black cover, elastic band, pocket inside the back cover.

I would say it is very unusual, presenting a linear unbroken view of the calendar year.

There are some problems, and I’m not sure how to make best use of it. Each day’s numeral has eleven rectangles below it – each of which is 6mm (horizontal) by 10mm (vertical). This isn’t enough space to write anything – maybe just a single character or a check mark. Presumably you would need a pre-existing colour or notation scheme to chart or record something.

The reverse side does have an alternate calendar view with a 3.5mm ruled line that could take very small writing.

The reverse also has various “helpful” items such as international holidays. There is an error in the Canadian listing, which undermines my confidence in the other presented information.

Even if it is called a “project planner”, I can see the format being quite good for tracking personal information such as a budget or diet.

It has also made me think about this paper format – I’m wondering about where one could buy accordion folded thick paper. Moleskine’s Japanese Album is another product that I’ve always thought of as a sketchbook, and now realize could be quite useful for project planning.

The product is just somehow pleasantly clever.

Here are two Leuchtturm notebooks. One sourced in Canada, one in France.

Leuchtturm (meaning “lighthouse”) is a German philately and numismatic supply company founded in 1917. Among their offerings are specialty supplies for collectors – a particular item I find very intriguing is an album for collecting the metal capsules that crown Champagne corks! Who knew? And who retains that sort of collecting determination after downing a bottle of Champagne?

These are pocket sized notebooks with hard covers. They have an elastic enclosure band, a page marker ribbon, and a pocket inside the back cover.

They also have a feature that I love – numbered pages and a blank index section! This is a great solution to the problem of finding what one has written down. Plus, the numbers look like they belong, using the same font and ink colour as the rest of the text. There are laboratory and accounting notebooks with this feature, but many that I’ve seen appear as if they were stamped via a separate and unrelated printing process.

So congratulations, Leuchtturm. Page numbering is one of those little things which makes all the difference. For me, it’s a great benefit because I do write down things that I want to quickly retrieve later.

Here’s what I’m puzzling about. My two notebooks have a number of differences:

- Both are 90×150mm, but the Canadian one has 185 pages, while the French one has 187 pages. The interiors are physically the same, but the arrangement of blank pages around the index varies.

- The French version is stamped Leuchtturm 1917 Agenda, while the Canadian version is simply “Leuchtturm 1917″.

- The last eight pages of the Canadian version are detachable (starting at page 171), while 32 pages of the French version are detachable (starting at page 125).

- The French version came with 60 sticky notes on a card that fits nicely in the back pocket. The card’s back side has a ruler, and some unit conversion tables – a nice touch.

- The page lining imprint is remarkably different. Though the same pattern, The Canadian version is subtle and faint, while the French version is strong and bold. It’s hard to say if it’s just a difference between print runs.

In either variant, they are nice notebooks. Leuchtturm has other sizes, as well as a lattice or dotted grid format that I’ll show another day. I’ve been using a Graf von Faber-Castell pencil in the Canadian version for a few days, and have encountered no problems.

[Update: December 2, 2009]
I asked Leuchtturm about this, and the ruling differences represent different generations of the product, not regional variations. The light rules are the new format, and are being introduced first in Canada and the US.

My thanks to Leuchtturm for their assistance.