[HN Gopher] Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered t...
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Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era
Author : samclemens
Score : 67 points
Date : 2024-09-04 16:26 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| TheChaplain wrote:
| Moleskine is nice, but have you ever tried Leuchtturm1917?
| neom wrote:
| Not sure why, however in high humidity, Leuchtturm pages stick
| together much more frequently where moleskine do not at all.
| bloopernova wrote:
| The A4 hardback with square dotted paper is really nice. Before
| I moved my notes into text files, I used to put _everything_
| into mine. Work notes, sketches, plans, etc etc. Leuchtterm
| make gorgeous notebooks.
| ashton314 wrote:
| Leuchtturm1917 is so much better for fountain pens: the paper
| is smooth and the ink doesn't feather. The numbered pages are a
| great touch.
| ano-ther wrote:
| They're ok, but I prefer the slightly smaller format of
| Moleskine that strangely only they seem to make.
|
| It's astonishing how much these branded notebooks cost. They
| must have great margins, not just Moleskine as described in the
| article.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> From 2005, Leuchtturm.. took on Moleskine, matching them for
| quality.. older companies like Clairefontaine, Rhodia, and
| Paperblanks refreshed their offerings. Western hipsters, always
| alert to high-end Japanese design, started to import notebooks
| from companies like Midori, Hobonichi, and Stalogy, which bested
| any of the European brands with their exquisite papers and
| bindings (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese
| paper). In the US, Field Notes struck a utilitarian chord with a
| mid-century aesthetic. All presented a fresh spin on the basic
| product, and all benefited from the product building that
| Moleskine had done._
|
| Stalogy has thin paper with minimal bleed, enabling small
| notebooks with more pages for writing and reference.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper)
|
| I guess us Europeans can't even make paper anymore... I hope
| one day it'll be widely obvious to everyone that the true
| architects of our impoverishment are these CEOs who organized
| the offshoring of all our supply chain. But in the mean time
| we'll probably keep on blaming migrants for a while.
| FredPret wrote:
| That cannot be true:
|
| 1) A class of people (here it is "the CEOs") consistently
| behaving a certain way over time can only be explained by one
| of two things: a conspiracy (unstable; almost impossible to
| pull off), or their behavior is shaped by the reality facing
| them
|
| 2) if CEOs consistently offshore manufacturing over decades,
| this must be because it's most profitable to do so. This must
| then be because people elsewhere can make more widgets per
| dollar / euro of wages, or we're back to conspiracy theories
|
| 3) If workers elsewhere can make widgets cheaper, it's either
| because they're further along in industrializing and have
| more automation (not the case here) or because they do more
| work for less money. The blame here is not with the CEO's,
| and indeed not with the rich workers either, because they've
| evolved past that point
|
| 4) The rich workers should now switch to working at a higher
| level of abstraction - knowledge work. This way low-wage work
| gets offshored or automated or ideally both, consumer prices
| stay low, and wages go up.
|
| If you failed at step 4, that's because it's really hard.
|
| Adapting to the post-industrial paradigm is easier with a
| young population and a culture that celebrates change,
| neither of which is common or easy to maintain.
|
| "The CEOs" and "the politicians" are not to blame if the
| entire system isn't working.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> their behavior is shaped by the reality facing them_
|
| Yes, e.g. public policy.
|
| See tariffs and subsequent relocation of some manufacturing
| from China to SE Asia. Or export controls on ASML and other
| technology.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > "The CEOs" and "the politicians" are not to blame if the
| entire system isn't working.
|
| Yes they are. The CEOs and the boards are choosing to focus
| on maximizing short term profit over the wellbeing of the
| people in the countries they operate. That's a choice.
|
| And the politicians are directly responsible for setting up
| the rules under which such systems develop. That they allow
| companies to offshore to other countries and pay the people
| there much lower wages than the employees they fired is a
| choice. That they let them pollute in other countries in
| order to not pay for it is a choice, see the EU's border
| adjustment for the carbon pricing.
| FredPret wrote:
| Both the politicians and the CEOs are only successful in
| direct proportion to how well the public responds to
| their decisions - buying their stuff, voting for their
| party.
|
| The public wanted cheap imported products, and so now
| that's what we have.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| 1) True.
|
| 2) True, but maximizing short-term profit for a company
| doesn't necessarily imply maximizing long-term profit for
| society as a whole.
|
| 3) Ditto.
|
| 4) Is just an opinion, it's far from proven that abandoning
| physical goods manufacturing can work for every country.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Rhodia and Leuchtturm, and probably others, also have better
| paper than Moleskine... this is especially noticeable as a
| fountain pen user.
|
| I'm locked into Moleskine, though: I started using them around
| 20 years ago, when there wasn't so much competition in the
| market (or at least not where I lived) and also their paper was
| better than now. And now I have a long row of them in a shelf,
| which keeps slowly growing. And they are slightly smaller than
| other brands (Moleskine pocket notebooks are 90 x 140 mm,
| Leuchtturm 90 x 150, Rhodia 95 x 140, Stalogy I've never used
| but from Google search it seems to be 105 x 148). So if I
| switched brand, the new ones would stick out like a sore thumb.
|
| If anyone knows a brand with better paper but the same size as
| Moleskine pocket notebooks, I would be grateful.
| neom wrote:
| "Do you know there's a section of our customer base that buys a
| fresh Moleskine every time they come into a store? We have no
| idea what they do with them"
|
| I give them out. I have far too many moleskine's yet I still buy
| one every time I'm in a store with them... I just can't stand
| seeing someone using a crap notebook. So when someone I like
| comes into my office and they're using some free shit they got as
| swag from salesforce or w/e, I give them a moleskine and a F-701.
| wslh wrote:
| I prefer notebooks with rings at the top (A5 or A6). I think
| being left-handed also plays a role in this preference, as it
| makes writing more comfortable for me.
| soapdog wrote:
| Rhodia makes some good ones like that and so does Field Notes.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I personally prefer Rhodia notepads and notebooks: I prefer the
| stark whiteness of the paper, the smoother paper, and the 5mm dot
| grid. Moleskine's marketing is simply too aggressive: they don't
| sell notebooks, they sell an aesthetic.
|
| I'm not going to claim to be above such marketing tactics: I'm
| definitely not. But Moleskine's claim to sell authentic Parisian
| notebooks used by struggling authors is such obvious bullshit.
|
| It reminds me of the 'Original Australian Ugg Boot Company',
| which is an American business that tried to trademark the name of
| a generic product made by countless Australian businesses from
| offcuts of sheepskin. Just as everyone in the southern half of
| Australia has a pair of Ugg boots (but only Bogans will wear them
| in public), so those famous authors used moleskine notebooks:
| they're not good quality products; they're just ubiquitous and
| cheap.
| Simorgh wrote:
| I have also used Rhodia notebooks in the past. I think they are
| manufactured in France. Which for me is a plus since one
| assumes the manufacturing process is kinder and to a high
| standard.
|
| Rhodia pricing is also really good!
| vr46 wrote:
| Leuchtturm paper bleeds like a napkin, so hopeless. Moleskine
| works. Hobonichi rules.
| ashton314 wrote:
| What are you writing with?
|
| I write with a Lamy Al-Star EF nib and use take-sume black ink
| from Pilot; Leuchtturm doesn't bleed at all; doesn't feather
| either. Moleskine doesn't work nearly as well for fountain pens
| --too much feathering.
| vr46 wrote:
| Capless EF, Diamine Red Dragon. We cannot be talking about
| the same books, my friend ordered one and found the same
| problem, not sure what they were using. Bled badly with a
| Pilot C4, as well.
| mihaic wrote:
| Honestly, I now think most people with a Moleskin are doing it
| primarily for show. They do have nice quality paper, so it's not
| really a bad choice, only could be better depending on what your
| exact needs are.
|
| For work I ended at Maruman Mnemosyne and I'm always happy with
| them. It's a Japanese brand with great paper, nice ergonomics of
| easily fitting a pen in their spire and plenty of combinations of
| size and grid pattern.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I got a Moleskine because it seemed to be the nicest thing
| available in the bookstore when I needed a notebook. Got a
| small one with fire red cover to write my scratch codes.
|
| (The hope is that whenever I am actually locked out of my
| accounts and need to find a scratch code in panic, that red
| notebook is gonna catch my eye faster than any other colour.)
| mihaic wrote:
| In most bookstores a Moleskine really is the best brand
| available, so I completely understand your choice. Good luck
| that you won't need to use the codes though.
| memset wrote:
| Fascinating! I myself am partial to the Muji lay flat notebooks.
|
| Question: how can I find a printer to make my own? I run a small
| business making staff paper notebooks. I want to make lay flat,
| thread + tape bound ones. How can I find a printer that can help
| me replicate? (I also want to launch a line of cheap mead-like
| notebooks, but similarly have trouble figuring out how to get
| those done.) most places will do spiral, wire-o, or saddle stitch
| with essentially copy paper but I'd like to be able to make these
| more specialized items.
| sgu999 wrote:
| Mind sharing more about your business? How did you end up doing
| that? Are you competitive at all on prices or are you mostly
| benefit from the fact that it's a local product for your niche
| market?
| memset wrote:
| themusiciansnotebook.com
|
| I'd paused it for the past couple of years but am bringing it
| back! Just scratching my own itch.
| minkles wrote:
| 100% agree with the muji ones. I buy the planner every year. I
| do most of my organisation and most of my thinking work on a
| hoard of a two foot thick slab of muji squared paper and enough
| gel pen refills to last 20 years.
| salamanderman wrote:
| Peter Pauper Press is my go to notebook. They aren't elegant in
| their simplicity like a Moleskin but they are lovely and very
| functional.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| My rule of thumb when reading a headline that says "How xx did
| yy." Is to always wonder "Did xx do yy?"
|
| There doesn't seem to be anything in the article to suggest that
| these particular notebooks are anything other than fashion
| accessories and Veblen goods, certainly nothing to suggest any
| kind of conquering of the "Digital Era".
| nyc111 wrote:
| I wasn't clear if they bought the "Moleskine" trademark, did
| they? Apparently the original company had been sold before.
| oezi wrote:
| I think the notebook itself is secondary to the system employed
| for note taking. For me bullet journaling changed what I do
| inside a notebook roughly 10 years ago. Today I have moved back
| to scratch-your-own-itch digital tool to manage a bullet journal
| with markdown syntax: https://github.com/coezbek/rodo
| threatofrain wrote:
| Ya'll may also want to check out Midori1, a favorite of the
| journaling community. There's also Northbooks2, a small American
| company. And Nanami Paper3 if you want to try out quality paper
| in the ultra-thin direction.
|
| [1]: https://md.midori-japan.co.jp/en/products/mdnote-cotton/
|
| [2]: https://gonorthbooks.com/
|
| [3]: https://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Note-Tomoe-River-
| Journal/dp/B073...
| drekipus wrote:
| Pretty much the only moleskine I got, and still use regularly. Is
| the A5 week to a page diary.
|
| I love that the right hand side of any opening is lined for free
| form writing. And the thing is small enough to fit in your
| pocket.
|
| Absolute game changer, I think I'm up to my fourth year in a row
| now.
|
| Other than that I have used lechturm1917, I really like the
| numbered pages, but I find it difficult to get in any local
| bookstore.
|
| Having the pocket diary has changed the way I do notes, so I'm
| finding I need it less and less.
|
| I'm using a pilot juice-it-up four coloured pen 0.4mm ATM and
| love it to bits, but the ink runs out way too fast. It would be
| lovely if someone made a pen that has such vivid colours end
| flows well without quickly emptying the tank
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I can only write with papermate felt tip. And I love me some
| dotted paper.
| austinl wrote:
| I'm curious about the main use-cases for physical notebooks from
| folks on HN. I love the idea of physical notebooks, but also have
| years of digital notes that are searchable and that I can access
| on any device. I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like
| the ability to access it anywhere.
|
| Has anyone made the switch from digital to physical and loved it?
| What kind of notes are you taking, how did you get it to stick?
| walterbell wrote:
| They are not mutually exclusive, in the era of ubiquitous
| cameras and handwriting recognition.
|
| Paper and physical notebooks offer motor memory and time delay
| before data ingestion by cloud analytics.
| gk1 wrote:
| For me the benefit is avoiding distractions while writing. I
| can't cmd+f to search my notes but I also can't cmd+tab to
| switch to my email tab.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I feel like I 'm in too deep with digital, and like the
| ability to access it anywhere._
|
| You can have both.
|
| My wife uses a smart pen that tracks her writing in her
| notebooks and creates searchable PDFs.
|
| Every couple of months she unloads it via Bluetooth into iCloud
| and the pages are available everywhere she is.
|
| She recently turned off the pen's built-in OCR after she found
| that macOS does a much better job of automatically OCRing the
| pages just by dropping the PDFs into the file system.
| siquick wrote:
| What's the name of this pen? Sounds incredibly useful
| reaperducer wrote:
| I don't know the brand. (She's traveling right now.) but I
| know it uses something called "N" notebooks.
|
| Checking Amazon just now shows that Moleskin has one of its
| own. But I don't know if that's hers.
| bc569a80a344f9c wrote:
| Might well be Lamy?
|
| https://us-shop.lamy.com/en_us/ncode-technology
|
| I didn't even know they were still around until recently.
| I always had Lamy fountain pens as a school kid, many,
| many years ago.
| zenexer wrote:
| I often go to Barnes & Noble to sit and work on my laptop with
| a coworker. They have nice seats, no shortage of reference
| material to settle debates, and happen to be in closer
| proximity to my office than a library.
|
| One cold winter day, as I was typing out a rough design for a
| major project, I decided it was just too tedious to work that
| way. My hands were cold, typing hurt, and my fingers couldn't
| keep up with my head. I was trying to track all sorts of
| interdependent services in my head.
|
| I got up, grabbed a notebook and pen from the shelves, and
| walked to the checkout counter. Coincidentally, both were
| Moleskine-branded, but to this day, I know nothing about the
| company. All I know is that it was far less frustrating to
| scribble crude diagrams on paper than it was to type them up.
|
| Once I got everything down on paper, I still had to type it
| all. The scribbles were barely legible to me, let alone the
| other people on my team.
|
| Pen and paper didn't replace digital; rather, they augmented
| it.
| patrickmay wrote:
| This is my experience as well. As PG notes in "Hackers and
| Painters", figuring out the architecture of a program is more
| like sketching than engineering. Scribbling in a notebook is
| more freeing than typing or diagramming on a laptop.
|
| Analog and digital are complementary.
| latexr wrote:
| I use physical notebooks for ephemeral information (i.e. todo
| lists and ideas). The problem with digital is its convenience:
| it can grow infinitely without affecting you. There's nothing
| to distinguish an old note and a recent one.
|
| A notebook's pages physically accumulate as they're written on.
| It forces me to acknowledge them. If I need to write something
| new and must skip ten sheets before I find a blank one (I rip
| out and throw away pages as they're done), it means there's a
| fair amount of unrealised stuff that I haven't gotten to. Time
| to reevaluate: read what's in there and decide what still needs
| to be in there and what realistically has passed its expiration
| date of relevance/excitement/importance and should be trimmed.
| drums8787 wrote:
| Been filling notebooks for years while also keeping pretty
| meticulous digital notes. Physical is mostly personal or ideas
| (sometimes for work). Digital is mostly work.
|
| I like to doodle and draw alongside note-taking and there's no
| substitute for analog there IMO. Plus, being able to write and
| not be on a device after a long day at work is a relief.
|
| Lack of search can be an issue. But then I sometimes create
| indexes to things like book notes or stuff I'm learning and
| that is a pleasure in itself.
|
| Also pairs well with a fountain pen & ink hobby.
| jim-jim-jim wrote:
| I have 14 years of personal journals and 7 years of
| programming/math/music notes. I can usually find old entries
| right away because it's much easier to remember where I was
| when I wrote it, and why. Part of it is the muscle memory of
| moving a pen, and part of it is because I would have to care
| enough about a topic to sit down and put ink to paper in the
| first place.
|
| A good deal of my technical notes are write-only anyway.
| Slowing down and jotting things once gave me all the
| understanding I've ever needed. This is less likely to happen
| with copy/paste.
|
| I think paper exercises your brain, while these fancy programs
| attempt to replace it.
| dayvid wrote:
| I'm a big fan of MUJI notebooks. Perfect for me on the cost-
| quality spectrum and they have blank paper options. I have some
| from high school that still held up.
| djbusby wrote:
| Here I am using the backs of paper from spammy paper mail (post)
| held together with a binder clip and the random pen I got from my
| recent visit to a bank.
|
| The price in these things seems a lot to me. But I also spent
| money on a Remarkable (which is nice too).
| sellmesoap wrote:
| I spend a fair bit of time out in the woods or on the water, I've
| become a huge fan of Write in the Rain products, along with
| Japanese made mechanical pencils. My writing and structure has
| improved a lot after volunteering with the local marine search
| and rescue crew. Having to write a lot of logging information for
| training and missions while cooping with the boat movement and
| weather adds extra challenge!
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