A Funkaoshi Production

Field Notes

   2 October 2007, early morning

My Field Notes finally arrived by way of one Tyler Rooney. When the notebooks were first announced shipping to Canada was stupid expensive, something like $19.50 for 3 day shipping. Now, I’d be cool with paying that much if the notebooks came with a picture of Mr. Coudal himself stuffing my notebooks into an envelope, but since it didn’t seem like this was the case, I asked Tyler to buy me a pack and send them to me. Of course, checking the web site now, I can see that shipping to Canada is now a much more reasonable $4.75. (Mind you, this is still 50% of the price of the notebooks themselves, so you really should commit and just buy 27.) I suppose that’s a long digression on shipping.

The notebooks themselves are quite nice. Their closest competitor would be the Moleskine Cahier notebooks, which are also a thin cardboard covered notebooks filled with nice paper. The differences between them are slight, so it’s probably a matter of taste more than anything else that will decide which brand you opt for.

• The Moleskine Cahiers are bound with string, while the Field Notes are stapled. I think the string is nicer, but i’m not sure that really makes any difference. I’ll need to use the Field Notes for a while to see if the staples fall apart.
• The Moleskines are also devoid of any branding, save for an embossed Moleskine logo on the back. The Field Notes have writing all over the front and back covers: the logo, details of the notebooks themselves, space to write your name and other details, and ideas for what to do with the books. I like all the Futura, but the blank canvas of the Moleskine leaves you room to be creative.
• The grid paper in the Field Notes is nicer than the lined paper of my Moleskine. That’s my completely unscientific take on things. The Moleskine paper is much more yellow, and the lines are a light somewhat thick gray. The Field Notes paper is much more white, with a thin brown grid. I think this is a big plus for the Field Notes.
• The Moleskine has slightly more paper, 64 pages vs. the Field Notes’ 48. The last 16 sheets in the Moleskine are perforated so you can pull them out.

I’m definitely impressed with the Field Notes. They are quite nice. If you are looking for nice small notebooks to write junk in they are probably worth taking a look at. Hopefully they start selling them in stationary shops soon.

[ed. I need to add a rabid consumer category to this site.]

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