Design notebook suggestions?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=751100

by mechanician • 17 years ago

25 27 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What do you guys use for design and or sketch books? I know everyone seems to love moleskins, but frankly they've broken down on me in the past. I also like having larger size sheets of paper to work with.

fogus• 17 years ago

I LOVE the Rediform composition notebooks. Model 53-108 60pgs. They can be had on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Rediform-AVE53-108-RED53108-Compositio...

icco• 17 years ago

I just use a legal pad. They work great for design, not really sketches though.

It really depends on what you are doing though. I use a graphpaper spiral bound book in my bag for long term ideas and designs and then the legal pad for working with people and sharing designs.

warwick2• 17 years ago

My big problem with a legal pad was throwing it into my bag tended to destroy the top one or two pages.

maggie• 17 years ago

I've had that problem, too. I generally leave the top 2 pages empty and blank for that reason.

leif• 17 years ago

spiral bound blank pages, preferably on the heavier side of medium weight

jackcheng• 17 years ago

The Behance dot grid books are great for layout sketches: http://www.creativesoutfitter.com/

Konigi graph paper looks decent for wireframing: http://konigi.com/tools/overview

As do Whiteline books (you can buy them off Amazon): http://www.whitelines.se/en/

I personally use and recommend Muji recycled ring notebooks. They're relatively cheap and excellent for quick sketches/journaling: http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/note/recycled-paper-note...

For me, anything that'll let me get my ideas on paper as quickly and effortlessly as possible is the way to go. As long as the notebook doesn't get in the way, it's perfect.

weaksauce• 17 years ago

Those whitelines notebooks are a great hack on the traditional lined paper. I like the structure of lined paper but dislike how the drawn lines on the papers lines make it hard to see. Great find!

cdr• 17 years ago

Cute idea, but $9 for a basic A6 notebook? Eesh.

al3x• 17 years ago

A Behance dot grid notebook was with me at every meeting until it ran out of pages. I recently replaced it with a Whitelines notebook, which I like even better.

reg4c• 17 years ago

The best one that I have used so far is a spiral bound deck of A4 sheets of paper with a hard cover. A bit heavier paper works best.

Benefits: - Cheap - Fully customizable - If you cannot find them then make them

aharrison• 17 years ago

Just this morning I literally wandered around Staples for an hour pondering this exact question. Staples might not be the prime place to look, but it was the best I had.

Anyway, my requirements were thus: it had to be reorganizable (e.g. your standard three clip binder), it had to be relatively small (I want to carry it around in a small messenger bag or even better my versipack) and it had to be amazingly simple (lined paper only, no calendar, no pockets, no special latches).

Long story short: every notebook I looked at was absolutely idiotic in some fashion or another. The reogranizable requirement limited me to like half a dozen. The simple limited me down to basically two: a standard 1/2" binder or one of these new fangled "rolla" notebooks, which are absolutely horribly designed. I ended up going with a simple 1/2" binder, a bunch of paper, and the hope that eventually someone will solve this problem acceptably so I can have a reorganizable notebook.

The main benefit of the 1/2" binder is it small: keep only what you need, but keep it with you as often as possible. Insight comes at odd times, and if you keep your goals in the binder they will get revisited often, solidifying them in your mind.

Hope that helps.

diiq3• 17 years ago

I bind my own. It takes some time, but the result is a notebook that has the paper I want in it, that lays flat so I can use all of every page (I'm a lefty), and that I don't spend too much money on.

Moleskines are $$ for a pile of paper. A few minutes and an upholstery needle and I have graph paper, light-weight blank, and watercolor paper bound together just the way I like it.

superjared• 17 years ago

Any advice on how to get started on a DIY notebook?

diiq3• 17 years ago

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/book/ and http://briansawyer.net/craft/bookbinding/

Note that these are tutorials for reasonably archival binding; good for 300 years. You only need your nodebook to stay bound for a month, until it's full of your distilled brilliance, and then you file it. So if you don't have a binding frame, that's OK. A couple boards and a hand-clamp will do 'ya.

Hostile• 17 years ago

Just out of curiosity, got any pictures of these? Making my own notebook is something I've considered ever since exploring my pocket notebook options. Your comment might be the thing that gets me off the fence.

diiq3• 17 years ago

Nah, they're pretty dull; the coverboards are usually a clean piece of pizza-box or a bit of used matteboard. I'll take a pick this afternoon, if you like.

warwick2• 17 years ago

Personally I use an artists sketchbook with big pages, heavy paper and a thick cover. It's too heavy, but the contents are safe and the paper is of the right texture and unlined.

I generally pick them up at University bookstores where they tend to be cheap (~$10).

rflrob• 17 years ago

I just use a plain old $1 graph-paper composition book for all my notes and such. I find them to be much more durable long-term than spiral bound notebooks, which inevitably seem to end up with the cover just barely hanging on.

zandorg• 17 years ago

I got a A5 and A6 spiral hardback-bound notebook from Wilkos in the UK. Each with durable paper, 100 pages, about 70 pence (about 1 dollar).

dan_the_welder• 17 years ago

If you want to roll your own most full service copy shops offer several types of binding.

Before I got a tablet/ebook reader I would regularly print out documentation and get it 'perfect bound' with a heavy card stock cover sheet.

Kaya• 17 years ago

For the past decade I have been using (faux) leather bound, grid ruled scientific notebooks, first from BookFactory (http://www.bookfactory.com/) and then from Scientific Notebook Company (http://snco.com/).

These lab books are designed to document work for patent purposes, but I find that they are great for all manner of design and implementation writing.

Unlike the cheap shit you find almost anywhere else, the bindings are incredibly durable, and you can lay them flat, like a spiral notebook. You can paste printouts directly into some of the larger versions. The quality of the paper is very high. For a small fee, you can have your name embossed on the cover in gold leaf.

patrickg-zill2• 17 years ago

Thanks for the snco link, that looks exactly like what I was looking for!

patrickg-zill2• 17 years ago

Go to Borders, get the Moleskine knock-offs made by Piccadilly. I found myself migrating to the larger size instead of the roughly 3x5 inch small ones.

joe_bleau• 17 years ago

I like Eureka Lab Book (http://www.eurekalabbook.com/). Lots of variety, including waterproof and class 10 cleanroom.

zeckalpha• 17 years ago

http://doanepaper.com/

hs• 17 years ago

back in uni, engineering paper (the green with squares) was expensive so ... i made my own.

it's really simple, just fire up spreadsheet and resize the rows and cols respectively, then border them.

edwardog• 17 years ago

Field Notes + the Marvy Le Pen [http://www.lythastudios.com/marvy/] for walking around and making notes with.

Rhodia [http://www.rhodiapads.com/] and Whitelines [http://www.whitelines.se/en/] are great for sit-down work.

Design notebook suggestions?

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