It’s a handsome spiral-bound sketchbook, with slightly-toothy paper that takes pencil well, and erases nicely. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it for the last few weeks, and I’m trying to work out why.

Impression

The book is attractive in a way that’s qualitatively different from a Moleskine. The matte rubberized cover feels nice, and the Helvetica Strong embossed on the cover tickles my inner modernist swiss-grid snob.

It’s a non-standard size, something not really shown well in the photo: Ten and a half inches by nine inches, minus the spiral binding. The odd size is a result of the notebook’s double perforation, on which more will be said later.

Grid

My inner demon is a swiss designer with a shaved head, twin degrees in graphic design and architecture, rimless glasses, a mechanical pencil tucked behind one ear, and an obsessive-compulsive fixation on the typographic grid. It’s like having Joseph Müller-Brockmann as your invisible friend, which is not as much fun as it sounds like.

What I am trying to get across is, I like grids for sketching.

For years, I’ve been sketching diagrams and ideas on index cards and moleskine pocket sketchbooks.

But that’s a pretty small area to sketch in, even when you use both pages. Worse, the grid itself is difficult to filter out; if you scan it, you can’t get rid of it. It’s as if the scaffolding on a building is welded on, impossible to remove, even once construction has been completed.

The dot grid book neatly does away with both complaints.

In an inked and scanned sketch, the dots can be faded right out with photoshop, without any loss of detail. What’s more, the larger format frees up a needless constraint. It’s like taking off a heavy, binding wool sweater, and feeling a looseness in your arms that you had forgotten was lost.

Bound

And now I have to talk about the perforation and spiral binding.

If you look closely at the photo above, you can see that each page has two perforations. One, next to the binding, gives you a tear-off page with holes for a three-ring binder. The other lets you tear off a page with no binder holes.

Brilliant.

And yet.

The spiral of the sketchbook is of a decent quality, not cheap or flimsy. It’s tight, which is generally a good thing — if you’re going to carry something around in a backpack or satchel, you don’t want the spiral to get mangled. The binding on mine is in perfect condition, as far as visual inspection is concerned. None of which prevents this from happening:

Argh.

Every time I open the sketchbook, the pages get hung up on some point in the spiral binding, and need to be carefully re-adjusted, so that the paper doesn’t tear along a perforation.

So far, this is a minor pain, something that’s worked around by mindful handling of the paper. But I live in dread of the day that I have a brainstorm, try to pop the sketchbook open, and riiiiiiiiiippp. I can envision a day where I have a half-dozen pages sliding out of the sketchbook whenever I open it, edges worn ragged by my backpack.

Love

Despite that gripe, I still love the book. Every other detail has been seen to with care; the weight and tooth of the paper are a delight. Soft pencil clings to the paper, and adjacent pages stay free of pencil marks. Anyone who has come back to an older sketchbook and found ghost images all over facing pages knows what I mean when I say that that, alone, is a small blessing.

So far, the perforations have held up, and I have some hope that when I’m past the first dozen pages, the weight of the collective pages being turned will protect it from damage. At least, that’s the case when I open the book to random pages in the middle. Still, it would be nice if the first few weeks of using the book weren’t so precarious.

And, again, the dot grid is a lovely innovation. It fades into the background behind a sketch, providing structure without overwhelming, one photoshop filter away from disappearing.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a workbook to sketch in, and you like a quadrille grid, you’ve found it. It’s perfect for the office, studio, or laptop case.

It is not a carry-everywhere thought capture tool, and doesn’t pretend to be. The spiral binding reduces the book’s portability, and it’s not exactly a convenient size for carrying around, so this isn’t a ubiquitous capture device. You want index cards or a pocket moleskine notebook for that.

But it is an excellent medium for expanding some rough ideas into sketches without advanced planning. With a paper sketchbook, you don’t have to worry about mode, like a computer forces you to: do I use OmniGraffle for this? Text? Maybe I should use Photoshop…

The Dot Grid book is a modeless interface, and the perforations and scanner-friendly grid means that whatever content you capture, it isn’t lost in an analog silo.

If you’re looking for a sketchbook, I’d advise you to at least give it a shot. At US$14.00 for a 50 page book, it’s a bit pricey, but worth it if you overuse your sketchbook as much as I do.

For example, I thought I was the interweb’s “index card guy.” But it seems I’m going to have to cede the title to Flickr user hawxexpress, whose photoset, Maximizing Productivity, puts me to shame. Burning, painful shame.

Virtual Memory must be Small

I mean, check out that handwriting. Jeebus.

Elseweb (is that a word?) Flickr user BookMonger (a.k.a. John Doull) has a lovely photo stream full of book pr0n and eccentric oddments…

For example, Pozzoni’s Medicated Bookmark, for “ladies who value a refined complexion”.

I must admit that I had heretofore overlooked the bookmark’s utility as a dispenser for medication. And now we have learned something new.

John is also a member of several Flickr Groups, such as the Bookmarks group.

Dolphin Bookmarks

Another group found via John is:

The Catalogue Cards & Card Catalogues Memorial Pool

card catalog

I absolutely love card catalogs, although I can’t afford one right now. This makes me sad. I plan to stalk the card catalog group like a chocolate addict hounding a candy shop.

That’s all the candy I got. More at some point when the urge strikes me…

…

Click. Whoosh.

…

Whoosh… click.

…

Click. Whoosh.

…

Whoosh… click.

…

Click. Whoosh.

…

Whoosh… click.

…

Click. Whoosh.

…

Whoosh… click.

…

(I bought a real filing cabinet this week.)

…

Click. Whoosh.

…

Whoosh… click.

…

(You realize, I’m going to be playing with it like a kid with a new toy. For days.)

…

Click. Whoosh.

…

Whoosh… click.

…

(Nope. No life. Thanks for asking.)

…

Click. Whoosh….

One of the effects of Everyware (or ubiquitous computing, or ambient intelligence, or pervasive computing, to use some of the ambiguous terminology in common use) is that the things we use are going to change in ways we don’t expect. Our running shoes will transmit our health data elsewhere, maybe to our home computer. Maybe to our insurance provider. (Didn’t run this week? Your friendly neighborhood actuary just adjusted your life insurance premium according to the trend of poorer health. Shouldn’t have bought that sundae yesterday with your credit card.) The tradeoffs in privacy and convenience are nowhere near simple, and it’s going to be difficult to opt out, especially if you’re not aware of what’s happening.

Anyway, when Adam starts musing about what we carry around in our pockets as a bare minimum, I perk up my ears. Especially with this title:

Suspect device 006: Tools for today, analog edition

…At least for the relatively privileged and globalized cohort the Intel research focused on, this amounted to a very few near-universals: house keys, car key or transit pass, ATM and credit cards, mobile phone.

And it should surprise nobody – least of all Intel, right? – that these objects are all at most the physical tokens of transactions that are increasingly become digital. As Uncle Marsh might have put it, they’re all well on their way to being “angelized,” desubstantiated and diffused throughout the environment. Between RFID, universal wireless Internet access, and the various kinds of biometric-signature recognition and identity verification becoming available, it’s hard to imagine that the negotiation we now inscribe in a house key or a transit pass need reside in crude matter for terribly much longer.

But what about that large set of daily essentials we tote along with us that do not refer to some virtual transaction? As interested as I am in ensuring that the latter are imagined and executed with an appropriate degree of finesse, I’m still more interested in equipping myself for the implacable demands of the actual. And that requires good gear: thoughtfully designed, functional objects that allow me to live my life happily, comfortably, and in a manner as near to frictionless as is practically achievable.

Oddly, one of those things is not the Fisher Space Pen. Although I’m seriously considering taking a dremel to mine, after reading why Adam goes with the Other Woman of miniature pens…

For example, Montblanc pens are things of beauty.

These fetish items have wonderful writing qualities, but they cost obscene amounts of money. Here are instructions on how to convert a Montblanc refill to work with a Pilot G2, thus getting the feel of a $200 pen with a $2 Pilot.

…I wonder if that violates the DCMA somehow?

In any case, it’s a great hack, and yet another reason why Instructables rocks.

And, if you want something to write in with your awesome new pen, you could get one of the new Moleskine City Notebooks. (Photos of a prototype, taken by lucky Moleskine user and MoleskineArt.com web maven Patrick Ng: all images are from his photoset.)

The fold-out maps look gorgeous.

I love all the wonderful little thoughtful details, like the translucent overlays you can use to mark up the maps non-destructively…

…and the multiple fabric bookmarks…

…and the tabs, with iconic stickers to sort your notes on the city.

Finally, if your city gets no Moleskine love, you can always make your own.

(Edited to fix the fact that you really can’t hack a fountain pen to work with a pilot G2…)

There’s really very little on the web that can beet Flickr for sheer, utter geekery. Lifehackers and organizational fetishists and headcases from around the globe have taken full advantage of the medium, and there are some beautiful things to be found.

A not-even-barely-complete list of Flickr groups, and pretty pictures, may be found after the cut.

The Moleskinerie Flickr Group

Devoted to sketches, doodles, and art in, around, and using Moleskine notebooks.

The Getting Things Done Flickr Group

You never knew there were so many ways to use index cards.

Origami Tessellations

This has nothing to do with organization, but it’s just so damn pretty.

Annotated Things Groups

The notes feature on Flickr is just a wonderful way to layer detail into an image, and use it to tell a story. Dave Gray has created a set of groups based around this premise, and they’re all great.

• Annotated Workspaces

  

• Annotated Notes and Sketches

  

Wave your mouse at the stuff in those pools.

Tea Sketches

Put a teabag on an index card, long enough to make a stain.
Now, draw something around that stain.

Inspiration Boards

I love these glimpses of other peoples’ internal landscapes, as reflected in their work environment.

It’s trite to say that there’s no limit to what you can find in Flickr, as inspiration for your own low-tech stuff; if you were an immortal who never slept, and had nothing else to do in life, it’s conceivable that you could see it all.

But given our limits in attention and time (not to mention the painful effects of sitting at a computer all day), it’s pretty clear that there really is more than you can ever actually consume.

So, while this is hardly the sum total of what I’ve been aware of on Flickr, if there’s something you don’t see here and I haven’t mentioned, drop me a line. I’d love to see it.

(Also, if you suspect that this whole post was just an excuse to noodle in Flickr and play with TextMate’s new image upload and blogging tools, then you’re absolutely right.)

Presenting, the ghetto index card bleachers:

No modification necessary.

Hey, I bet zip disk cases would work even better….

I’m disgustingly infatuated with Dave Seah’s Information Graphics. Stop me before I build a little shrine and start camping out on his lawn.

[EDIT] Oops.

Dave Seah is not Dave Shea.

Which I had just read.

Don’t think of your tongue.

The combination of wiki, planner, and plaintext was seductive, but in the end, I just do too much paper and digital sketching, which can’t be shoehorned into emacs, and the experiment came to an end.

The mental model of emacs planner stuck with me, though. The central idea is so seductive: one central set of simple things, which get arranged around your journal, tasks, and notes. It takes the whole pile of your digital “stuff” and hangs them in a web of magic thread.

Sacha’s “wikiblog” is, in fact, a public extension of her emacs-wiki-planner setup. (Which is utterly brilliant, and I wish more tools offered that kind of thing.) I always thought of her, therefore, as a kind of emacs goddess. Remote and unreachable, stitching together the threads of life with meta-x- commands, she lives in the buffer of the sky. Or something.

So imagine my delight to find on the DIY Planner blog, Sacha Chua explaining how she manages research info-glut, using index cards:

How on earth am I going to keep track of all the information I need for my thesis? Not only do I have to read hundreds of papers, but I also have to make sure I properly cite any ideas I use in my work.

[...]

Index cards to the rescue! A time-tested way to keep track of random bits of information, index cards make it easier to capture, structure, and even shuffle ideas.

[...]

Capture. I get practically all my information through the Internet. Even with focus-follows-mouse tweaks and all the keyboard shortcuts I’ve memorized, taking notes while viewing a web page or PDF file isn’t easy. It’s a lot easier and a lot more fun to scribble ideas on index cards, flipping the card over and recording citation details on the other side.

Structure. Index cards also make it easy to organize ideas into instant outlines and mindmaps. I can simply divide the deck into piles, lay them out on the desk or on the floor, or even stick them on my wall with some tape or sticky stuff. Physically spreading ideas out also makes me think about things that aren’t there yet and find spaces for new ideas. Fun.

The physical act of laying out a huge grid of index cards, and then physically sorting them is an enormously satisfying way to think. It’s like a huge, physical extension of your brain. (You can use other tools besides index cards, of course. For example, sticky notes on a whiteboard are a favorite.) Each individual card holds one thought or idea. (More after the jump.)

Here’s an exercise, if you’d like to play along at home, or if you already use index cards or something similar to take notes on the go: try and use one card per idea, as you go. Then, when you’ve got a bunch, spread them out. You’ve now got one hell of a powerful tool to find the patterns in them.

If you’re collecting your incidental thoughts in one format, then you can easily develop them in that format, and use the existing tools to act as physical tokens for those thoughts. It also lets you use books, bits of clay, odd objects, foam models, and toys in the mix.

You could use an outliner on the computer for this, and many people do. Personally, I find that to be best as the next step.

Whatever your tool of choice is, the important thing is that it allows you to get your thoughts out of your head: externalize your ideas, so that you can reflect on them, and iterate. You won’t know what a good idea looks like until you’ve seen the bad ones. Give it a try.

Final Note

As a (anonymous) comment on the post at DIY planner notes, though, computers are a better tool for tracking and sorting information, long-term. You will likely want to capture the insights and things you get from an index-card outline in some electronic format.

OmniOutliner Pro is my tool of choice for translating “cardthink” into the computer. Other tools, such as Tinderbox, may be a better fit for some. I haven’t found TB to be a great fit, personally, although I keep poking at it. Much like planner mode, it seems a great tool, but it just doesn’t feel right. Feel free to suggest your favorite tool in comments.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have this huge backlogged stack of cards, and i need to sift through them to find out what I’ve been thinking…

Dave says:

I have to admit I’m a little curious about how they put everything together from a packaging perspective…is it actually useful, or is it primarily a novelty gift?

Hmm…

I’m guessing, “novelty.” But maybe that’s just me.

On the other hand, you do get this date tracker form:

Yeah.

I’d like to take a moment to thank Knock Knock for guaranteeing, with this kit, that some people will never, ever breed.