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I’ve heard that the things that bring us the most joy, also have the potential to deliver the greatest pain. It’s true! If you’ve ever parented a teen or experienced the delight of picking up a stunningly beautiful notebook only to discover dark, 8 millimetre-spaced lines inside, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Why would a designer ever think it’d be okay to smack us in the face with whopping great lines like that?? I’ll attempt to answer this question by putting on three different attitude hats.
A good cover is important to me, but the right kind of paper and line spacing is vital if I want my thoughts to dance onto the page, carefree, rather than feeling like they’ve been laced into a corset and expected to march to a military tune.
Give me pale grey 6–7 millimetre-spaced lines, or give me a blank page. Please. Whether you call it snobbery or call it being opinionated, the truth is that I know what I like, and I know what distracts me. YMMV, as they say.
A light grey dot-grid I can understand, even though I can’t bear using one myself. It’s beautiful, and — intellectually, at least — I know it’s practical, but in reality, I can’t help seeing dot-grid pages as a game of join-the-dots. My brain insists on strategising ways to make the beginning and end strokes of my letters land on a dot, so as to give the page the appearance of being blank. Drives me crazy!
Pale grey grids I can handle, and dotted grids where there are enough dots to make the page look like a complete grid are okay too. You can see an example of the latter in my monthly planning template.
Given the above information, you won’t be surprised to learn that I keep a respectable supply of just the right kind of notebooks, and only the very best behaved of pens.
In my office sits a stack of Moleskine Cahier and Rhodia notebooks, next to a tidy supply of Pilot Dr Grip 4+1 pens and refills, plus 4 identical Tombow N75 dual tip markers. If you’re in Australia, the Tombow are a great price here).
The pens are well used, but those notebooks have been gathering dust since the end of last year. The reason? Something surprising, enlightening, and ultimately satisfying has shaken up my rigid attitude toward the paper I use for my everyday notebook.
It’s this: I’ve discovered (or rediscovered) the power of non-precious paper! Of writing or drawing on unimportant paper that’s entirely guilt free. It feels amazing!
Like * bam * — no more pressure to perform, no risk of ruining a beautiful notebook, and no more worrying about writing small to save paper (and thus the planet). Oh, and no more losing loose paper, or stressing about how much I’m using and where I’ll store yet another notebook when it’s filled.
Who’d have thought that writing on discarded paper of dubious quality could elicit a sense of freedom and creativity in my scribblings that I didn’t know was missing! Beautiful, fountain pen friendly paper still has its place, make no mistake. It’s just not what I want to write or draw on when I’m in a tentative or exploratory frame of mind.
I studied graphic design in the late 1980s, and have worked in and around the field ever since. Choosing the right kind of paper stock for a job was as expensive back then as it was important, so we planned every detail before making the first mark.
Even though I was surrounded by sheets of beautifully finished, textured, and coloured paper, my all-time favourite was the ubiquitous layout pad — an A2 or A3 slab of semi-transparent 50 GSM paper. Those pads were pressure and judgement-free spaces where ideas were born and iterated into things of beauty!
A few years ago (but well into the digital age) I had the artist’s equivalent of writer’s block on a project with a looming deadline. I was getting more and more uptight about it, and my drafts reflected that tension. They filled the technical details of the brief, but were lacking the life, the dynamism this project required.
Then I did something that turned out to be an accidentally genius way of dealing with the problem: I stopped thinking about the final product, and started rapidly sketching on cheap, almost transparent layout paper, just like I had in the 80s. And that was when things started to flow!
The non-preciousness of the paper gave me permission to dance in the rain
It was the feeling that these drawings didn’t matter, that released the block. The non-preciousness of the paper gave me permission to dance in the rain, as the saying goes. Instead of re-doing the pictures on better paper afterwards, I actually ended up scanning them from the original scrappy paper, and they were just fine!
With regards to my new everyday notebook setup, I’m talking about A4 or letter sized paper, otherwise destined for the bin. Ordinary copy paper most of the time, that’s been printed on one side and then given the flick, stacked together in an elegant folder complete with bookmark, elastic closure, and pockets for loose bits and pieces.
From what I can see, there are only two main competitors in this space. Roterfaden, a premium German notebook holder whose prices top out at over 250 Euros, and the Paper Saver, an impressively good Australian brand that’s a lot more accessible at around a quarter (or less) of the price.
Roterfaden is on my saving-up-for list. It’s beautiful, practical, and I wants one! They consist of a thick, durable cover with an even thicker lining, and three sets of top/bottom clips that swing up/down to hold anything from bound soft cover notebooks, to stacks of loose paper, which is what I’d use it for most.
You can also buy Roterfaden preprinted notebooks, and oh boy, they are right up my alley! I was surprised how much I loved the industrial vibe of the mono spaced font and narrow margins. These red-thread stitch-bound books ooze high-end design, while suggesting the feel of retro computer printouts. Did I mention that I want one?
Paper Saver is what I’m using—and am very satisfied with—at the moment. It has a high quality hard cover with a thin, vertical piece of metal down the entire length of the centre for holding pages that it doesn’t come with, a bookmark, and an elastic loop to keep the book closed. I also have the optional organiser to keep my pens handy. It’s a good design that works well and keeps out the way for the most part.
The idea of the Paper Saver is that you source the internal pages from scrap paper that may be lying around your home or office. Collect 40–50 sheets of paper, carefully fold them in half as a unit, then insert them behind the metal bar in the cover.
And there you have it: a notebook that not only doesn’t put any pressure on you, it’s one you can never use up because the refills are everywhere you look!
First of all, this isn’t my only notebook. I still occasionally use a blank Moleskine cahier for sketching practice, and I keep my 5-year diary in a Leuchtturm1917 “Some lines a day”. More permanent notes — including interstitial journaling — go into Markdown files in my Obsidian vault. Non-precious paper I reserve for …everything else. Especially brain dumps, nutting ideas out, and rough sketchnoting.
In the centre of my Paper Saver are 12 sheets for planning the next year (template link), in addition to my digital calendar.
This is something I’ve done for 40 years, and to this day I keep a paper wall calendar as well; mostly for the convenience of other members of my family. That makes three calendars to keep up to date! I’m convinced that the duplication is just what my psyche needs to keep on track. This won’t be for everyone, but for me it’s a way to really feel in touch for what I’ve got going on, and to easily remember the most pressing events without looking at the calendar.
You do you, but I’d feel uneasy if I solely relied on a digital calendar.
Yes, I know we could just put our scrap paper into recycling and grab a fresh, pristine book off the shelf, but I’ve been hearing worrying rumbles that things aren’t going so well in the recycling department. There’s no question that we need an efficient system for reusing scrap paper, but that, even when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, is not enough to offset the damage our wasteful paper-habits are doing to the planet.
What we need is a way to make better use of the resources that we’re already drowning in before sending it to the recycle plant.
Whether you use a Roterfaden, Paper Saver, or a legal pad, there’s something powerful and freeing in writing on paper your brain perceives as non-precious.
Saving money is great (the notebook eventually pays for itself), doing what we can to save the environment is vital, of course, but I admit that a large part of the attraction for me as a writer, designer, and a planning geek is the ephemeral, unimportant nature of the pages.
Whether you use a Roterfaden, Paper Saver, or a legal pad, there’s something powerful and freeing in writing on paper your brain perceives as non-precious. I’m going to keep using my beautiful notebooks and apps, but I never want to give up the joy of letting my thoughts run free-range over some unimportant paper from time to time.
See also All Your Questions on This Surprisingly Creative Notebook Practice, Answered
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