I’m a bit of a design nerd. It comes with the job, I guess. And with that comes a love/obsession with paper and printing. There is nothing quite like walking into a huge print shop. Hearing the roar as paper flies through the city bus-sized press. Smelling the inks. Dodging the press operators as the fly around the multimillion dollar machines, checking ink densities with hand-held devices with more computing power than the Apollo-era space program. What was once an art, is as much a science now.
But in this age of digital outputs, there are still jobs that utilize the old-school methods of an artisan printer, like one of my “Oprah-style” favorite things: Field Notes.
INSPIRED BY the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list, the Draplin Design Company, Portland, Oregon in conjunction with Coudal Partners of Chicago, Illinois bring you “FIELD NOTES” in hopes of offering, “An honest memo book, worth fillin’ up with GOOD INFORMATION.
I won a year-long subscription to their Colors collection from Gowalla last winter and I have become a huge fan, not only of their product, but of how they do what they do. These folks love paper and printing and it shows in their product and how they present it to the public. Which brings me to my point (finally). The gang over at Field Notes posted a video about the making of their Raven’s Wing notebooks, the Fall 2010 edition of their Colors series. It’s a beautifully-shot piece and really conveys how much they love what they do. Take a few minutes and check it out.
And in the spirit of Oprah, I’m going to raid my stash of books and give away a three pack of the sold out Balsam Fir edition notebooks to some lucky poster. Just leave a comment below and tell me what your favorite Pantone color is. That’s it. I’ll pick someone at random next week.
