Travel Stationary Geek

Tuesday, 23 June, 2009

I've always had a thing about quality stationary brands, ever since the ubiquitous Filofax organisers from the 80's. I still retain a personal and an A5 sized Filofax, filling them with personal papers and using them to keep together important cards and documents. Afterall, their customisable inserts make them practical for any physical essentials in the face of our growing reliance on digital.

Practically all my work is digital, but having trained mostly with crafting by hand, I still cling to any vestiges of analogue I can fit in my life.

More Journals

Since arriving in East Asia, I've had more of a reason to do so. My Filofaxes are now joined by a couple of Moleskines (one being the red Helvetica special edition which I may never use) and the two different sized Travelers Notebooks that are available from the Japanese company Midori.

These new "devices" fill my requirements for different types of travel journaling and portability. I've also supplemented them with items from the purveyors of fine, handmade felt and leather cases, Hardgraft, and a leather Moleskine cover from Gfeller.

All photos Linh and I are taking on our travels are digital and I'm maintaining our experiences on the MangoVine.net blog, so strictly speaking, analogue isn't essential.

Analogue Ephemera

But as a designer, I'm constantly picking up bits of ephemera that now find their homes in my full-size Traveler's Notebook. Analogue in this sense is just essential for collating all those things that traveling unearths, that can't just simply be put online.

New East Asian Stationary Brands

Our shopping experiences have so far revealed new East Asian stationary brands whose aesthetics are demanding more creative time in my travel journals. Some brands I would have heard of before whilst in London, such as the Travelers Notebooks and Craft, Design, Technology, but others, such as the patterned MT Masking Tapes are opening up new ways of spending!

All these together with a new found obsession with stamps (ink and pad type) are bordering on some kind of stationary porn consumption.

Hong Kong's City Super

The stationary range at Hong Kong's City Super stores are definitely one of the culprits for turning me into a stationary geek. Senior buyer Patrick Ng runs a blog at Moleskine.vox.com which is a thinly-veiled attempt to get creative types to spend all their cash at City Super!

I'm not complaining however, since I'll finish my travels with lots of analogue documentation. Besides, this month, I attended one of City Super's free Travel Photo Cafe sessions that Patrick organised, which provided plenty of travel writing inspiration.

So here's to the Stationary Geek movement! You can join by checking out my lovingly put together photoset of my stuff:

Stationary : Travelers Notebooks, Filofax and Moleskines

Also, thanks to James @ Hard Graft for posting my photo on their blog.

Links

Filofax.com
Moleskine.com
Midori-Japan.co.jp
Hardgraft.com
GfellerCasemakers.com
MangoVine.net
CraftDesignTechnology.co.jp
Masking-Tape.jp
Citysuper.com
Moleskine.vox.com

This entry posted in : Design & Art Direction. Travel.

2 Comments :

Hi Mark

Thanks for the interesting introduction to your Notebooks. I use also the legendary Midori in both sizes. For what purpose do you use the passport size and the large Traveler's notebook?

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/10/09 at 11:56 AM

Hi Yvette,

The passport one is definitely the portable notebook that goes everywhere with me for notes on the go. The large one is kept at home where I tend to stick in all the ephemera I collect on my travels.

I've described a bit more about the process in this post:

http://www.markwu.info/website/journal/a_process_for_travel_journaling/

Thanks for reading!

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/10/09 at 09:09 AM

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