In an impromptu Hi-Rise Café discussion with Vaughn T, it was revealed that we are both notebook nerds, and share, among other things, a seething rage for imperfection and laziness with regards to all things printed and/or bound. One thing more surprising than this shared emotional orientation is that he is a former printer and binder. A multi-talented continental gentleman, without a doubt. He uses this printing skill set for good, and not for evil. Whereas I get generally peeved and stomp around trashing my mediocre notebook collection, he has contracted several companies in East Asia to make him his own custom notebook line.

Reactions — 

1) RAD. Rad rad rad.
2) That is so damned rad.
3) I want one. Or ten.

We talked a little bit longer, and developed some ideas that should come to fruition over the next couple months (Vaughn is a doer, and he does he he says he'll do).

1) Have dots, instead of grids or lines, as guides on the pages. These dots would be a little off-blue, so they wouldn't be picked up by photocopiers, and could easily be removed in image software. You'd be able to write and draw with precision, but the guides would be invisible when you wanted them to be.

2) User paper that doesn't suck. Enough of this 50lb paper maché humbledy-mumbledy. Get some real stiff stock in there. Paper you can write on, paper that makes you feel like what you're writing is important and will last.

3) Add unique identifiers for each notebook and each page, on every notebook and page. Of course, each page would have a pagenumber, but each page would also have a bit.ly-style alphanumeric code, uniquely identifying the notebook. This way, if you were to scan in or snap a picture of any notebook page, OCR software would be able to automatically index the notebook ID and page where you wrote or drew something.

4) Develop software to make searching through it all super easy. Of course, some software that would be able to take images of a page in this notebook, and OCR the text, vectorize the line-drawings, and store everything nicely. I'm all over this like hipsters on fixies.

5) Use proper binding, so the notebook actually lasts. Enough of this Moleskine bullshit. They use terrible, brittle glue, the pockets in the back torque the spine terribly if you put more than a receipt in it, and the whole thing usually falls apart after a month in a back pants pocket. Miquelrius knows how to bind a notebook, and he'll likely follow in their footsteps.

6) None of the extraneous crap. No bookmark thread, no elastic band to hold it shut, no shitty pocket, no faux-leather cover. The essentials.

Maybe we'll get the new laser etching shop in Central square (by the good folks from seriousbusiness) to mark 'em up with some cool designs, or something of the like.