Moleskine: the one to beat

Of all the note­books on the mar­ket, none is so cel­e­brat­ed or debat­ed as the Mole­sk­ine. Loved by many, there are at least a half dozen web­sites devot­ed sole­ly to the icon­ic note­book, and a Google search on the key­word «mole­sk­ine» pro­duces (at this writ­ing) over four and a half mil­lion results. No oth­er brand of note­book has achieved the same lev­el of repute or notoriety.

I’m not here to say that Mole­sk­ines are the best note­books, but they are the stan­dards by which most oth­er note­books are judged. So don’t be sur­prised when future edi­tions of The Sun­day Papers use the Mole­sk­ine as a mea­sur­ing stick. Mole­sk­ines are, for all their faults, the King of Note­books. They main­tain a pres­tige point in the mar­ket due in part to the myth that sur­rounds them, in part to good design and mate­ri­als, and in part to the atten­tion paid to the needs of the users.

Those new to the Mole­sk­ine may balk at the expense, and with good rea­son. It seems bizarre that any­one would pay eigh­teen bucks for a note­book when a Mead com­po­si­tion book can be obtained in any drug store for under two dol­lars. It’s an easy con­clu­sion to which one can jump: it must be some lux­u­ry item that only some­one with more mon­ey than brains would fall for.

I’ve no doubt that’s what it is for some peo­ple. Mole­sk­ine’s mar­ket­ing is all about the mys­tique and ambiance, tying the cur­rent prod­uct to the note­books used by lumi­nar­ies in the writ­ing and artis­tic worlds. Van Gogh and Hem­ing­way may well have used small black note­books in their days but any­one who thinks they were made by the same com­pa­ny that makes today’s Mole­sk­ine has been sold a bill of goods.

So why would some­one who isn’t just buy­ing in to the hype buy one of these note­books? There are sev­er­al excel­lent fea­tures that the Mole­sk­ine note­books sport:

Oilskin cover

The cov­er of the Mole­sk­ine is a durable, stiff mate­r­i­al that looks hand­some and pro­fes­sion­al. It is not as flashy or extrav­agent as a leather cov­er for a note­book. The note­book is pro­tect­ed by a cov­er more sub­stan­tial than that of any com­po­si­tion note­book. This is a note­book meant to last and sur­vive the rig­ors of trav­el, being stuffed into mes­sen­ger bags, used as coast­ers, and so on. This fea­ture earns Mole­sk­ine points both for prac­ti­cal­i­ty and style.

Elastic enclosure

The cov­er will stay closed when the elas­tic band is keep­ing it closed. This pro­tects the con­tents and gen­er­al­ly keeps things neat. The elas­tic bands are of good qual­i­ty, unlike the elas­tic bands I’ve seen with some oth­er note­books. I’ve had some Mole­sk­ines for years on which the bands still snap just like the day they were new. If you’re going to have this kind of fea­ture on a note­book, it had bet­ter be of decent qual­i­ty. It’s pret­ty sad when the elas­tic hold­ing your note­book closed gets stretched out.

Bookmark

It’s a small touch but handy. Hav­ing a book­mark built in to the Mole­sk­ine makes it easy to find your place again, or to mark an impor­tant note you wish to return to after time. It does­n’t take a lot. Some note­book mak­ers take this a step fur­ther and include tabs that can be clipped to mul­ti­ple pages, or mul­ti­ple book­marks sewn in to the bind­ing. Mole­sk­ine does not. You get the one book­mark to hold your place and that’s the end of the story. 

Pages

Yes, every note­book has pages, but the Mole­sk­ine has a pleas­ing cream-col­ored paper that makes the note­book lit­er­al­ly easy on the eye. The grey lines are spaced more tight­ly than most note­books, at 6mm between lines. While this forces writ­ing to be some­what small­er than most users are used to, one gets used to it rather eas­i­ly and has the advan­tage of fit­ting more words onto a page than one can with a stan­dard com­po­si­tion book, despite the small­er page size (my pre­ferred size is the 13×21 cm version—at 9×14 cm the pock­et ver­sion is very pock­etable but not so handy for extend­ed writing.)

Folder

The fold­er in the back page of the Mole­sk­ine makes the note­book tru­ly handy. I use mine to hold postage stamps, busi­ness cards, receipts, any­thing that I need to have with me while I’m out or until I get home. It saves me from hav­ing to keep these things else­where where they might be a nui­sance. It’s an effi­cient and thought­ful touch. Many peo­ple keep things between the pages of note­books any­way, but hav­ing a built-in pock­et keeps things from falling out at inop­por­tune times.

Paper quality

The Mole­sk­ine’s virtues exceed its high price in all areas but this one. Iron­i­cal­ly, the Mole­sk­ine’s fatal flaw is the qual­i­ty of the paper, where one would expect a high-end note­book to excel. Sad­ly, Mole­sk­ine’s paper qual­i­ty fails to live up to the expectation.

The col­or, as already not­ed, is pleas­ing, and for some­one who writes with a pen­cil or a ball­point pen the paper qual­i­ty might not be an issue. I, how­ev­er, write with a foun­tain pen, and foun­tain pens use liq­uid ink. The paper of the Mole­sk­ine is gen­er­al­ly poor­ly suit­ed to foun­tain pen ink. The writ­ing feath­ers, bleeds through the page and shows clear­ly on the oth­er side. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ing because so much of the design of the Mole­sk­ine appeals to users of foun­tain pens. It calls to the sen­si­bil­i­ties of an ear­li­er gen­er­a­tion find­ing upper-crust virtue in old­er tech­nol­o­gy. Put blunt­ly, both the Mole­sk­ine and the foun­tain pen tend to appeal to per­sons with mon­ey and a nos­tal­gic temperment.

It would there­fore be a nat­ur­al pair­ing to use a foun­tain pen with a Mole­sk­ine note­book. This is why it is so trou­bling to see the qual­i­ty of the paper bring down the over­all appeal of this note­book. Pur­port­ed­ly this was not always the case, but the qual­i­ty con­trol has suf­fered since pro­duc­tion of the note­book with Euro­pean charm was out­sourced to Chi­nese binderies.

So while Mole­sk­ine may reign as the king of the note­book hill, Moda & Moda (mak­ers of the Mole­sk­ine) have left the throne open to the attacks of usurpers.

Over the next few weeks, The Sun­day Papers here at Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look will look at sev­er­al of these con­tenders. Pic­cadil­ly, Can­teo, Leich­turm, Rho­dia, and oth­ers pro­duce note­books for the same niche mar­ket, each with their own sets of ben­e­fits and pit­falls. Com­ing March 27^th: a review of the Can­teo note­book from Switzerland.