There’s always been some of the American “can-do” spirit about Field Notes. When designer Aaron Draplin couldn’t find a simple notebook, he created one and, with the help of designer Jim Coudal, transformed it into the ubiquitous tool of students and creatives everywhere. No surprise, then, that in the latest edition of their Field Notes 3-packs, they would choose to honor one of the greatest “can do” endeavors in the nation’s history: America’s early manned space missions. And how they chose to do it ... well, that was pretty “can do” as well.
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To start with, each of the three memo books celebrates one of the space programs – Mercury, Gemini and Apollo – with a photograph from each of the respective missions printed 4-color process on the front cover, with an “Orbital Silver” metallic ink and aqueous coating added to bring it all to dramatic life. On the back you’ll find key dates, locations and personnel information for that particular program. The 12-pt. Westrock Tango C1S sheet it’s printed on makes for the type of cover you’ve come to expect from Field Notes – stiff enough to withstand everyday use without feeling like an unyielding hard-cover one. The grid on the inside pages is printed in extremely light “Firmament Gray” ink on 60-lb. Finch Opaque Text.
All very nice, you say, but surely there must be more? Oh there most certainly is.
The larger-than-usual backing card for the 3-pack cleverly features the continuing clouds of exhaust from the rocket on the cover of the first notebook, and actually houses three punch-out sheets that enable you to build paper models of each of the three space capsules – “1:50ish” in scale, as the detailed instructions explain.
This was actually trickier to create than you’d think, as they had to choose a paper that was heavy enough to function as a model, yet light enough to be rolled into the cylindrical parts that make up each spacecraft. The designers chose an 80-lb. Domtar Lynx Cover, with 7 spot colors printed by eDOC Communications, which also printed the notebooks. When assembled, the resulting pieces are ... oh heck, I’m going to say it: Out of this world.
Sabine Lenz is the founder of PaperSpecs.com, the first online paper database and community specifically designed for paper specifiers.
Growing up in Germany, Sabine started her design career in Frankfurt, before moving to Australia and then the United States. She has worked on design projects ranging from corporate identities to major road shows and product launches. From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, her list of clients included Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank, IBM and KPMG.
Seeing designers struggle worldwide to stay current with new papers and paper trends inspired Sabine to create PaperSpecs, an independent and comprehensive Web-based paper database and weekly e-newsletter. She is also a speaker on paper issues and the paper industry. Some refer to her lovingly as the "paper queen" who combines her passion for this wonderful substrate called paper with a hands-on approach to sharing her knowledge.