Best Results Organizing

When you think about using magnets to get organized, is the first thing that comes to your mind something like a dental appointment card stuck to the refrigerator with a novelty magnet? Me, too.

So I was surprised recently to hear about a Kickstarter campaign for a magnetic option for organizing handwritten materials.

THE MAGNOTE

The MAGNOTE Magnetic Notebook, from Orange Monkie, takes a page (pardon the pun) out of the playbook for tablet/keyboard combinations like the Surface and my newly beloved iPad + Logitech wireless keyboard set-up. Magnets hold things together — at least until you want to pull them apart. The MAGNOTE applies the same principle to keeping your paper notebooks together.

The neodymium magnets sound like something out of Star Trek, but have a nifty, streamlined appeal. If you’ve never used a bluetooth tablet keyboard/cover, it’s hard to explain the giddiness you experience with that first tidy, joyous click into place, but this image may indicate how cool it is.

Keeping the notebooks you need (for the day, for a study session, etc.) all together without a giant elastic or a backpack is pretty cool, and, as this fun little video indicates, keeping your notebook visible yet out of the way is as easy as tossing it in the direction of your fridge or metal dorm room door!

However, to be honest, the magnets aren’t even the most interesting thing about MAGNOTE. But let’s start with the basics.

THE DESIGN

At 5.3″ wide by 7.7″ high, the MAGNOTE notebooks can be held in one hand.

Each notebook has a bound cover that lays flat when open without risking the structural integrity of the spine. So, if you want to draw or write across the center dividing line of two pages, you can do so with confidence.

The planned paper stock is fountain-pen friendly, which is a boon for many of the types of users who prefer fancy Moleskine-like notebooks over composition books and legal pads.

THE TIME CIRCLE and LINE-LESS MONTHS

MAGNOTE’s minimalist approach is especially intriguing when you look at the daily planner style. Rather than traditional hour-by-hour lined grids stacking up the hours of the day like so much firewood, the MAGNOTE envisions daily life centered around an analog clockface.

Each daily planner page has one simple circle with the day of the month in the middle. It all starts with the premise of the Time Circle, allowing for more free-flowing visualization of the high-, medium- and low-activity zones in the day. You’ll want to look at the Kickstarter page to get an in-depth sense of how these times blend together to get one twenty-four hour plan for a twelve-hour clock, but you can see, below, how chunks of dayparts can be assigned.

To plan your own day, you work your way around the circle, with mind-map style lines out from the hours of the day to when you’ve scheduled fixed appointments and planned work blocks. (Well, not blocks. They’re more like floating clouds.) The bottom of the page provides ample room for notes.

Paper Doll is a little too linear to use the Time Circle comfortably, but for those who don’t see their day like layered stacks, this might provide some fresh air for time management and planning.

The monthly planner is equally minimalist. There aren’t even boxes or squares to indicate days. Alternating weeks are slightly shaded, to provide contrast, the months are numbered and not even named, and each day has the date noted.

Otherwise, the calendar page is left for the user to design, adding details and grouping projects by parts of the week or days of the month. You can definitely imagine some people adding serious color-coding to get the look that works for them.

BOXING IT UP

Orange Monkie’s original plan was for five colors, each representing one style of the MAGNOTE notebook.

Going left to right, the colors and styles of each 64-page notebook were envisioned as follows:

• Red: MagPlanner Monthly (two-year planner)
• Burgundy: MagPlanner Daily (two-month planner)
• Grey: Magnote Plain (plain pages, front-and-back, suitable for sketching, mind-mapping, free-form note-taking and any visual creativity you have in mind)
• Blue: Magnote Ruled (lined pages, with lines falling every 8mm)
• Brown: Magnote Grid (graphed pages, suitable for scale drawing, room design or math problems)

The whole kit and caboodle (sets of multiple notebooks, in whatever colors are preferred) fits in a diagonally-cut box cover, so you can display your notebooks (or not) tidily.

See it in motion:

The Kickstarter campaign’s initial pricing was set as:

• Early Bird pricing: any four notebooks/planners of the five for $39 (limited to the first 250 funders)
• Notebooks sets (Plain, Ruled, Grid), select 3/$29, 6/$47 or 10/$72
• Planner sets (planners or notebooks), select 4/$43, 6/$59 or 10/$88

The price, which initially seemed high, doesn’t compare unfavorably with the cost of Field Notes and soft-cover Moleskines, for those with a more refined notebook palate. But committing to the MAGNOTE would mean settling for only one size of notebook, which may be a deal-breaker for some users, no matter how magnetic the attraction.

MAGNETS ATTRACT, MANUFACTURING DISSATISFACTION REPELS

When I started researching this post, the Kickstarter Project for MAGNOTE had already reached 80% of its funding goal in under a week. Eventually, it hit $33,804 of a $35,000 funding goal — it was there, baby! But then, early last month, something funny happened. Orange Monkie wasn’t satisfied enough with the manufacturing process quality, did more research, and found a better company for mass production, one that would allow for even more exciting features, like refillable notebooks!

While this change of direction is a positive thing, doing it mid-Kickstarter meant they’d have to change the backer rewards, and redesigning the prototype for new options meant delaying the estimated delivery date. I think it took a lot of moxie for Orange Monkie to halt an almost fully funded campaign to basically say, “Wait, we trust our product, and we want you to trust it, so let’s drop this campaign, and we’ll meet you back here for a relaunch when we’re shiny and new!”

So, although it’s rare that I share a product that’s not-ready-for-Prime-Time, I encourage you to keep an eye on this concept. Until then, you can review some favorite Paper Doll posts to help you find your ideal notebook:

• 5 Key Points for Organizing With Notebooks
• Notions on Notebooks: Organize Your Paper Picks
• Paper Doll Writes Between the Raindrops: Waterproof Notebooks
• An Organized Hybrid: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine
• Organize Your Writing Right — With Left-Handed Notebooks
• Customizable Notebooks: Have It Your Way…Sorta
• It’s a Notebook! It’s a Whiteboard!: 3 Dry-Erase Notebook Innovations
• From Paper to the Cloud: Ampad Shot Note
• NAPO2014: Notetaking and Pendaflex/TOPS’ FocusNotes™