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Notebooks. Bullet Journals. Diaries. Sketchbooks. Whatever you use, notebooks are essential to capturing words, feelings, designs, and brilliant ideas so they don’t fade away into oblivion.

We’ve talked a lot of notebooks here at Paper Doll HQ, everything from waterproof notebooks to notebooks for left-handers. We’ve discussed various types of hybrid paper/digital notebooks, like Ampad’s Shot Notes and Versa Crossover, TOPS’ Focus Notes, and Evernote’s Smart Notebook by Moleskine. We’ve dug into magnetic notebooks, dry-erase notebooks, and customizable notebooks.

The blog has also looked at the 5 Key Points for Organizing with Notebooks, and in Notions on Notebooks: Organize Your Paper Picks, we delved into all of the considerations to take into account when choosing a notebook solution, including: price, branding, portability, binding, paper quality, lines, and color. 

We’ve even looked at the shape of notebooks before when we presented Paper Doll Surveys the (Paper) Landscape. Because, sometimes, you just want something a little different. Today, we’re going to embrace three very different notebook styles.

PANOBOOK

Most notebooks have a portrait orientation. It’s rare, other than with sketchbooks, to see a notebook with a landscape orientation. Panobook, however, takes landscape one step further and delivers a panoramic (landscape-orientation, but wider) notebook designed to sit on your desk (in that bit of space between your abdomen and your keyboard), and eventually, on your bookshelf.
 

Created by Texas-based Studio Neat, known for a variety of innovative products, from wooden charging docks to cocktail-making tools to video-related apps, Panobook began life as a Kickstarter and quickly gathered community support.

It’s easy to understand why. Depending on the width of your desk, you may or may not have space to the left or right of your body. But your monitor is generally straight in front of you, and so is your keyboard, so unless you have an L-shaped desk, the real estate in front of you is pretty tightly packed.

If you want to take notes, maybe you can scroll (I mean, slide) your body to the left or right, or you may have to swivel in your seat to use the left side of the desk (or the right side, if you’re left-handed) to take notes. Unless your arms are long (and your eyesight so pristine that your monitor is very far away), there’s just not that much writing space in front of you. (And I’m pretty sure you don’t want a notebook poking into your tummy.)

Panobook was created to solve this problem of limited space. The panoramic format, measuring 160 mm x 288 mm (6.53″ x 11.34″) is designed to sit squarely in front of, or if you prefer, behind, your keyboard. (Turned vertically, of course, it can sit to the left or right, if you have that much space. But then you’d probably be using a traditional notebook or legal pad, right?) 

Panobook is made of high-quality (Finch Fine Soft White Ultra Smooth 70 lb text-quality) paper and designed to perform with a variety of writing instruments and inks without causing bleed-through or smudging. Both the front and back of Panobook are rigid, made of Neenah LaCrema 617 Charcoal-colored 50 pt black chipboard. It’s all bound with sturdy black Wire-O (12.7 mm (0.5″) diameter), so Panobook will sit flat when opened on your desk. (For some of us, this is a huge deal!)

Each notebook contains 50 sheets (100 pages). Instead of being lined or blank, Panobook has a subtle dot pattern with grid spacing at 5 mm (0.20″). And there’s a quirky little twist. There are guide markers on each page that make it easy to quickly draw three rectangles on the page, sized ideally for web designers doing smartphone user interface design or creative types for doing storyboarding. There are also edge guides to divide each page and provide cues for layout. They’re subtle, so if you don’t need them, you might not even notice them.

So what do you do when you finish the notebook? Panobook is designed to let you archive your creations and comes with a slip case in a French Paper Kraft-Tone Standard White 100 lb Cover (for people who know about such things). Write on the spines to catalog your notebooks and keep your collection together on a shelf.

See the Panobook in action:

You can buy Panobook directly from Studio Neat for $20/notebook for one or two; they’re discounted to $19/notebook when you purchase three or more. 

TRIANGLE NOTEBOOK

When I first saw the Triangle Notebook last summer, it seemed vaguely familiar. Back in 2012, there were quite a few posts on the design blogs about this product and it was selling at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shop. However, by the time I planned to write about it, the Triangle Notebook had already sold out and been withdrawn from the marketplace. Now it’s back in an improved form.

The Triangle Notebooks (both the original and improved versions) were created by Tan Mavitan, a creator based in Istanbul, Turkey and best known for his sculptures. As you can imagine, artists need someplace to collect designs and thoughts, so who better to imagine innovatively designed notebooks?

The Triangle Notebook appears to be just that: When closed, it’s a triangle. Flipped open, the notebook is square. The hard front and back covers and spine are encased in fabric, and the 160 interior (90 gr acid-free paper) sheets are narrowly ruled.

The Triangle Notebook comes in 13 solid colors, including Black, (light) Blue, Dark Green, “Green” (which looks more like chartreuse), Navy Blue, Pink, Purple, Red, Yellow, Dark Amber, Ghost White, and Mustard. There are also three Special Edition Triangle Notebooks: Triangle Thoughts (white with black avante garde style, and Yachtsman Blue (pictured below) and Yachtsman Red. All notebooks are 21 cm x 21 cm (8.26″ x 8.26″).

Personally, I find $33 to be a steep price, even for an admittedly lovely hardcover notebook, but my larger concern is that the pages may not lay flat when the notebook is open. Of course, at about 8 1/4″ square, you could place a small book weight in the center without obscuring too much of your content.

All versions of the Triangle Notebook are available from Amazon or from the Tan Mavitan Studio shop. The price in both venues is $33. The Studio often has discount codes listed at the top of the page; as of this writing, WELCOME2019 yields a 20% discount. However, there’s no shipping rate information on the site, and the notebooks do qualify for Amazon Prime two-day shipping, so check both options to see what works best for you.  

SIDEKICK NOTEBOOK

Remember what I was saying about real estate on your desk being at a premium? Panobook isn’t the only option for handling this problem creatively. The Sidekick Notebook appears to be a mostly normal (if narrow) portrait-oriented notebook with a bottom margin cut strangely on the diagonal.

When closed, the Sidekick Notebook measures 21.5 cm x 8.5 cm (8.46″ x 3.34″). But once it’s flipped open, the Sidekick is actually an L-shaped notebook designed to hug the corners of keyboards, iPads/tablets, mousepads, books, and other square-ish items.

Instead of a portrait or landscape orientation, the Sidekick delivers both options simultaneously

The Sidekick, which comes 160 sheets (of 90 gr acid-free paper) per notebook, has a hard fabric-encased cover and comes in four colors: Red, Black, Navy Blue, and Light Gray. The layout is dot- grid style.

I suspect that the Sidekick won’t serve well for sketching large designs, but with both landscape and portrait writing areas, it’s good for taking notes and creating fiddly, small-detail designs.

The Sidekick is available for $24 per notebook from Amazon and from the Tan Mavitan Studio store, with the same discount and shipping caveats as noted above for the Triangle Notebook.

As always, the content you create and capture in your notebook is more important than the size, shape, color, or design. Sometimes, if a notebook is too spiffy (or expensive), we are reluctant to put anything but our “best” notions in them, which may mean procrastinating on doing anything at all.

If a unique design inspires you, embrace an unusual landscape or angle. Just give yourself permission to create first, and judge your work later.