• Moleskinerie
  A blog created by Armand B. Frasco archiving numerous sharings, it is updated nearly everyday and full of pictures from various contributors.
• Moleskiner.cn
  My country's best Moleskine site! Hong Kong is still somewhat different from mainland China even though we are one country. I'm so glad that in China Moleskine is picking up pretty well and appreciate a lot the effort from the site owner
• The Wandering Moleskine Project
  Created by Moleskinerie.com, dozens of Moleskines are wandering all over the world. Each recipients/participants are to draw/write something on them and pass over to the next recipients, thereby creating a collage of art and culture in notebook format
• Moleskinerie Gallery
  Yet another great gallery by Armand B. Frasco.
• M and Archival Ink Pens
  A lot of sites didn't really mention or share what type of pens are used by people on M. This is a rare analysis.

• Lovemarks
  Why people love this brand? Check out the reasons posted by people on the brand loyalty tracking and rating site. You will be surprised to find other brands and why so many people are devoted to them.
• Moleskine Notebook
  This site is selling M. If you'd like to order online, or see some of their customer submission, it is worth visiting.

• Moleskine CityNotebook Master site
  This is certainly going to be huge! When the Citynotebook range is expanding from Europe to America to Asia, each city will have a special corner and people can recommend places they've been to! Definitely a new way to create your own travel notebook.
• Moleskine THE Homepage
  The Italian company Modo&Modo now owning the brand and its production. Their site is full of the History of Moleskine, stories of writers and travellers using it, full catalog and best of all a collection of pictures of Moleskine use in movies, TV, etc

• Notebookism
  We all share a pleasant affliction - the urge to create on paper...
• Rhodia Drive
  A personal blog about all things Rhodia
• Pencil Revolution
  Comrades who share the love of pencil would love to visit this site for constant update, review and test on anything related to pencil. Now from a personal blog to a community. Check out the pictures as well.
• Timberlines
  Musings from the Forest: Thoughts and discussion on the pencil industry, forest management, California Cedar Products Company and the artistic and written creativity enabled by the wood-cased pencil. Created by Charles Berolzheimer (aka Woodchuck), President of Calinfornia Cedar Products Company, check out his other web sites: Pencil World and Pencil World Creativity Store. Super energetic guy whom I met in Frankfurt Paperworld 2006.
• Paper Notes in a Digital World
• Paper and Pencil
• 43 folders

• Janey's Journey
  Janey was "reading (Jeffery Camp - a manual of pictorial thought and practical advise) and he wrote something that makes me feel better about copying". But she has certain style developed fusing line drawings with paints.
• Judysmile Experimental Blog
  Judy is a school teacher who loves to draw. Her blog started in 2001 and her drawing is full of bits and pieces of daily reflections, sometimes sad, sometimes full of encouragement, most of the time dreamy and genuinely lively.
• Nate Williams
  aka n8w, originally from Western United States, but currently lives in South and Cental America. He works as a freelance illustrator/artist and apparently speaks in 3rd person.
• the drawing club
  A blog about drawing (and a club to join).
• Michaelnobbs.com
  Michael is a tea drinker, artist, blogger and recovering ME/CFS sufferer living on the west coast of Wales. He recently started to publish The Beany, a sort of blog-in-print (also traditionally known as a book).
• Dan Price's Moonlight Chronicles
  Dan has already done what I've always wanted to do since childhood, drawing and publish journals with drawing. Visit his web site, subscribe his journals, see the Oregon Public Broadcasting interview.
• Lisa Laughy's Gallery
  Great drawings inspired by Jung's notebook, Golden Ratios and letterforms from various cultures. Now with online store and blog.
• Russell Stutler's Sketch book
  Russell carries a small sketching kit which consists of a Moleskine pocket sketchbook, a mini water brush and a watercolor box he made. Check out his drawings.
• FLICKR.com
  People upload photos to this photo sharing site, it has a "tag" function which allows us to tag "moleskine" to submissions. Check this out for a quick selection of Moleskine drawings!
• Julia's Sketchblog
  Amazing sketches done on Moleskine by Julia in NY.
• Sketchcrawl.com
  A drawing marathon project happening all over the world. Started out by Enrico dedicating 21st November a special day for all artists to go out and have a full day of intense drawing around the cities using pencil and watercolors.
• Richard Downs
  My favorite Etching press and editorial illustration artist. If you happen to like the artworks in The Dark Eye and Riven games, or numerous artworks done by Richard in publications such as Times, Newsweek, etc, you must visit the author's site!
• Jeffrey Fulvimari
  Jeffrey was born in Akron, Ohio. He now lives and works in NY city. Recently exhibited in Hong Kong. Extremely lovely drawing.
• Le Moleskine à Beleg

• BBCi Article
  Who really made Moleskine? Who really actually used Moleskine? Tips for using Moleskine notebook. All in this short but fact based article.
• Brandchannel.com
  Brand Features - profile. Behind the brand: The triumphs and tragedies.
• International Herald Tribune
  written by Jason Horowitz, October 16, 2004

Check out the proj:ex ONE drawings, video and comments!

STATUS: Taiwan Exhibition starts 22nd June. Click here for more details, Special Event on 25th June, 2pm

Entries were sent from all over the world and we got over a hundred of them. It took me the whole afternoon to flip through all the pages. The judging criteria are mainly about the originality and creativity of the concept presentation, as well as how the drawings capture the travel spirit.

Each judge was to rate the notebooks from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) and all the marks were added up to find the winners. I first scanned all the notebooks once and grouped them in piles of my own preferences, then looked at them again in more details (I found many used amazing techniques, some almost like book art) and tried to think of how appealing when they were to be exhibited. Finally, there were 11 top most impressive ones from my choice. Marks were then given to them after a final study of details.

It was amazing how small this world has become. I saw from one of the entry a picture of a girl who's a friend's family member. Also, some of the entries were from inner Mongolia. You can really see country differences in these drawings.

I am particularly fond of great drawings or collage techniques with truthful stories behind. Some chose to put everything in a notebook treating it a memory vault, some never pasted a receipt but drew the essence, some have touching stories and beautiful photos of foreign lands. It was an amazing afternoon too short.

Finally the list of the top 10 winners came today. There were too many great entries Moleskineasia.com decided to add more prizes. Details to be announced by them later. I'm anxious to show you all more pictures later.

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I've been using City Notebook since January for my business trips to several cities including London, Frankfurt, Paris and New York. I love the concept of combining note-taking, maps and travel planning in one little black book and I'm amazed by the growingly strong supporting from Moleskine City web site. However, I had some difficulties with City Notebooks and I'm sure many of you agree at least some points, so I made sure I travelled enough with the notebooks and here's the comments for improvement:

1. Mental burden: City Notebook lacks a full size foldable map which would allow you to quickly locate zones/districts AND street names in one view. I had to flip back and forth from the main map to find out which page contains the more detail street maps, so in order to locate things fast, I needed to have a mental map of where the large-scale pages are, which is not relaxing at all considering all the places I needed to go in a short trip. In the beginning I did plan my trip on map (London and Paris) in very detail, but finally I relied on free maps from the airport which has far more details than City Notebook.
2. Limited street names on map (Where am I?): I think this is the biggest problem with City Notebook. Just compare the maps with a regular or free map from the airport you'll notice a big difference. There are not enough street names on the maps! I had this problem many times: if I'm standing on a street corner trying to find out where I am, I would look at the street signs and locate corresponding streets on the map but gee, the area on the map is empty! Yup, try to find the names from the index pages, they are not there if they are not on the maps! So where am I?
3. No street numbers: This is not a common feature on maps but since City Notebook maps are cut up into many pages, I think the feature is very useful since there is space on large-scale city center pages. For instance, I was staying in New York Holiday Inn Mid-town, which is 440 W 57th Street. The address doesn't say anything about Avenues and you know New York taxi drivers, they need to know 'W 57th where?', 440 was not enough and you couldn't hear what they mumbled. So if I knew 440 was somewhere between 9th and 10th avenue, then it would be so much easier to tell them right away after flipping though City Notebook.
4. Unnecessary scale: The scale of the map is printed on every map, since the maps are cut up into many pages, some of the key locations really sit at the margins and the scale really blocked the view of the street maps! The scale can be printed on the maps in less intrusive ways.
5. Flipping back and forth: Since all the maps are cut up into sections, in addition to the above trouble to flip from main map to locate a zoom-in page, I have great problem with the London and Paris maps because most of the key locations I needed to visit are sitting at the margin of those little maps. For example in London, if you walk in the SOHO area between Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus stations, you have to flip between two pages and smaller streets' names are not on the maps, prepare to flip frantically if you are not familiar with the area.
6. Not enough translucent sheets: City Notebook Lacks enough translucent sheets for even just one trip to those who are new to the city. There are just 12 of such sheets and since there are a lot of map pages, you can't write on the translucent sheets on every map if needed. Worst, you can't buy them coz they are not available as individual retail refill.
7. Translucent sheets are not for pencils and roller balls: Since I found that I don't have enough translucent sheets and roller ball ink doesn't dry fast enough, I tried to use pencil on them so that I can later reuse some of sheets, turned out the sheets are not pencil/eraser friendly either. If you try to use an eraser to clear pencil marks, the sheets will change from matte to gloss, you can't write with a pencil on the gloss surface anymore.
8. Translucent sheet too small: If I started to use ballpoint pen on the sheets to mark several locations and suddenly I found that some of the locations are close to the page margin and by moving the sheets to get closer the the margin it would render the previously marked points dislocated, therefore new sheets are needed. The sheets need to be a bit bigger to cover the margins.
9. Translucent sheet not friendly to bookmark: If you have two translucent sheets sticked to opposite pages and you placed the bookmark in between, close the notebook and try to open the page using the bookmark, it will slide underneath either one translucent page and it is clumsy when you want to find something quick.

Things I found Citynotebook great though:

1. Great concept to plan ahead and enjoy the process, knowing the city before you travel and with support from MoleskineCity blog
2. Intuitively combine notes-taking and city navigation with maps
3. Retaining measures and conversions info, found it useful in several in several occasions
4. Perfect size fitting most pockets
5. 3 bookmarks allowing quick access to info

After walking full day at New York Stationery Show 2007 on 21st May 2007, Monica and I went to MXYPLYZYK store on Greenwich Ave to check out the store (there are several interesting stores on the Ave such as Flight 001). Although we were invited we didn't realize Kikkerland's cocktails party celebrating 15 years of design in New York was on that date so we joined right away meeting Jan, Laura and Thomas once again. While we happily walked around with my favorite Grolsch in our hands, the store was quickly filled with designers, press and sales reps.

Turned out this has to do with Moleskine's premium business, which consists of 65% of the company's income (more than I had assumed) producing unique and customized notebooks for corporations. For instance, quoting from a 11th May 2007 article from BusinessWeek titled 'Moleskine Blogs the Little Black Book': in honor of a recent series of events and film screenings by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, the Museum of Modern Art in New York commissioned a notebook featuring some of his still images and a calendar of the various events taking place. Goldman Sachs (GS) commissioned notebooks embossed with its name and logo to hand out at a financial conference. Adobe (ADBE) commissioned a collection of three different types of notebooks to help promote the London launch of its CS3 software.

In fact, from some of our customer's past queries, if you have a project which needs a production of customized Moleskine notebooks, you will most likely talk to Modo e Modo directly or they will refer the business to either a company in Italy called Promemoria or New York based Black and Write.

I was in PaperWorld 2007 in end Jan, met the great lomo guy in their booth and got this nice tote bag, nice contrast with black Moleskine and Faber Castell pencil w sharpener. Lomo people's name cards are photos they took.
The exhibition area of PaperWorld showcased best products from various vendors. I was particularly impressed by the red carpet and the "Writing" light projection on the carpet, so I put my M on the floor and took this picture. A friendly security lady came and told me smiling "you know you can't take pictures here". We exchanged a smile and off I went to see other presentations

A month ago I reported that 3 of my Moleskine (2 pocket size, 1 large size) had problems with the elastic band. The large size M has a very loose elastic band it won't hold the book close anymore, while the two pocket size M have "shrinked" or "melted" elastic bands (as seen in the pictures). I never exposed these notebooks in adverse conditions so they are under my normal use, in fact the large size M is my journal about my son, so it stays in a glass cabinet all the time. 2 weeks ago I received an email from the distributor saying that they would love to give me a replacement and I received the notebooks a few days after. I'm relieved that Modo e Modo is really committed to maintain good quality products despite there were probably some problems with certain production lots. I'm asked by the distributor to find out the quality control number but I purchased these notebooks before Modo e Modo implemented the quality control number system. So a little advise to all of the M fans: Keep the insert or cut the quality control number out from the insert and save it in the back pocket. It helps to identify problem lots for Modo e Modo and you may be able to get a replacement if something is wrong under normal use.

The legendary's origin. The story is here at the Moleskine official site. The place is Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie right in Paris. You simply cannot find any trace of paperie there anymore. You will be disappointed if you visit, you will be standing there wondering how was everything connected, the past, the present, the legend. I was there during a business trip and that's all. M won't be a short lived product range, as long as the new owner keep the spirit alive (not the marketing hype). I just wish the culture of M can be continued in a legendary place, on the same street, a small stationer, a nice collection of stationery, a must see place for the lovers.... Modo, open up a small store there! Worths everything.

1 week after this Europe trip, I went to Japan. Before the trip I tried to plan ahead by reading previous travel records on my Moleskines, when I fetched my Moleskines, a terrible quality issue came out. Several of my Moleskines' elastic band became loose, unable to held the pages together. Upon detailed examination, I found that part of the elastic band were melted or shrinked somehow. Either pure tension resulted in the shrinkage near the edges or the notebooks were exposed to sunlight for prolonged period. I've always thought that the elastic band is weak, but never to the extent that it would melt/shrink like that! Yes, I did put my Moleskines on the porch of a window some time ago for a short period of time, but if that's enough to damage the elastic band, it's just too weak to be a personal journal.

I'm gonna travel to London for market research, then Frankfurt for PaperWorld 2007 and finally Paris for Maison et Objet and market research. I'm so happy I got some samples from vendor last week and I can start to plan my 12 days trip using these two city notebooks. I will definitely know if these are really that useful after the trip. I do however really buy into the idea that the best trip is one that's planned by yourself instead of following travel guides. The new MoleskineCity.com site also offers traveler's recommendation in various cities, so I guess getting info from the net and plan your own trip using city notebook is definitely a great way to... plan and execute a trip.

On the other hand, today I received yet another prototype of the New York city notebook! According to vendor's information, we will have Europe cities available in March, then around May to Aug North America east and then west coast cities will also be launched. Finally Asian cities will be launched in 2008. The reason why they can't launch all of them at once is that Modo e Modeo would hire one person in each city to actually check all the details to make sure they are correct, although the maps are in collaboration with Lonely Planet. The prototype contains several inserts of a one page note and at the corner they say "We would be grateful if you would advise us of any inaccuracies you may find, or any suggestions you might like to make to improve this City Notebook. Use this sheet of paper to keep track of them and then please send us an e-mail at info@modoemodo.com. Thanks to your help, you will find updated information at moleskine.com in the City Notebook section."

Thanks to Victor Hsu's kindness and Moleskiner.cn's continual effort, I'll be receiving this nicely done new year postcard! (sponsor: emo+)

Steve from Taiwan wrote a song out of the blue about Moleskine! That's the first song I've ever known dedicated to Moleskine! In his words: This is a song I wrote the other day, a way of thanking my Moleskine for being such a faithful companion in my life. I don't know if there is a better way than writing a song on it and simply for it. And thanks again to Moleskinerie, I'm truly honored.
Hmmmm a bit late to report this but I'm sure you'll find this amazing :) Check out Steve's Moleskine Song

The curator of this exhibition invited several artists from my previous Proj:ex exhibition to join. I couldn't send my drawing in time coz I was in Japan. But Joachim did! Congratulations! I received invitation of this great event today: 70 Moleskine by international artists designers architects illustrators & writers at STANFORDS, THE CORAN SHOP, ARTWORDS, WATERSTONES. Press View: Monday, October 9th 2006 7:45pm. STANFORDS Covent Garden, 12-14 Long Acre, London WC2E 9LP. Exhibition continues until October 22nd, 2006

Took us nearly a year to plan and execute this "My Favorite Moleskine" exhibition. Finally we got around 40 entries from all over the world and showcase in the Festival Walk LOG-ON store from 6th Sep to 21st Sep 2006. After that, we separated the exibition into groups and transferred to different city'super stores to continue until 12th October 2006. Thanks to Arnault Castel from Working Unit to help execute this difficult task! We got interview from various press and Cable TV, which is super exciting for us all. In the coming days I will upload pictures of this exhibition, video and the Cable TV report of this event. So Stay tuned. Meanwhile, visit the photostream of this exhibition

I've been bugged by this Nabaztag for a while and finally I adopted him and let him sits in front of my computer. Well, he jumps around and sometimes sits in the living room but it doesn't stop there. He announces the time, wakes me up in the morning, notifies me new messages, tells me the weather, etc... what can I say! I'd rather have him around than not. If you are a Nab adopted as well, discover a new Nab Me! button in this page and start Nabbing me!

I heard that they've been planning this for a long time and finally able to do it. Now I wish they have something like a Business Tools Notebook for daily use, including nice tips from Getting Things Done (David Allen), Steve Covey, Tom Peters etc. Please please please! Instead of doing a Hipster PDA, I love to have such Business Tools Notebook with rich contents!

Currently announced models are "European Arrivals" (available Fall 2006) and "American Arrivals" (Spring 2007). There will be more cities coming up, Asia will probably be end 2007 or 2008..... the wait could be looooong.

The image you see above is actually an invitation from US distributor Kikkerland for the Book Expo America to be held from 19th May to 21st May in Washington DC. I will not be able to attend BEA, but I will visit New York Stationery Show from 20th May onward, so I guess I will be able to see first hand this new series and will take some pictures to share with you all.

• 18-month weekly notebook pocket (ISBN: 88-8370-607-2). Retail price : HK$98 / NT$400
• 18-month weekly notebook large (ISBN: 88-8370-609-9). Retail price: HK$158 / NT$650
• pocket watercolour notebook (ISBN: 88-8370-560-2). Retail price : HK$118 / NT$500
• large watercolour notebook (ISBN: 88-8370-562-9). Retail price : HK$178 / NT$750

"My Moleskine" exhibition has been very strong in Asia, especially Japan and Korea. Each drawing was literally being touched but thousands because of the nice open box display, which people can't really take away the notebooks yet able to flip through the pages. There has been reports that famous artists' drawings where stolen, people just tear off the pages from the notebooks, how terrible. Anyway, this round of "My Moleskine" exhibition will come to its final stop in Taiwan's city'super. From mid-May to mid-June, the drawings will be transferred to this mega lifestyle store and being displayed at the entrance. If you are in Taiwan during that period, don't forget to pay a visit coz these are supposed to be the last exhibition of those drawings. I will have more pictures when the exhibition is being setup. Stay tuned.

Isn't it easy and fun? Just grab your digital camera and shoot yourself a less than 1 minute Moleskine experience and send to me, it will be shared in the MOLESKINE minute section of this site. Video men or vloggers or citizens, don't think, just shoot! Who knows, after the 2 proj:exhibitions showing all the drawings I got from all over the world, I may be able to create the first video exhibition with some installation art.... stay tuned.