Review: The Nomi Notebook

Early on in my career, I got by using reporter’s notebooks for most of my notekeeping needs. I also spent long, miserable years jotting notes on 8.5–by-11-inch sheets of copy paper, which is even worse. By the end of a project, I’d have a pile of mangled scraps in no organized order.

My notebook obsession started when my wife got me hooked on Bullet Journals. Since I use fountain pens slightly more frequently than she does, I enjoyed experimenting and testing new notebooks to see how well they work with my growing collection of pens and inks. The classic Leuchtturm BuJo is nice, but there’s creative value in switching up what you use on a regular basis. You never know how a new paper or pen will impact your process and what you create.

My latest crush is the Nomi Notebook, currently on offer as a Kickstarter. (Back the project here through October 8, 2021.) I certainly don’t need more notebooks, but this one has a couple of nice touches that impressed me.

SIZE: My go-to size for notebooks is A5, which is roughly about 5.5-by-8 inches. There are tons of other sizes out there, but A5 (about the size of a trade paperback novel) is the one that will sit comfortably on my (smallish) desk without eating up all the room. A5 also fits nicely in my backpack when traveling. The Nomi measures 5.5-by-8.5-inches, so it’s a little narrower and slightly taller than two of my usual favorites, the Leuchtturm BuJo or The Seven Seas Writer. If you didn’t handle A5 notebooks every day, I doubt you’d notice the difference. Nomi’s sizing means you’re getting an easily carried book with 192 pages of good-size paper.

CONSTRUCTION: The signatures are Smyth-sewn, which is the mark of high-quality, archival stitching. The exterior spine is wrapped with soft black book cloth. This treatment permits the Nomi to open flat, which pleases the lefty in me. I know I’m not going to butt my hammy mitts against the curl of the interior spine every other page. And I won’t lose any writing space to the gutter.

Look! It lays flat!

PAPER: This is the key, right? My fave A5 notebooks (Life, The Seven Seas, Maruman Mnemosyne) tend to use smooth, beautiful Japanese paper that that are theoretically optimal for fountain pens and other liquid inks. The Seven Seas and my Hobonichi planner both use Tomoe River paper, which is certainly smooth, but your work takes time to dry. (Both books come with blotters, if that’s any indication.) The pocket notebooks I carry on the go (Field Notes, Write Notepads) sport papers that aren’t as lovely as that Japanese paper, but still hold their own with juicy inks. Nomi features 118 gsm (grams per square meter) white paper, which to my touch feels a lot like the Write notepads I use. (It’s thicker than the ones in official Bullet Journals and the Seven Seas notebook.)

The big difference? Nomi paper is recycled. I’ve been a stationery geek for decades, and while I use recycled paper for my home office copier, I learned early not to bother seeking out recycled for my writing papers. What’s out there isn’t lovely. Apparently you can either chew up a forest to feed your appetite for beautiful paper, or you can save the planet with sucky recycled paper. Nomi has sourced paper with a nice tooth to it.

To start, I used disposable pens and markers, pencil, and high- and low-end fountain pens on it. The big-ass Sharpie ghosted somewhat though to the next page—but of course it would. Impressed with the low-end instrument performance, I tried slightly juicier fountain pen inks, and more expensive nibs. The paper held up wonderfully. A nice writing experience, whether you’re using a cheap disposable or your premium fountain pen. Only one nib—a very flexible nib, I might add—produced some feathering and ghosting.

Testing inappropriate/low-end pens and inks.

Sharpie ghosting on reverse—of course.

Testing fine-tip Rollerballs.

Testing disposable liquid ink pens.

Testing a Pelikan Oblique Medium with very flexible nib.

Some feathering with the Pelikan nib.

Some bleedthrough with the Pelikan.

Flawless performance on the stub.

COVER: I really dig Nomi’s recycled cover. Notebook covers always present a problem. The Leuchtturm BuJo feels like I’m forever toting a hardcover book around with me. I immediately notice the extra weight when I slide it into my eBag with my laptop. “Paperback” notebooks are lighter, but they really take a beating.

Maruman sidesteps this issue using durable plastic covers for its Mnemosyne. The Seven Seas marries fabric to card stock. Either way, the covers of these three standbys are nowhere near as lovely as the paper they enclose, which is why so many of us stationery geeks feel compelled to sheath our preferred notebooks in leather covers. It’s a brutal Catch-22. Leather’s nice, but boy does it add weight!

The Nomi uses 120-pound double-thick cover stock that feels satisfying, thick, and perfectly capable of protecting the book for the long haul.

ART: You weren’t expecting this, now, were you? Unlike any notebook I’ve ever seen, Nomi sports artwork on its endpapers. Noir is the theme of this inaugural Kickstarter edition, in keeping with the startup’s San Francisco location. The two images are by New Yorker cartoonist Shuchita Mishra. Black and white, moody…the images evoke classic old movies. The building at the bottom, incidentally, is 891 Post Street, where mystery writer Dashiell Hammett actually lived, and which he choses as the home of his fictional detective, Sam Spade. (The building, which still stands today, is marked with a plaque that shares the story.)

BOTTOM LINE: This was supposed to be year I stopped buying more notebooks, ink, and pens, and focused on enjoying the stash of tools I’ve already acquired. But the Nomi sucked me in, and I briefly thought about jumping for a ten-pack, since you reap a nice discount in volume, and get one book signed by the artist. But I exerted some willpower and backed the Kickstarter for just one book as a reward. I chalk my enthusiasm up to the complete package: Artwork, substantial gray cover, nice paper, and a nod to mystery fiction to boot. If these matter to you, jump on the bandwagon. Again, the Kickstarter runs until October 8, 2021.

Note: I was provided with a complimentary prototype in exchange for an honest review. I tested a blank-page book, but a dot grid version is also available.

Photo at top by @kellysikkema via Unsplash.

New interview with Joe and Denise, now up at Hoban Cards!

There’s a wonderful interview with my wife Denise Kiernan and I up today at the website of Hoban Cards, a letterpress printing shop in Chehalis, Washington. Hoban prints the loveliest letterpress business cards and stationery. The interview has us talking a little about our work as writers, our books, and how we use Hoban’s business cards. Check out the interview here.

I don’t recall exactly how we found Hoban. It may have been via their etsy shop or their website. We had used other printers in the past to create everything from business cards to bookplates to rack cards, but we wanted to step it up and get some some really special cards made that would leave a lasting impression with people we met at conferences and book events.

I’ve always been a stationery geek, but I’m far from an expert. Letterpress is an old style of printing probably best known these days for the distinctive texture left behind when the photopolymer plates literally press into the surface of the paper. Since pieces are printed by hand, one at a time, on antique, rescued and refurbished equipment, orders are pricier than offset printing, which is the technique used to create almost every bit of generic printed matter in our world.

You don’t use letterpress to advertise Happy Hour specials. It’s typically reserved for small-batch stationery, wedding invites, baby announcements, and business cards like the ones we have. You can check out the process in Hoban’s nifty video.

I’m no expert on the process, by the way, just a fan. If you’re curious, it’s worth checking out Hoban’s website, which features posts on such topics as Victorian-era stationery, the qualities of letterpress paper, the difference between fonts and typefaces, and modern-day business cards. Their hilarious templates often imagine the business cards of fictional characters. They did a post recently analyzing the business cards in the movie American Psycho. If you know the film, you know what I’m talking about.

Denise liked her Hoban cards so much that she now has three different types. I just placed my second order, which I’ll show off in a few weeks when they arrive. My photos don’t really do them justice. The photography at Hoban’s website will make you salivate—if you’re a psycho about such things.

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My New Obsession: Fancy Notebooks

From top, left to right: Field Notes Byline Reporter's Notebook, Leuchtturm 1917 Jottbook, Clairefontaine, Apica CD Notebook, Life Notebook, Rhodia Meeting Book, Nanami Paper's A5 The Writer Notebook, Midori MD Notebook, and the Maruman Mnemosyne 196 A5 Notebook.

Back in the day, I took tai chi classes from an older instructor, or sifu, in Hoboken, New Jersey, who, among other things, also gave me a short course on firearms. He invited me and my then-girlfriend out to his house in the country, where we spent time shooting all kinds of handgun and rifles at targets.

Once I happened to mention that I had bought a fountain pen. He was immediately intrigued, and showed me that he carried one every day. He preferred them over all other writing instruments. "If you have even one," he said, "you should write with it every day."

Well, I didn't. I tried, I really did. But I found that pen to be too fussy to be an everyday writing tool. Eventually the nib of the pen would stop writing and I'd try to get it to start up again. It worked for a little while, then stopped. I was forever setting it aside in favor of a handy ballpoint, and the ink would proceed to dry in the fountain pen and need to be cleaned out laboriously at a later date. Disgusted, I'd move on, leaving the ink blotches and ink-stained fingers behind me. A year or so later, I'd buy a new fountain pen, get fired up to use it, and I'd have the same crappy experience.

Hence my love/hate relationship with fountain pens.

Not long ago, I was telling another friend why I'd given up on the lovely pens I'd bought over the years. (This guy was not a tai chi instructor, just an ordinary pen geek.) He said, "Well, what kind of paper are you using to write on?"

That blew my mind. Turns out paper quality strongly impacts fountain pen use. If the paper's crappy, the fountain pen tears it up as it writes, and the paper fibers clog the pen nib. Or the paper just gets soaked with the ink and bleeds through. And in some rare cases, the pen nib just needs to be tuned up by someone who knows what the hell they're doing.

Which led me to research better quality paper and notebooks. I figure I could spring for this kind of luxury since it's ostensibly related to my profession. I'm currently writing my way through a lot of different notebooks. Suffice to say that the paper in these books is smoother and stronger. They don't shred under the pens, and they don't bleed. In the parlance of stationery geekdom, these notebooks are "fountain pen friendly." Well, wouldn't you know, these old pens of mine are behaving like totally different instruments. It's amazing.

I'll share more about this development soon enough, but the current batch of notebooks are shown above. Most are destined to be the daily notebook I keep on my desk. Some are already dedicated to one specific project or client. Most are A5-sized notebooks, which is the size I like best for my desk and which is roughly 6 X 8.25 inches in size. I've bought them variously at Amazon, Nanami Paper, and Goulet Pens. More on the latter two indie businesses one of these days.

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