I came to a realisation today that I simply don’t have enough time in my life to review all of the notebooks I have in my shelf. It’s ridiculous really, an entire row of shelving is dedicated to over 100 notebooks and notepads of varying sizes. Some are common (Rhodia) and some are relatively difficult to find (Paperways, and some small brands), but they all need reviewing. Almost every notebook I own is unique and great in its own way, which really shows how much can be done with such a simple concept.

Anyways, this new series of posts will involve quickly reviewing three different notebooks in the one post. I thought I’d begin with some of my really unique journals in the first post, so let’s go.

Standard Number Color Pop Diary

Korea seems to churn out weird and whacky stationery as if it’s their primary export. This journal is no different. The cover is unassuming at first, just black with a faint grey grid on top and a color pop logo. It comes with a plastic sleeve to protect it too, which is nice, but all this stuff doesn’t really live up to the “color pop” in its name. However, this notebook is anything but boring once you look inside.

This is the only instance of a “design your own cover” notebook I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of weird notebooks. The notebook includes two identical sheets of whacky stickers to put on the cover (one glossy, one matte), so you can personalise it however you want. There are a bunch of brightly coloured shapes and messages and they’re pretty high quality.

Of course you can dress up a notebook all you want, but if the insides are crap you won’t use it. Luckily the design of the pages and the whole layout of the book is top notch. Inside the first page is a three year calendar (mine is fairly old so it only goes to 2012), but that doesn’t really matter because you date the journal yourself, so you can use it any year you want.

The second page is a yearly plan. which doesn’t really let you write in much, maybe only a couple of letters or a small drawing in each box. Personally I would just use this for things like university semester start/end dates and things like that.

Thirteen month pages follow, so you can stuff one up or begin in December of the previous year if you want. You have space for notes on the far left, and each week starts on Sunday (not my style). Circle the current month on the top, and fill in the dates next to each day name. Everything is nice and colourful, the year page is pink, months are bright orange, and weeks are green.

Fifty four week pages follow. One thing I love about this design is that each week is split across two pages. This keeps your focus to a single week and gives you heaps of room to write a heap of stuff for each day. Circle the month up the top, fill in the dates next to each day, and fill in your days from there. Each day runs from 6am-10pm which is a good range of time in my opinion. Two hour increments, with two lines per hour allow you to fill in the odd hours, or have two lines to fill in for each two hour block. There’s also a nice big space underneath to put anything else you want. Saturday and Sunday are clumped into one column, sans explicit times. I really like this layout, it allows for a heap of customisation with no wasted space.

The pages that follow the functional part of the diary are totally bright and random. Coloured grid pages, groovy whacked out patterns, and odd diagonal grids may not be as useful as the rest of the book, but it’s unique and a bit of fun.

Unfortunately this is one hard to find diary. I bought it about four years ago from The Hach, but they’ve stopped stocking it since. Standard Number seems to have gone the way of the dodo too, which is a shame. If you find another source for one, chuck a link in the comments below!