Getting to Know the Nomi Notebook
There was a time when the only sales pitch I needed in order to buy a notebook was to be told that it was made from recycled paper. This was before I delved deep into fountain pens, of course, because recycled paper has not always been known for having the best performance when it comes to liquid inks. I’m of the right age that I participated in pulping and making my own “recycled paper” by hand as an arts and crafts project as a child back in the Nineties, and I can’t imagine how badly that paper would feather and - not even bleed through but - soak through. All of this is why I was particularly intrigued when I heard about the new Nomi Notebook, currently launching on Kickstarter.
I encourage you to go take a look at the Kickstarter page and especially the pitch video that the Nomi Stationery team have put together, because I think they’ve done a very good job of explaining what they saw existing in the notebook market, what they saw lacking in the notebook market, and what they feel they are bringing fresh. They also do a great job of explaining the perils of bad paper, such as feathering, ghosting, and bleedthrough, that those of us who use liquid ink deal with on a regular basis. For clarification, the purpose of this review, I will be referring to “ghosting” as when the ink on one side of a page is contained on that side, but visible through the page on the other side, and “bleedthrough” as when the ink soaks through from one side of a page onto the other side of the page, or even onto the following page. As someone who shops based on both form and function, I’ve dealt with my share of notebooks from certain brands like Moleskine or Field Notes that look very nice, but can’t hold up to the ink from my fountain pens. Feathering can be mitigated by using smaller pens or writing deliberately so that lines won’t blur into each other, but bleedthrough can mean wasting multiple sheets of paper each time you write a page, depending on the quality. The trade off is often paper like Tomoe River, which stands up to use from liquid inks, but takes approximately a year and a half per page to dry, and because each sheet is as thin as a mouse’s whisper, it ghosts like heck, and I wastefully only ever write on one side of it. I know Tomoe River paper is very popular, and people are very sad about it going away, but I’ll be honest, I never really found it to be a useful “everyday” paper, mostly because of the slow drying times.
But fast drying times are an additional promise of the Nomi Notebooks, so I decided to put the promises to the test when Nomi Stationery offered to send me a prototype notebook to test out. I say prototype because some of the printing on the notebook I received varies slightly from the finished product that Kickstarter backers will be getting, but the paper is the same, which is what matters. Both the cover and interior of this notebook are made with premium post-consumer recycled paper, and not to bury the lede, I was very impressed with its performance. This particular paper is 118 GSM and fairly opaque. In fact, the below images are presented sequentially, and while there are a couple of instances where I went particularly hard on the paper, and you can see some ghosting or even bleedthrough, in those areas where I wrote normally I was able to write on both sides of the sheet without any issues. The only bleedthrough I really got, in fact, was where I had already written on a page and then went back over the same spot, which is something that no paper is particularly good with, so I’m not going to fault it for that. The paper was fairly smooth, and worked nicely for the various sizes and materials of fountain pen nibs that I tested. The paper was also nice and smooth when using ballpoints and rollerballs. With my 0.9mm mechanical pencil I started to feel that the paper was a little bit too smooth, which is a common pitfall for fountain pen papers when it comes to pencil graphite, but with a thinner lead tip, like the sharpened 2mm lead or the sharpened wood case pencils, I didn’t feel any issue. Speaking of pencils, I was also impressed by how well my pencil eraser test worked, as well as my Pilot Frixion eraser test. Getting back to dry times, I tried running my finger across a line of writing immediately after finishing it with a couple of different nib sizes, as you can see in the second photo below, and found that most of the line had finished drying by the time I was done writing.
The one thing missing from this writing experience, and perhaps it is a fair trade off for the drying times, is that I did not get any particularly notable sheen on my inks. I got a reasonable amount of shading, and I’m happy with the color results, but if I was looking specifically to show off the sheen of a particular ink this isn’t the paper I would use for it. That said, I did not specifically try any “super sheener” inks, I just tested with the pens I had on hand, and sheeny inks in particular tend to have significantly longer drying times, which would defeat the purpose of a fast drying notebook. I think that for the performance this paper provides, especially considering the environmental benefits, this is a fair trade-off.
If you watched the Kickstarter video mentioned above you know that it wasn’t all about paper, it also spoke about the importance of binding. The Nomi Notebook features a smyth sewn lay-flat binding covered with bookcloth. It looks great, and functionally I was impressed. For the most part, you can open to any page and write without having to hold down the paper to keep it from rising up at you. because of the flexibility between the signatures and the lack of a rigid backing it is easy to open a two page spread wide if you are looking to write or sketch across two sheets. In a couple of instances I had to press a page down when I first opened it, but it stayed after the fact without my holding it there, which is all that I can ask for. The thick cover stock, rounded corners, and 196 page-count fill out the specifications sheet on this almost-A5 notebook (it is 8.5” by 5.5”.)
While balancing environmental sustainability with quality stationery products is the focus of Nomi as a whole, this first launch product has more of a story to tell than just that. Nomi Stationery is based out of San Francisco, and has decided to go with a Noir theme for this notebook, featuring endpaper illustrations by Shuchita Mishra, based on classic San Francisco noir tales. The illustrations are beautiful (you can get a peek at them on the kickstarter) and feel fitting with the monochromatic grey and black covers. The Dashiell Hammett quote in the front off the book encourages one to write whatever story they have to tell in an open and inviting way. As the notebook is available in either blank or dot grid options, I appreciate that this theme feels like a fun bit of set dressing, perhaps inspiring the user to write or sketch something interesting along a theme, or if not, it is at least unobtrusive enough that it can be ignored and the notebook can be appreciated regardless of theme. Still, I think the theme is well done here and I’m curious to see what themes they have lined up in the future.
Nomi Stationery plans for this notebook to retail at $30, but during the Kickstarter campaign it is available for $25, or $35 for a copy signed by artist Shuchita Mishra. There are additional options for bundles of more notebooks as well. For an almost 200 page notebook of premium fast-drying fountain pen paper, I think that’s a reasonable price. I think it’s so reasonable that I’ve gone ahead and backed the campaign myself. I plan to get a dot grid notebook for portable use to replace a Tomoe River book I’m currently using, so that I can actually close the book when I’m done writing, rather than having to leave it open forever to dry. As of this writing there are two weeks left in the Kickstarter campaign, so go check it out if it sounds interesting to you as well.
The notebook reviewed above is a prototype unit that was provided to Penquisition by Nomi Stationery free of charge in exchange for an honest review.
