My love/hate relationship with notebooks
Designers and developers seem to have an unhealthy obsession with notebooks and writing utensils. I too share in this obsession. I have at least four notebooks I actively write in, with at least —- no joke —- seven sitting on a shelf, waiting to be used. I also buy too many pens that don’t get used because they feel weird or they don’t write smoothly enough.
As much as I love buying notebooks, I’ve found that using a notebook hasn’t come very natural for me. Staring at a white (or yellow) page with nothing on it causes anxiety not unlike what you feel when you start a design in Photoshop. It’s just blankness staring back at you.
How do you organize your notebook?
Despite my deep desire and understanding of the benefits of using a notebook, one of my key problems is figuring out a good way to organize all of my notes. There’s no order, no structure, and no sense to be made of a new notebook. It’s untapped power.
I did a quick search to see how others organize their notebooks. I found a few articles but have yet to find the system I think will work for me. I’m kind of at a loss on how to partition it so I can keep different project-related notes together.
Notebooks aren’t made for lefties
Besides the organization issue, I find that being a left-handed person inhibites my ability to use a notebook to its fullest. I know what you’re thinking, Whatever David, just use it upside down and quit your whining. True, I could use it upside down, but then the sewn-in bookmark strap won’t work as intended and it’s just plain awkward to use it that way. Drawing or writing with the spine inhibiting your hand or pushing your palm is just plain annoying.
My notes aren’t pretty enough
I think every designer/developer type wishes their notes were like those conference notes you see every year around SXSW and other conferences. Check this page from Joshua Blankenship:
If you work in the web industry, you probably wish that your wireframes came out as neatly as the ones you see plastered all over Dribbble. I know I do.
But they don’t. At their worst my notes are indistinguishable, at their median they usually wind up looking like this:
And at their best they look like this:
Not terribly beautiful are they?
What works for me
I like to work on plain ‘ole copy paper. It’s not very organized and it’s cumbersome, and I often lose sheets or the sheets get spilled on. But, while being a terrible way of doing notes, it’s the way I feel the most free to create and brainstorm. Often when I’m looking at a notebook I’m afraid I’ll “mess it up" and that it won’t “look cool". This defeats the purpose. I’ve even made my own notebooks by stapling crappy paper together (come to think of it, that actually worked pretty well for me).
What I’m trying
So I definitely haven’t figured it all out yet, but what I’m trying to do is just get over myself and start using the dang thing and hoping it all comes together and I find the right system for me. If that happens, I will write my findings. For now, I guess I’m still on the road to finding the perfect solution for me.