Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/07/how-a-design-company-is-dealin.html
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Congrats on a company not suing because someone else made a notebook that is slightly longer and thinner than a traditional notebook.
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The pictured notebook looks relatively straightforward. It’s narrow and dotted, along with some other minor details. To me the elements that go into it are pretty basic, throwing a fit over copying it seems silly. I’m sure there are many other notebooks that fit the bill, so Studio Neat has the right attitude of just keep doing what they’re doing and loyal customers that appreciate the quality of their products will stick around and spread the word.
If the copy is also good then it is what it is. The notebook market is pretty huge and varied already.
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That’s what I was thinking. It’s not unheard of that various people might independently come up with the same idea. At first I thought it was a digital notebook, so maybe there was some proveable copying, but it’s a rectangle of paper.
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Similar notebooks have been making very fine, iterative improvements for a long time. Nothingburger is nothing…
Steve Jobs was inspired to make the first Macintosh graphics toolbox draw rounded rectangles because of street signs. It’s been downhill from there.
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To the point where everything now has to be a damn circle. I loathe this UI design trend.
(I’m look at you, Discourse with your round user pictures.)
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Especially if the idea is as simple as this one.
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I mean - if it is the size and orientation they are copying… I have to say… soooo???
But then again I am not in the market for fancy bespoke note pads. I use what ever is handy and free.
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$19 for a fucking notebook 
It’d better write the notes for you at that price.
Some folks got more money than sense.
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Which smartphone? There is an increasingly-dizzying number of aspect ratios being used for an increasingly-dizzying number of smartphones.
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The right aspect ratio for a smart phone is not 3:2 or 16:9 or 18:9 or 15:9 (5:3) or 7:3 or 2:1 or 4:3 or 56:27 or 39:18 (19.5:9).
The closest to perfection is 8:5 (16:10) as it offers the broadest number of use cases in either orientation. Sadly there are no phones on the market in this correct aspect ratio. And if you get European notepads they’re essentially in the aspect ratio you need, long before smartphones ever existed.
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For the kind of people that are very fastidious about writing, keeping notes or organizing their day however they choose to do it and whatever cost they think works for them i really don’t care. It helps some people so why not $19? Same could be said about most other things. My brother loves his cheap office chair, i have a $200-300 one, and some people swear my ones that cost over a grand. Whatever works for that person i’m in no position to judge and i frankly don’t care, not my money.
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My original user picture only worked as a square. Shrinking it to fit the circle made it unreadable.
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If the success of your business depends on the exclusivity of the “design” of a slightly differently sized piece of paper, you are doomed to fail. Sounds like the company is taking it in stride and this is one of many products, which is the right approach, I’m sure. This is probably par for the course in a business where you are taking centuries-old things that work just fine and cost almost nothing, and trying to make them “premium” with trivial changes. They are far from alone in doing that, so clearly money is to be made from novelty-seeking hipsters the world over.
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Who do I need to pay my royalties for 8.5x11 paper to?
I used to make these notebooks 15 years ago when I worked at a print shop. Printed grid on nice paper. cut in thirds and spiral bound. Not sure what the innovation is. I think I took the idea from a customer that got a booklet bound this way if I remember right. Each one cost about $2.50 to make and print.
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I’ve filled the space between my keyboard and the edge of my desk with standard post-it notes for years. Anything bigger and I feel like I have to push my keyboard to some un-ergonomic distance away.
But if we’re awarding prizes to the longest, narrowest notebook to put next to your keyboard, my money is on the Maruman Mnemosyne N162: 200x75 cm.
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Don’t think they were ripped off. Someone had a similar idea and did it better.
8:5! Cool! I am a 9x12 man myself just because it’s a common size for art paper and, at least in the U.S., inherently cool because it’s not the standard 8.5x11, so I have my reasons but they are shallow, ephemeral, and I would like to hear more about the gospel of the new ratio and its perfection and its many use cases.
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