Field Notes Brand is a company that knows how to market themselves, and knows how to make nice pocket notebooks. Perhaps they invest too much time and money on the former as opposed to the latter, sometimes to their detriment. But recent mistakes aside, I want to spend some time introducing you to possibly the best product Field Notes has ever produced: the legendary Shenandoah edition.
Every quarter for over a decade now, Field Notes has been producing a new take on the pocket notebook. With a wide variety of thoughtfully designed products, these Limited Editions are a big part of what has made Field Notes fun and engaging, coupled with their subscription package. In my experience (over 30 notebooks used over multiple years), these Limited Editions tend to have one or more of three shortcomings:
- Poor durability, particularly in the spine
- Non-preferred choice in paper ruling or layout
- Unappealing visual design
Take Trailhead for example. The durability is actually quite good, with no spinal tears experienced in any of my notebooks. The visual design is absolutely top notch in my book. But Field Notes went with a ruled paper design, which immediately makes the notebook difficult to use for some of my common applications (tables and graphing). Still a great notebook with two out of three qualities, Trailhead just misses out on the trifecta for me.
Another good case study would be National Parks. A home run with both visual design and paper choice, National Parks only falls a little short on the durability. After being used regularly for several weeks and being exposed to sweat or humidity, the spines become perilously flimsy, and have torn for me.
So hopefully you get the idea. Field Notes finds it difficult to check all three of those boxes - and in only one of their notebooks (of the ones that I've been able to try) have they managed to make it happen: Shenandoah.
Let's begin with durability. Occasionally, Field Notes will release a Limited Edition with a duplexed cover: two layers of cover paper fused into one, much more durable sheet.
The two-color duplexing of Shenandoah not only gives the notebook the green light in the durability category, but also makes for a beautiful yet simple visual design. Each notebook features the summer color of a tree's leaf on the outside cover, and the fall color on the inside cover. This is Field Notes at its best, achieving a great visual design, but more importantly, investing in the cover to make sure they get the durability right.
Finally, Shenandoah is filled with graph paper, by far the most versatile and neatest paper choice in my book. All three boxes checked with style and elegance to spare.
Unfortunately, this release came out in the fall of 2015 and is only available with increasingly crazy pricetags on Ebay and the Field Nuts Facebook group. I was fortunate to get my only three-pack for a reasonable price on Ebay before things got too crazy.
But, if you can get your hands on it, and you don't plan on direct exposure to rain, Shenandoah offers a blissful pocket notebook experience.
Is it the ultimate pocket notebook? No. It's not weatherproof, and Rite in the Rain's universal grid, with slightly larger squares, is a little better. The ultimate pocket notebook for me would be something like Shenandoah in terms of the visual designs, but made with a Rite in the Rain cover and inside paper.
Alas, perhaps one day.
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