Editing The Pen Addict 329/transcript (section)

== Elemental Paper Kickstarter ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Next up, I wanted to circle back on elemental paper. The notebook Kickstarter, that was super popular where they did, each of the elements had their own notebook, and they did the different colors and the spectrums on the edge of the pages, and they just came out beautifully. And there was a lot of variance in the paper quality. So people started seeing reviews saying, well, my paper was fine. Well, my paper was terrible. Look at it. And I was part of the campaign. So I got notebooks too. So I started testing them out, and I was actually a little bit nervous. I was like, hmm, maybe mine's going to be terrible for fountain pens. And that's what a lot of people were finding. You know, liquid ink pens are the biggest challenge for paper because they will bleed and feather the most if they have the opportunity to do so. But so Kelly at Mountain of Ink, which we referred to her review before, her ink writing samples looked atrocious. Like her paper did not handle fountain pen and inks at all. So I decided to break mine out. I'd been using it mostly with pencil and drawing pen for my journal. So I decided to use the back of it and test out the fountain pens. Mine came out perfect. Perfect. Like it's not Rodia, right? And we're going to talk about that in a minute. I wanted to elaborate on paper types in a minute. So I put all that in the show notes. But, you know, it's not a coded page like Rodia, but it's a quality page like Voyage Term where it dries fast. I had no bleed, no feathering. I used, you know, broad stub nibs on one page. I used medium stub nib on another page. I used an extra fine nib. I had zero issues. And that's, I wanted to post this not in like a show of support necessarily, but as a look. We all get different products sometimes. And there's variants in things. And that doesn't invalidate one person's point of view over another one's. I'm only as good as the product that's sitting on my desk, right? And Kelly's only as good as the product that's sitting on her desk. She can review the paper she has in front of her, and it's terrible. I can review the paper I have in front of me, and it's good. What I'm not sure is taking place is what Elemental's doing about it. Like, is there a way to swap out these books? Is there a way to even tell? Like, how would you even know? Like, they've talked about some, you know, manufacturing, you know, issues. But I don't know, is there a way? Like, if you got a bad one, can you swap it out? How do you know you got a bad one? Is there a way to tell without opening it up? Like, I have another one sitting here that I haven't opened. Is it the same paper as the one that I have that's good? So, those are questions Elemental, I think, needs to be upfront and clear on. Because you don't want to go into a product purchase not knowing exactly what you're going to get, right? That's the challenge. So, it's good that there's all these product reviewers out there that can have these different experiences. You know, sometimes we all have the exact same experience. That happens more times than not. But sometimes, you know, there's a kink in the plans and, you know, there's something that is different between products and there's variants. And that's when it's always good to hear from the manufacturers, like, the what's and when's and why's and how's. So, I think we've sort of seen it from Elemental. I would like to see more personally. Because they did such a good job on the Kickstarter. And I think they're going to continue to do a good job making these notebooks. They have a Tomoe River notebook coming out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And they obviously want to be part of this community. So, I think, you know, I implore them just to be clear about what they're doing with any notebook issues. That's the only thing I'm not clear on right now. But, I mean... For as much as you know, why would it differ so greatly from one book to another? So, they had... Based on what I read from their answers in Kickstarter, it was basically a source issue. Like, the source paper was all the same. Okay? So, imagine you get a pallet of paper. Like, literally a pallet. Like, as big as a refrigerator. Right? Well, maybe you have two pallets of this paper for the order. And the second pallet didn't get pressed correctly. Or the temperature was different. You know, these are things no one on my side of the table... You know, I'm relating myself, like, as knock or as elemental. No one on the vendor side of the table is going to know those things about each and every sheet that gets put into these notebooks. So, I could have two pallets of paper sitting next to each other. If the manufacturer had something that they didn't know, no one knew, sitting right next to it, you know, what could be the difference in those things? It's probably a list of technical things that could be different. They shouldn't be different. Your expectation is that they are not different going into it. Right? You buy Paper XB32. Okay? You expect Paper XB32 to be exactly like the paper you've tested, the paper you've put into your sample notebooks, the paper you've taken the photographs of, and the paper that you've based your product descriptions on. So, Paper XB32 shows up. And there's now four pallets of it. We keep getting bigger. They sold a lot of notebooks. So, four pallets of paper. One of those papers, one of those pallets was produced on Wednesday, and the other ones were produced on Tuesday. And, you know, Bob went out for a lunch break, and the humidifier in the factory went off. So, the pressing of the pages didn't go exactly as planned. Do you get where I'm going with this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. No, I understand. No one knows. Yeah. No one knows. How could you know? Right? You can't. Exactly. Science and any slight change in the circumstances at which the paper was forged can affect it. Forged. I get it. I get it. I just wondered. I understand it now. I didn't know that 10 minutes ago.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Your only recourse at this point, I mean, no way would I expect Elemental to open every book and test it. But, it's unacceptable.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They will have to deal with their manufacturer for something. They will have to figure something out to replace any defective ones. I don't know what they're doing. But, like, from their perspective, they ordered an exact thing, and they expect the exact thing. And they got a lot of the exact thing, but somewhere mixed in there was not the exact thing. It was almost the exact thing, and it worked differently than the exact thing. So, like, it's an impossible situation to rectify cleanly. Like, there's no black and white in this situation.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, from going forward, I think there just needs to be some clarity on what happened here and how we can do our best to ensure this never happens again to have a consistency issue. Because you don't, paper's one thing where you don't need a consistency issue, right? You don't need two different people having two different experiences with your product.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, if you want to keep selling multiple versions of it to the same person. Yeah. Which you do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, right? Yep. So, that was a long and rambly way of saying manufacturing is hard, and there's just things you can't account for. And that's not an excuse. It's just a fact. Like, it's not perfect. And it's never going to be. You try to get there, and sometimes you can't. And you try to figure it out as you go. So, I mean, we're dealing with that right now with these stinking Tallulahs that I can't get to show up. So, we all have our struggles. And it's just how you handle and communicate those things is, I think, is what drives your company forward and propels it forward. And, you know, and I think they'll do it. Like, I have full faith in the folks behind Elemental that, you know, going forward, their products are going to be great. I'm really happy with them. So, thinking about this made me realize that I speak in categories of paper, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If I didn't ramble enough, I wanted to talk about that a little bit because, you know, people ask for recommendations. Paper is a very hard thing to recommend to people because it depends on the pen and ink that you're using. And even if you tell me what you're using, it's still not easy because I don't know how you write. But I've noticed over the past few years that I've categorized papers in a certain way. And I wanted to throw those out there. So, when I talk in general terms and say a brand, like I'm talking about general performance characteristics. Like, I use Rhodia as a comparison a lot because, number one, it's very fountain pen friendly. But it's very fountain pen friendly because it's a coated paper. It has, you know, like to the touch, you can feel a smoothness on the page. And that makes the ink sit up a little bit, dry a little bit slower. But from a fountain pen perspective, you get to see more of the ink properties and more shading and more sheen. So, when people ask me to compare papers, I'll say it's like Rhodia or it's not like Rhodia. And then I have a group of papers called the Japanese group where these are almost like Rhodia. You get the same performance, but they're not as coated. So, that's like an entirely different group of paper. And it's really high performance stuff and high quality. It's probably my most used group of paper. And I'm talking about like Life, Midori, Kikuyo, Apica, all of this, all of the Japanese paper. So, that's a group that I categorize paper into. Tomoe River, that's its own group. You talk about Tomoe River like completely separate from everything else because it's so different. That one's easy to categorize. So, it's either exactly like Tomoe River or nothing close to Tomoe River. And pretty much only Tomoe River is exactly like Tomoe River. Then I think you hit the majority of papers. And Elemental is what made me think of that. I place it in the Leuchtturm group. And what that group is, is your good for everything paper. Maybe not the best for the one single thing you want it to do. Like Tomoe River, you want to see the shading and sheen of the ink. You're not going to get that from Leuchtturm. Leuchtturm, it's going to give you a really good dry time. You're going to see some ink characteristics. Not the full shade and sheen ink range. But it's also going to dry faster. So, you can use gel and rollerball inks. Unlike on Rodeo where those are going to smear a lot of times.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is your very good everyday paper.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So, I put a lot of papers in this category. Leuchtturm is like the middle ground where I compare all papers to. It's like right in the middle. So, this is your Elemental Notebooks. This is your Knock Notebooks. This is the Pano Book. Like everyone knows like what this middle range category is. It's like it's good for everything. If you have a specific use, it may not be the best. But it's going to work nine times out of ten for what you throw at it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And then you have the Moleskine Group. And that is good for everything except for fountain pens. You know, no liquid inks. No fountain pen inks. They're very challenging to write with on that page. You get inconsistent performance. But they're good for gel, ballpoint, rollerball, things like that. Then you have the Yupo Group. Which is kind of its own little group subset that comes up from time to time. And it's very specific in that it's a waterproof paper. So, you're right in the reins. And your Field Note Expeditions. So, that's where your ballpoints and pencils only. Like anything else does not work on those papers. The last one I just included as a joke. It's stone paper. Because it is a joke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Stone paper is the worst thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nothing compares to stone paper because it's garbage. Yep. I have had horrible experiences with stone paper. I think people sometimes like it and sometimes don't. Its heyday came and went real quick. I think it's not even a factor these days. It was like a hot, hot thing going in there real quick. And then it petered out quickly once people saw that it's not really as nice as what everything is. So, I don't know. So, I classify. I just wanted to throw that out there because when I talk about paper, there is actually... I end up using these brands as kind of the gauge for, you know, gauging other papers and, you know, new papers that come along. Well, what is this like? Well, it's kind of like Leuchtturm. You know, it does these things well. You know, but if you're looking for something else, maybe you need to look at the Rhodia paper. You know. So, anyway. I just wanted to throw that out there. So, that's kind of how I gauge things in a general sense. You know, there's exceptions to every rule, obviously. But in general terms, I've noticed myself comparing things to certain brands more and more. And a lot of things coming out fall on that Leuchtturm category. So, I just wanted to bring that up as a grouping of paper. So, I thought that was something worth mentioning, Myke.