Editing The Pen Addict 69/transcript (section)

== Favorite Editions ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it looks fantastic. It really does. So speaking of favorite additions, what's been your favorite or what's your favorite or what was your favorite to work on? Do you know, just putting together the whole project, you know, you put a lot into, this isn't just printing notebooks. I mean, you guys put in serious amounts of time and, you know, a lot of the products have accompanying videos, which I know take a lot of production. Then you have, you know, extra add-ons like stickers or pins, you know, that there's thought and design going into. So what's been your favorite, like as a whole project to work on and put out and share with everyone?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Oh, you know, this, the night sky was definitely one that going out to Great Basin to shoot that video was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life. Like I just, you know, staying up all night. I mean, if anyone ever has a chance to go out somewhere like that, where it's just no light, you know, no light pollution, no moon, and you can just look up and, you know, two nights in a row, we sat out and looked up in the stars and it never got boring. You would just sit there and just keep seeing new things and see like, you know, you notice things like stars have different colors and, you know, it was just, you know, you start getting loopy around four in the morning or whatever, but it was just, it was just such a good experience out being out in the middle of nowhere with no phone service for two days, like just sitting in the desert and staring in the sky. So that, as far as, you know, as far as videos, that and Fire Spotter was fun. Steve and I drove up to Wisconsin and camped out and then there was that old fire tower we shot and Steve was actually afraid to climb to the top. So I got to do all the video.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. But again, like I just said, it was, you know, we were, you know, we kind of were watching trying to make sure we'd be there when the trees look good and we just nailed it. We got two perfect days there and the trees were beautiful. And again, I could have sat on that fire tower and just stared out, you know, you could see for miles, just all the colors and I could have just sat there for hours and hours. So those are two of my favorite videos. As far as books, yeah, Night Sky, I like a lot. The Old Raven's Wing was probably my favorite before that, just because I really liked that duplex paper and, you know, I'm a photographer too, so I like the black paper. Just kind of, you know, looked nice in my camera bag.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Traveling Salesman, I liked a lot. Yeah, I mean, that one came out well, especially I like that, like, you know, the ledger paper was really neat in that. I like doing different things like that. You know, I know some subscribers are like, oh, that's not really useful to me. But I figure, you know, we like mixing things up. And if there's one out of, you know, if you're a subscriber and there's one out of four you don't love, hopefully you love one of the other ones to make up enough for it. We always say, if you don't like it, you know, send it back and we'll send you two crafts to replace it. And no one's taken us up on that yet. So no one's disliked an addition too much, I guess.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow, that's pretty cool.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' But yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean, you know, all the, I mean, I like working with, you know, working with letterpress and the foil stamping and stuff, you know, we get to kind of work with some different printers when we do some interesting things like that. So, so that's fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So when you're, when you're walking around the office, which one are you, which one, what are you carrying around with you? Do you use just the basic craft memo walking around or using something else?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, I usually, yeah. You know, I kind of just go through, you know, whatever's sitting there. I'll just grab, you know, we, it's, you know, there's a bunch of the latest editions usually sitting around opened up. So I'll grab one of those. I don't, I usually do carry one with me. Honestly, I'm not, I use the Steno more than anything, like on my desk. I use, I go through those like every, you know, once every couple of weeks, I'll have to start a new one. So, you know, product wise, that's the one I really, you know, use the most. But, but yeah, I've always got, you know, and the other thing is the Space Pen, which like once I, I think I'd been talking about doing that for a while. And then when we did the, when we did the night sky, it kind of made sense to do it then. But I had been carrying a Space Pen for a while and I just love having one of those in my pocket all the time. Like it's just, you know, the small bullet pen. It's just so convenient. And, you know, if you got that in your field notes in your pocket, you're ready to go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're still, you're still rocking the Space Pen, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. It's, it's what's clipped to the front of my field notes that I keep in my pocket every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's awesome. All right. So I want to talk about a little bit of the, the nerdery aspect. And that kind of leads into some of the readers, readers questions that we have. We get, I get a lot of questions in writing the blog and reviewing different pens. You know, how does, how do certain pens work, you know, on different types of paper and, you know, field notes obviously being one of those. And now since the focus of my blog hasn't changed, but I've been getting a lot into, a lot more into fountain pens. And they have, of course, different ink properties and, you know, different types of paper work better with different inks. So a lot of the questions I get are, you know, which fountain pens and which inks work the best with the field notes and which field notes edition is best for fountain pens and things like that. So do you, I know for a while there, the paper was pretty much the same. It was the standard, just the standard 50 pound stock white paper. And then y'all started to play with the paper weight, paper densities a little bit more here recently. Do you have any considerations to how people are using them or to what type of paper you're going to use? Or are you just really trying to fit it into what your, I guess, what your idea of this, the memo book should be for this release?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, I think, you know, we usually stick, you know, we have a good number of fountain pen fans that use, you know, use the standard crafts and we want to take that into account. But on the other hand, like we don't, you know, like, you know, we have a lot of different, you know, there's sort of sub sort of markets, you know, there's kind of the outdoorsy people and there's the, you know, coffee shop people. And we try not to focus too much on any one group, you know, and make our decisions just based on them just because we know if there's one edition that's not perfect for them, you know, they'll find other ones that work and we, you know, might, you know, find some new people that like the new edition. You know, so yeah, we take, you know, we take all the different groups and all our different kinds of customers into account. But generally we stick, we stick with that Finch opaque for the interior paper just because everyone seems pretty happy with that. And if we step away from that, we don't want to get too different. We used the green, what was it, Mohawk, I think, for the, for the salesman and then the America the Beautiful, which, you know, I love that one too. I know a lot of people, there were a lot of the fans on FieldNet said it wasn't their favorite, but that was another one I was real involved with and I really liked how that one came out. But yeah, we used a different paper in that one, which was also, it was a Finch, but just a slightly different line and a little heavier. But anyway, I think in general we're going to stick with that Finch and then, you know, just on certain editions where we really need something different, we'll try something else.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I can admit that I was one of the America is Beautiful's, not one of my favorite editions. Yeah. I can admit that to you, but I'm actually, that's the one I'm using now and I actually enjoy writing on the paper a lot. Yeah, that paper. I'm using fountain pens with it. It's really, really exceptional paper. I like it.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. Yeah, I don't, you know, we don't. We don't test, you know, obviously with like Expedition we did and, you know, we try out a few pens on a new paper just to see how it works, but we don't have like a big collection to try stuff out on. You know, I have like one fountain pen and I'll try it out, but, you know, I just, I'm just using like regular Waterman ink and.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, if you ever need someone to test, yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Well, we always see, yeah, I mean, people, people have sent us, you know, like a whole book full of different inks and things. So we have that to look at too. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, the. I'm sorry. Level. No, I was just going to say the level of geekiness that I get into. I can't imagine like some of the stuff you get in the mail saying, OK, here's what I think. Here's what I. Here's my. Here's all my ink tests. Here's what you need to do. And I can't imagine some of that. It's probably pretty intense.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, we get we get a lot of ideas for editions and it's funny because almost all of them are things we've talked about, which is kind of. Yeah. So a lot of times I won't even write back because I don't want someone thinking that like we got the idea for something from them because I remember we did the ask me anything. There were some people throughout some ideas there on field nuts and, you know, there were definitely some things we'd thought of and talked about. So, yeah, you know, it's like I think it's which is good. You know, it's a good sign. I think we're kind of in sync with what people want and expect from us. So that's good.