Editing The Pen Addict 375/transcript (section)

== New Hobonichi Product ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's a new Techo in town. Yes. A new Hobonichi called The Day Free. It is a monthly calendar with a blank notebook. And the idea being that they said from their customers that some people wanted more or less than one page per day in the Techo. So, they have created a notebook that has the month part in it. It has the yearly index part in it. But the inside is plain. Now, I'm just going to say they've been paying attention to what I've been talking about, about the way that you make a journal by not pre-printing the page numbers so you can let people create their own frequency of how much they're filling in the notebook. But that's what it is. It's thinner than the Kazun or the Techo, which is an interesting choice. What do you think about this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's interesting. It's not for me. It's essentially a notebook. A Hobonichi Techo notebook in a thick notebook. They've always made like a thin pocket size, you know, like A6, B6 type of pocket notebooks with this paper in it and the grid. But now, this is more of the bound style that you're used to in the Techo. With just the two page per month calendar in the front section. So, you know, 24 pages of that and then the rest of it being a notebook, which I think is cool. Like, it's totally fine, but it's a notebook, right? Like, it's pretty much like a notebook. If someone really buys into, like, the Hobonichi system, I think the date ones are going to be, you know, more popular. But I'll be interested to see how people will use these going forward and if it becomes a thing. But it's really, you just kind of got to look at it going into a notebook. This is like a good setup for bullet journalers, right? You have your base calendar in the front and then they can use the rest of the notebook interior to create their own bullet journal system. I think you're going to see a lot of that, which I think is great. Like, it's fantastic. It's a cool new product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think it looks nice. I think it's a nice idea, at least, anyway, to give people more flexibility with the system that they want to make inside of a notebook that they want. So, I think that's really great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, and I, you know, I'm interested to see. So, all the Hobonichi stuff is now open and available for order. So, I'll be anxious to see what everyone's getting. I always enjoy the pictures of that. I didn't order any. I haven't ordered anything, like, on Hobonichi Day for, you know, a couple years now because I've just, I don't use their covers necessarily. And that's the most important thing to get, I think. If you're going to do this, you can get the interior. You can get the paper, but the exteriors, those always sell out. And those are always really, really cool. They have some cool patterns and things. But I passed. I didn't pass on this next item, Myke. Like, our good friend, Myke Rohde, his sketchnote ideobook did finally launch on Kickstarter. I know he was thinking about launching it last month, and they ran into a couple of things with the platform. And they've got it going yesterday. I'm a backer. I'm a happy backer. I love what Myke does with the whole sketchnote world. He is one of the leaders of that group. You know, one of the, he's at the forefront of all the sketchnoting and, you know, the education behind it and how useful it is. So, it's a great product. It's a great person to support. And I definitely wanted to give him a shout out on this show. I think I have a couple of those coming from Airship, who was his notebook partner. So, I'll definitely give one away as well. But I'm happy to back it. The price is ridiculous. Like, if you're into this type of thing for, you know, just like notebooks and sketchbooks, the price is crazy good. Like, I was surprised when I went it. Because I didn't know the price before I went and backed it. I was going to back it regardless. I was like, oh, really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know why they're doing it for that price.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's really good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's $20, basically. It's $20.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's $19. The future price is $25. And that's still probably, like, a really good deal. So, yeah. Go check it out if you're into not just sketchnoting. This is, like, a really legitimately good sketchbook. They had a bunch of avid artists and journalers put this through the ringer. And you can see all the pictures. And, yeah, it looks impressive.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. What else have we got here? Should we take a break, actually? Because then we've got some things you're up to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The next two things are a little bit talky, even though they're shortlisted in the notes section. So, yeah. Let's hit a sponsor. And then we'll dig into something new.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's talk about Squarespace. You can make your next move with Squarespace so that you easily create a website for your next idea or project. With a unique domain name, award-winning templates, and more, they have everything that you're going to need to put your next project online. It's an all-in-one platform, actually. There is nothing to install or patch or upgrade. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff with Squarespace. They've got you covered. I love all of their templates. There are so many different options you can choose from depending on the type of website that you want to build. But they're also really customizable. Like, you can just basically throw it all away and just use the basic layout and features of that template. I love how you can drop in different pieces of functionality. Like, if you need a gallery, you can do that. Like, I really... And their app is so good. Like, I haven't tried out the Squarespace app in a while. I actually just was building a new Squarespace website over the weekend. And their new iOS app, especially on the iPad, is amazing. Like, you can actually, like... I concur. Oh, it's so good. You can, like, rearrange the design of the website and stuff. Like, really fantastic. I was super surprised about just how good that's gotten. Because I haven't tried their app in a while. But, yeah, that is really great. You can try out Squarespace for free right now by going to squarespace.com slash penaddict. There's no credit card required to sign up for a trial. And then when you want to sign up for a plan, they start at just $12 a month. But you can get 10% off your first purchase of website or domain by using the offer code penaddict when you go to squarespace.com slash penaddict. So, once again, that is the code penaddict at squarespace.com slash penaddict to get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace. Make your next move. Make your next website.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Penaddict. All the codes. Love it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All the great codes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So, a couple of months ago, we talked about what my perfect journaling setup would be, right? We were trying to... We knew this time of the year is coming. September is, you know, new journal and planner season for 2020. That's when all the products launched. So, we had been talking about how successful I had been this year with my Sumkin A5 journal that I enjoyed the layout and I enjoyed the size and everything about the product. And it was a surprise to me. Like, I'd never heard of the brand before and it was just one of those things I tried and it stuck. So, we talked about what other possibilities I had for the type of layout that I'm looking for and several things came up. And one of them being like a very recurring theme in my email inbox after that episode was, have you ever tried a disk-bound system? So, if you're not familiar with what a disk-bound system is, Levenger made them popular in the U.S. where, you know, you essentially have rings in a notebook, like almost like a folio cover. And then the paper just slot notches into these rings and the paper's made to be removable and not just to be taken out of, but to be shifted within the notebook. You can take it out, put it back in based on, you know, the way you set up your notebook. And the reason people recommended it, because it is highly customizable and configurable, right? So, it's not just a straightforward notebook and you're not fixed into whatever format you buy. Like we were talking about, you know, if I bought like the bigger Hobonichi Cousin, I wouldn't use like the first two or three sections, you know, the meat of the notebook I would use, but I'm losing like a third of the notebook just didn't work for me. With a disk-bound system, you're not tied into that. So, we talked about this on Twitter as well with a bunch of us bringing up William Hanna. And I know that Susan, who writes for The Pen Addict, is a big William Hanna fan. She has a couple of their products. She's reviewed them. And I've always been fascinated by the style and look of their product. And some of my friends at pen shows also carry these around, these disk-bound systems from William Hanna. So, I've got to handle them and I've always really enjoyed them. And William Hanna got a hold of essentially our Twitter conversation and reached out to me. So, Dave, the owner, he is a super nice guy. He's like, I don't really do Twitter. You know, I'm not really, I'm still trying to figure out this social media thing. But like, I saw you talking about this and I think we can maybe make something that you're talking about. And I was like, well, now my interest is peaked. And so, Dave hooked me up. So, a big shout out to Dave. I was able to order my own at no charge to William Hanna. Hashtag disclosure. Hashtag not an ad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hashtag influence a lifestyle.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But Dave hooked me up. And I got to build. So, one of the, there's obviously a bunch of features we could talk about. And I'm not going to go into everything today. Well, because I just got it last night. But basically, you can customize every step of the way of your cover and of the paper formats you get on the inside. So, like I got to build a cover. So, I have like a purple leather with a lime green stitching and this, you know, bright blue turquoisey interior suede thing. So, like it's, you know, I got to pick something that's really, really for me. And then I got to pick all the interior papers. And one of the things he wanted to do for me to test out was he sent me each of their little paper formats. They're essentially pre-built and you buy a pack of them, say 30 pages. I don't know what the count is. So, he built a pack of the layout that I wanted with seven days horizontally on the left and then the right page, a note page, right? So, he built the layout that I like from the Sumkin and sent that to me like as a prototype. So, I'm going to be testing that out. You'll be hearing me talk a lot about this. A lot of people want to know how does the paper work for this, you know, brand. That's like their first consideration. Listeners of this podcast, they're like, cool, we're fine with like expensive notebooks and whatever you want to do. But only if the paper is good, right? Nothing else matters to a lot of us except the paper because I don't care how nice your notebook is if you don't enjoy writing in it. Well, then it's going to be an issue. So, my first test, it passed with flying colors. I have it out on Instagram. I just did it this morning. But all of this is to say I'm going to give this a shot and test this out. I really like my wheels are spinning how I can set this up and I'm feeling pretty good about the layout and we'll talk more as I get like I don't even have it set up and organized how I want yet. A lot of the paper inserts are still loose, but I have like all my dividers and all my pages and I'm going to build it out how I want and I'm pretty thrilled about it so far. So, thanks Dave for taking care of me and as a side note to that, while we were having that conversation, Zoom can reach out as well. I guess like it's like planter hype train. So, we're about to have a throwdown apparently. So, I've got some stuff coming from Zoom can too. Hashtag influencer life.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Look at you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, William Hanna is a UK company, Myke. So, you just need to go knock on their door. Like they're next door, right? That's what it means. I think so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They're just around the corner.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Okay. Okay. Let me know. Let me tell Dave hi. Go out to lunch.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll try. I'll do my best.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah. So, I have lots of planners to go through, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You got one from me too.