The Pen Addict 33/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	33
Title:	Field Notes Fascination
Release Date:	December 11th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 33
Audio File:	Audio Episode 33
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 33
Length:	2727 min <br />0.45 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 33 of The Pen Addict podcast, the weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that you love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined today by a man that you do not need to pay up front for to receive in instalments. He is the pen guru, that is Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, sir.

Brad Dowdy: Now you have me laughing on that one. I almost didn't let you get through that intro before busting out. I am good, Michael. How are you?

Myke Hurley: I am very well, sir. I am very well indeed.

Pen Addict Format

Brad Dowdy: Well, good. We have an interesting topic today. And this is something we've alluded to and something we talk about probably just about since episode one. We've always talked about field notes. And, you know, I've had some interesting conversations on Twitter in the past few months that kind of opened my eyes to some things going on in the field notes world that I was not aware of myself. And, you know, I wanted to spend some time talking about, you know, just field notes and their whole, you know, color subscriptions. And they're there. The people out there that are, you know, collecting field notes and just kind of all the crazy things that are going on. You know, this might not be a hugely long episode, but it's kind of a topic that I've alluded to so many times that I thought we'd at least take some time to to talk about it today.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because of the sort of the what I actually consider is to be a special type of show, really than usual. Like I'm I haven't really got much to input. Well, probably rather than going, oh, that's interesting. So I don't want to break your your flow. So if you're if you're happy for me to do so, can I thank our sponsor first?

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. Yeah, that'd be great. Good idea.

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Brad Dowdy: All right. And definitely let me know if you have any questions or want me to elaborate on any topics because I don't really – I'm totally winging this. I have some general topics to discuss. But yeah, definitely chime in if I need to elaborate a little.

Myke Hurley: I will.

Field Notes History

Brad Dowdy: But I don't want to get into the history of Field Notes too much just because most people that listen to this podcast or read Panatic.com are at least familiar with the brand regardless of whether you purchase it or not. But I've been a customer of theirs since essentially the beginning in 2008. They just started selling the craft paper, the brown notebooks. And not too long after that, they started out with these limited edition notebooks. They keep the base level, the brown craft paper, field notes. Those are always in stock and always available. You just go to their site or any other vendor site and you can always buy that. And then what they decided to do on top of that was every quarter they would make a special print run. And either – they've done all kinds of things and we'll go over them a bunch. But just changing the color of the cover. The first one was called Butcher Orange. They made an orange cover for it and made a limited edition set. And every quarter they'd come up with a new version. And as it's gotten more popular, they've done a few more – they've kind of expanded what they do, making letterpress type covers and doing all these types of add-ons and things like that. So it's become a very popular product for these limited edition memo books. And I just want to start at the beginning of those because what happened that I've found out this summer and that's the first time I've been really wrapped up in it and made aware of it, is people are like viciously collecting some of these older print runs field notes. And until I started looking into this topic, I didn't realize that on the field notes brand colors page – and this is a – let me sidebar right here. This is an episode. You're definitely going to look at the show notes because I'm putting in the links that I'm talking about where you can get these numbers and the list of everything that's been printed. So you definitely want to check out the show notes. I've already given all this stuff to Myke. But what caught my eye is on the colors page and I'd never seen – for all the years they've been out there, almost got four years now, I never noticed that they listed the print runs for each of these runs that they did. Like the very first one they did was winter 2008. They did the butcher orange.

Brad Dowdy: At that time, I was a field notes customer. I like their memo books. And I was like, I'm good. I don't need any orange ones. They're pretty cool looking. But I like these. I'm going to use these up and I don't really need them.

Brad Dowdy: And field notes puts you on a mailing list. If you sign up to their mailing list, you get early notice that you can purchase these books like three days, I think, ahead of them opening it up to the public or something like that. So I do highly recommend if you're interested in this product to sign up for that mailing list. But shortly after that, in spring, their next quarter of release, they did butcher extra blue. Same kind of inside paper but with a blue cover. And I was like, eh. I don't really need that. I'm good on what I have.

Myke Hurley: They started off so reserved because they didn't know that there would be a big thing. And if you compare them to the Traveling Salesman and Day Game and all that sort of stuff, and you get all these little bits and bobs of them now, don't you?

Brad Dowdy: That's exactly right. I mean, in the beginning, it was just a cover. The inside paper was the same.

Brad Dowdy: And just the cover was orange on the first version. The cover was this light blue color on the second version. Very good looking. I was just like, eh, I don't really need that. Well, then the summer one came. And it was this grass called Grass Stained Green. And it had this letter-pressed cover. This is where they first started branching out a bit. It was a letter-pressed cover. And then it had a green graph paper. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. I'm going to order that. So that was the first time I dove in. I've never done the subscription model just because I always felt that, you know, just like the first two ones, eh, those didn't really speak to me. I don't want to just get things, you know, that I'm not really, you know, not really in love with or don't think I'm going to use or whatever. So I've just always, you know, when the email comes, I'll decide if I want it right then and there. And I'll either order it if I do or not if I don't. Now, when I do order, I always order two three-packs. And this is something I did in the beginning before I realized about all these collectors of it. I would order one three-pack and, you know, keep it sealed up and just file it away and then open up the other one and start using them. I mean, that's what these are for, right? I mean, they're little notebooks that you should probably use, you know, to write down all your notes in.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, and it just went on from there. I'm not going to go through every single one. But that was kind of the genesis, and that's when I first jumped in right there on their third one. Have you got a favorite, Brad? Do I have a favorite?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Grass-Stained Green

Brad Dowdy: Far and away is the grass-stained green, and it's not even close.

Myke Hurley: Oh, wow.

Brad Dowdy: It's not even close. Do you still have any left? I hate to say that because not a lot of people have that one.

Myke Hurley: Do you still have any left?

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's a topic we're going to get to.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Letterpress Covers

Brad Dowdy: That is the genesis of this whole episode. So my favorites are – we'll go over that real quick – grass-stained green. There's one called Raven's Wing.

Myke Hurley: The black ones.

Brad Dowdy: The black one, which if you notice, I like the letterpress covers. I just think those look cool. Both grass-stained green and Raven's Wing have the letterpress covers. They're super, super good looking.

Brad Dowdy: And then those are my two favorites. Then there's a bunch of second-tier ones that I like a lot but that are not as great as those two. But I thought they did a really good job with the National Crop Edition. I just thought that was a very original and unique thing to do. I love those ones. Yeah. So that's been a good one. I'll tell you some that I have not liked. The balsam fur one is probably my least favorite.

Brad Dowdy: I'm not a big olive color guy. One for – that color green doesn't really appeal to me. And then they shipped those. I think they had like little balsam furs in the envelope, like little tree branches in there. I was like, okay. I didn't really need that as well. But I mean that was one of the wintertime ones. It was Christmassy. I understood. I didn't buy the dry transfer edition at first because I was like, you know what? I already have the craft paper.

Brad Dowdy: You know what I mean? The standard field notes. This is basically the standard field notes. And I can write dirty things on the front of my field notes. I mean that's the only thing I would use it for. So I didn't see the need for me personally to have that one. So that one – They were my first. That one wasn't – Huh?

Myke Hurley: They were my first.

Brad Dowdy: That was your first one. Yeah. So what did you write on there?

Myke Hurley: What did you stick out? One said book because it was planning for the book. One said 70 decibels on it. And the other has yet to be written on.

Brad Dowdy: See, that's way tamer than I would have went. I know. I am tamer than you, Brent. Which would have caused me to put something filthy on there and never use it because I'd be embarrassed about what I put on there. Excuse me. But they've gone all the way – this has gone all the way up. This is a current thing. They just released the Traveling Salesman edition here back in the fall, which I'm really happy with that one. That's one of the better ones that they've done in a while too. I like different colored papers. I like letterpress covers and I like different color lines. So they kind of – they did a good job with this Traveling Salesman edition. But if you'll notice on the color subscription page, if you go way back to Butcher Orange and Butcher Extra Blue, back then when they started doing this for Butcher Orange, they printed 1,500 memo books. That's 500 three-packs. They sell these in three-packs. And same with the Butcher Extra Blue. They did 500 three-packs. And then the third release was Grass Stained Green, which is my favorite. They say, hey, we've got a good thing going here. They ramped it up to 5,000 books, which is 1,653 packs. So they tripled production for Grass Stained Green. Forwarded that all the way now to Traveling Salesman edition. They did 24,000 Traveling Salesman books.

Myke Hurley: All sold out.

Brad Dowdy: And then it's completely sold out.

Brad Dowdy: So –

Myke Hurley: Interesting how things – like how the numbers change. Like they only did 7,500 – I know it's more expensive, but the boxes of the national crop. But they're still available. And then like – So there's 24,000 of the Traveling Salesman, but there were 18,000 of the Day Game Edition, which were the ones before. So it's interesting how they feel that their – you know, things are ramping up for them. It's great that it is.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And, you know, I didn't – I had no idea that these numbers were here up until I started researching here in the past couple months. You know, that they actually listed the print run. So they have kind of tapped into the – not only the people who enjoy using the product by doing this, by giving, you know, people like, you know, us and, you know, like Brett Kelly is a big Field Notes user, you know, giving us something fresh to use, you know, every quarter, something fresh to look at, you know, a cool new design. But they've tapped into the collector side as well. And that's what really got me going on this because back in – I think it was in the summer. You know, I've never been, like, super religious about, you know, photographing my Field Notes. And, you know, I've never – I don't know that I've reviewed any version of the Field Notes. I just didn't feel that it was necessary on the blog. But, you know, I did have some pictures in my Flickr feed.

Field Notes Blog

Brad Dowdy: Well, I got an email. I'm pretty sure it was back in the summer or early fall about, hey, I see you got, you know, some Field Notes in your Flickr stream. You know, I'm collecting. I'm trying to collect something from every – I'm trying to collect, you know, every release that they've ever had. And I see you've got these grass-stained green ones. And would you be willing to part with them? I was like, is this spam? Or is – you know, where is this coming from? You know, it was really unexpected kind of out of the blue. So, honestly, I just kind of – I pretty much kind of blew them off. You know, I was like, you know, yeah, I've got an extra three-pack. But, you know, I'm not looking at – I'm going to keep them, basically. It's like, okay, well, if you change your mind, let me know. I was like, okay, fine. And so a few weeks later, he actually came back with like a hard number. I was like, hey, you have a sealed three-pack of grass-stained green field notes, right? I'm like, yeah. He says, would you take $50 for it?

Brad Dowdy: And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I was like, huh? And I turned it down because, you know, that's – I don't want to sell them. I'm not – it's not a money thing. You know, I'm not trying to make you profit off these. It's my favorite. I enjoy them the most. I don't want to sell them. But I thought, you know, $50 for a pack of these, that's pretty steep. And, I mean, if I would have said, yeah, I mean, he wouldn't have blinked. I would have had, you know, $50 on PayPal heading my way or whatever. I was like, okay, this is interesting. So then I started digging. And, you know, I – you know, like we can all kind of stalk each other on the internet. So it's turned out I've talked to this guy a bunch. His name is Sandy McDonald on Twitter. I don't know his Twitter handle right off the top of my head. But he's a super nice guy. And we've talked. I was like, so you're collecting these? And, you know, I started talking to him like, what are you doing? He's like, you know, I'm trying to get, you know, something from every release. You know, there's – I missed a bunch at the beginning, you know, kind of like I did, you know, the Butcher Oranges, Butcher Blues, a lot of the early release ones. And he said, I'm going – I'm tracking down people and, you know, I'm trying to fill out my collection. And he's like, you know, and I've got – you know, there's some friends of mine on Twitter. They're doing the same thing. And then I started getting emails from these other people. Like Sandy struck out with me. Then I started getting email from other people like, hey, I see you have these field notes that do you want to sell? This one and this one and this one. I'm like, no, I don't want to sell any of them. And it was just the damnedest thing because it happened all at one time. I was just getting bombarded with emails of wanting to sell, sell, sell, sell. And I'm like, I didn't realize there was such a collectability aspect to all these releases. So, you know, I think Sandy, you know, he ended up getting – I think he's got all the regular releases and, you know, all of his friends. They've been able to track all these things down and I didn't get involved in, you know, like the ones I'm missing. I didn't really get involved in trying to track down those. But on top of all these color subscriptions, what's happened is Field Notes has also done promotional additions for conferences, for fundraisers, for different businesses, different meetings. And that has become really another area where a lot of these collectors are going. And that's a place that I don't think a lot of fans of Field Notes know that they're doing. So I sent you a link. You can see a guy, the signalnoise.com. What's his name? I'm blanking here.

Myke Hurley: I've got it in front of me. His name is –

Brad Dowdy: Jamie.

Myke Hurley: His name is – Oh, he says but then can't find it. I literally just saw it but now can't find it.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I'm sorry. It's Jamie or James – I'm blanking. James White. James White.

Brad Dowdy: Anyway, so he runs a blog.signalnoise.com. Well, within his blog, he's got a page just called Field Notes and it's called My Collection Checklist. And this is a really cool page that you all need to go to the show notes to check out this link because up at the top, he kind of goes in order. You know, Butcher Orange. Got it. Butcher Extra Blue. Got it. Grass Stained Green. Got it. On and on and on. All the regular releases. He's got them all. Then you scroll down to the bottom and then you start seeing all these special additions. And then that's when your mind really gets blown. It's like people that collect these, they're going to all these vendors and all these other places to get this stuff. There's some that are pretty mainstream that anyone can get like J.Crew Special Edition. I went and looked last night. They're on the website right now. They're like $15 a three-pack. I passed on that. I didn't need that. Actually, there's a Threadless Special Edition that I happened to order like two years ago when they were on Threadless. That's when I was shopping on Threadless a bunch and I happened to see those pop up. I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. I didn't even think about it at the time. This was some kind of random release. So I've got some Threadless Special Editions here. I saw our friend Dan Benjamin. There was a photo of him around the time of the XOXO Fest. There's a purple field notes, which is really sweet. I like the purple color, which is Aaron Draplin's blog. Sometimes purple is his least favorite color. He hates these more than anything. But there's a picture of Dan walking down the hall at XOXO Fest with probably just looking at the size of the stack. Just from memory, I don't have it in front of me. He probably had 10 three-packs of these. So they're handing these out at conferences, and it's creating this aftermarket of these Special Edition field notes. And you look on James' site. There's Levi's Special Edition. There's some from Tatli, which is the dry transfer tattoo place.

Renegade Pencils

Brad Dowdy: The Renegade Pencils one is pretty cool because it's got Mongolian text on there.

Brad Dowdy: That's kind of one I would like to have. That's kind of neat. And this doesn't even sniff it because I know there's – I can think of three or four editions just in researching this podcast that aren't on James' – on his kind of the promotional area of this. So it's just kind of fascinating. I didn't realize all these – I knew they were making some promotional stuff. I didn't realize how deep it was. And then on top of that, I didn't realize how big the aftermarket was for some of these promotional items. The coolest one on here is the DDC Factory Floor Edition. And for those who don't know, DDC is Draplin Design Company, which is Aaron Draplin, who started field notes. And this – if you happen to visit Aaron or see Aaron, he's got numbered edition field notes that he runs for himself in his office.

Brad Dowdy: I sent you another link. There's a new – that's one that James got, this solid orange cover one. Then I sent you a link from a new version for someone who just visited Aaron at his studio, got a new version of the DDC field notes book. So Aaron's always printing limited runs. So it's kind of a never-ending supply of these field notes. And a lot of people are starting to collect these, and I'm getting a lot more traffic on field notes posts, and I'm getting a lot more questions about field notes. And I'm getting where can you find this insert weird edition here, field notes. And I'm not the guru, but I've talked to a lot of these guys that are collecting these, and I thought it was pretty cool. And I thought it was kind of worthy of a show topic on its own just to kind of let people know if they're interested in this type of thing. This is what's actually going on with field notes more so than just the brown craft paper books that you see a lot of people using. So I thought it was pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: So I found that picture of Dan and put it in the show notes. He has at least 30 packs.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, so yeah, I was off by a lot.

Myke Hurley: The tweet itself was by a guy called Max Temkin, and he says, Here is at Dan Benjamin carrying one million field notes.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Which is very true. So you'll see that in the show notes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And okay, so on that, the last link I sent you, the Andy Johnson's Twitter with the draplin design, the newest one. In there, there's a, he tweets at Sandy J. McDonald. That's who I've talked with a lot. So if you guys want to collect field notes and, you know, want to read about, you know, all the things that a lot of these guys are going through, follow at Sandy J. McDonald on Twitter. We'll put that in the show notes too. And I've talked with him on email and offline. We've exchanged several emails just talking about this whole topic. And he's hardcore, man. He's trying to get, he's literally trying to get some of everything. So it's pretty interesting, pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: He's in the show notes too.

Brad Dowdy: So Sandy, if you get extra followers, I don't, I don't think he knows who I am from Adam. I don't know if he, I doubt he listens to the podcast, but you know, follow Sandy. He's, I think, I don't know that he's missing any, missing any. And actually he's got a picture in his Twitter feed. It looks like of his collection, just all stacked up together that you can see if you go to his page.

Myke Hurley: Man. It's crazy. It's nice to have a little, a little hobby.

Hobby Discovery

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. See, yeah. It's, um, I had no idea all this stuff existed until I started talking with Sandy a couple months ago. And now, and now that I've started to look at it, it doesn't stop. They're everywhere. But I think they're in such small numbers, you know, these, these small print runs and designs. I mean, they're, people are getting after it and, uh, they're pretty cool. Like I like the Levi special editions for some reason. I like the red, white, and blue, uh, feel of the, of the notebooks. I, I, you know, I did go look on Levi's site to see if I, if they still had those available, but I couldn't find them. So who knows? I would have ordered those if I could have found them, but, you know, some of them don't appeal to me. Some of them I just don't need, don't need to spend the money on. But, um, you know, I, I do have, uh, my share of, of promotional type and special run types outside of the regular subscription list. So it's, it's been fun. It's, uh, field notes has definitely done something to, uh, to hit the nerve of, of a lot of people. And, uh, they're doing well.

Myke Hurley: I want some of those XOXO ones.

Brad Dowdy: They're cool. I know. You'll have to, uh, you know, you better hook your buddy up.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: Uh-huh. That wasn't very committal, Michael.

Myke Hurley: No, I want some. I'll get, if I can, if I can get my hands on some, then I will help you out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Those are good. Those are really good looking. I, I, I like the purple.

Stationery Design

Myke Hurley: They're really nice. I like it. Cause it's like, it looks like a interesting texture as well. Yep. See what I can do. Yep. Okay, Brad. So people can find you at penaddict.com. You're also on Twitter. You are at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. You are at dowdy on app.net. I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E on those services. Thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. I'm Myke and he's Brad. And until next time, happy field note hunting.

Brad Dowdy: Good luck. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.