The Pen Addict 239/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	239
Title:	Previously Inksploded
Release Date:	January 11th, 2017
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 239
Audio File:	Audio Episode 239
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 239
Length:	6868 min <br />1.133 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 239. Today's show is brought to you by Blue Apron and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hello, Myke Hurley. How are you? Good. How are you? Good, good. I'm ready to record. This is one of our famed 8,000 short topic episodes, which are always some of the best. We talk about that all the time. It's pretty funny.

Myke Hurley: I'm literally adding more topics, as you're saying now. I'm adding more and more and more.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I was like, don't start yet. I'm putting something else in. And then as we're talking right now, I see you typing in our shared documents. So yeah, it's gonna be a fun episode. And I thought we would kick it off with you pimping yourself out a little bit.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so you remember last time I spoke about the fact that I had some field notes for sale on eBay right now. As we're recording this, there is two days left on that. So I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to the field notes that I currently have up on eBay. And if you're interested and you get in in time, you can go and put some bids down. There's one, there's a few of them that I still just don't understand. But there's quite, on some of the ones that I find the most perplexing as to the fact that the totals are low, they have the most watches. And Dina was saying to me, oh yeah, okay, what's gonna happen is this is gonna be a bunch of like crazy bidding in the last minute or two.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, a little sniping at the end. Bit of snipey. I'm happy to see the roastery edition going for a large amount. That is outside of the colors editions in the special edition realm. That's one of my favorites. It's certainly like a top three kind of special edition. It's a great one. It's orange dot grid on the inside in the LART 5x7 size. It's just fantastic.

Myke Hurley: I didn't know that it was orange inside. I've never, I have two of them. I never opened it.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. It's wonderful. Wonderful notebook. I filled one of those up before. So yeah. So a few more days on that.

Myke Hurley: And remember, it all goes into my Nakaya fund.

Brad Dowdy: It all goes into my Nakaya fund. We're gonna talk about that a little bit later. I happened to see a note for that. And wow, you're putting even more stuff in the show notes that I didn't even know about. I thought it helped. This one we knew about, and the timing was hilarious because last week we did our cold weather pen follow-up with all of Dave Ray's and Andrew. I want to give Andrew some props in the Slack chat. He was part of the math and sciencing that was going on. And they're figuring out the expansion and contraction of the ink in the barrels. And I think that same afternoon we released, the Goulet Pens had a blog post where one of their customers works in Antarctica. You know, does the trip, you know, a couple times a year to go work on the bases, various bases in there. I believe she's Australian. And, you know, it's part of her job. And Noodlers makes what they call a polar ink, which is supposed to be freeze-proof and all this. So that was kind of a perfect meshing, a perfect storm of a blog post where I believe it's Casey. Yeah, her name is Casey. She took the ink and a pen down to Antarctica and, like, taped them out, like, strung them up outside. And I think it got down to 40 below, something like that. And you'll just have to go to the link. We'll share this link in the show notes. But it was really, really cool results. I think, you know, they did some outside testing. They actually have some really, really strong freezers inside their facilities. They used those, too, so they tested ink and pens. And the results were really impressive with this ink. I mean, you'd have to get really extreme for this stuff to not work, it looks like.

Myke Hurley: It's interesting to have a freezer in a polar facility. I feel like you don't need that. Like, you just put it outside.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yes. The funniest takeaway is basically as long as the temperatures stay above negative 20, you should be in good shape. Yeah, I think below that, you've got more problems. Yeah. This is for the polar ink, by the way, not normal ink. This is Noodler's Polar. Oh, what do they call it? Do they call it polar ink? Yeah, polar ink. So, it has special properties. There you go. Freeze resistance.

Myke Hurley: The answer, if you're worried about cold temperatures for your ink, is just use Noodler's Polar. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: It was an awesome article. I got a huge grin out of it. I very, very much enjoyed it. On the opposite end of the positivity spectrum, this is interesting. My phone started getting various texts from various people on Monday saying, hey, it looks like Paradise Pins is shutting down. And, you know, I got that from multiple people, found some articles. And then yesterday, they had their website up with all the stores shut down there. It's a physical store in shopping malls, mostly, or retail areas. And then the website was up, so everyone wasn't sure. And then as of yesterday afternoon, they put the big splash page on their website. It says, with great sadness that we must tell you that Paradise Pins is closing its doors effective immediately. It has been an absolute pleasure serving the Pins community for the past 15 years. And we cannot say thank you enough to all of our loyal customers, employees, and vendors for their years of support and friendship. It's time to start writing the next chapter. Best regards, the Paradise Pins family. So, I've been talking a lot on this show. I talk about it more probably in the members newsletter that year over year stationary business growth rates are in the double digit percentages. And it's just positive article after positive article. Then you see this. So, we wonder, like, how do those two things, you know, how can we have both of those things happening at the same time? And I've always felt that Paradise Pins almost doesn't count in our community. They obviously do. It's a lot of people's only access to some of this stuff. But where they place themselves in the market is an area that is declining overall. Not just the pen business, but shopping mall business, right? They are brick and mortar and not even, like, standard normal brick and mortar, like, just in various business areas of cities. They are in high rent district malls. They pay extraordinary square footage rates for the locations that they're in. That requires them to be a full MSRP shop. What that means is you are paying absolute full price for every single thing in there. And, you know, a lot of our online retailers, you know, they have to do the same thing. And there's various commitments to vendors and manufacturers and things like that. But you can also get, you know, you're allowed to, these online shops are allowed to discount at certain rates. You know, you'll find pens 20% off, 40% off, things like that, that you rarely ever see at Paradise Pins. I think it's telling that I very rarely hear people asking me questions. Hey, I saw this at Paradise Pins. What do you think? I don't get those questions. You get it, you know, from a lot of the online shops or in person, like Fountain Pen Hospital or, you know, Anderson Pins and things like that. You also get, outside of the Paradise Pins locations, you get a more, I don't know, helpful feedback from people who do this full time. Not that the people at Paradise Pins don't.

Myke Hurley: A more tailored service, we'll call it. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: There you go. There you go. It's, you know, the retail atmospheres, you know, can be interesting. I've heard, I have heard of people going in and, you know, not, you know, discussing something with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about and things like that. Just because, you know, an established like that has to fill up all the hours that they're required to be opened by malls and things like that. So they maybe don't have, like, the most experience in the things that we talk about. So I think it's kind of a double-edged sword. One, they're in a very high-rent district in all of their shops. So, I mean, we're talking, like, the premier malls in big cities. Like in Atlanta, the Paradise Pins was in Linux Mall, which is considered, like, the high-end mall. So, you know, they've had shops in Las Vegas and in just other, like, very, very high-rent district areas. Like, it's hard to compete with all of the online shopping that people do now or all of the specific retail establishments that have opened up across the country and have proven you can be successful in this market. So I don't see them as someone, like, affecting, like, the growth. Like, is it this, like, a marker or a red flag of, oh, the stationary community's turning? I don't think they count, essentially. I don't see that at all.

Myke Hurley: No, there's a change in the community. There is a change in buying practices. But that doesn't mean a decline. It just means a change. Yeah. I mean, I did a little bit of Googling while you were talking, and it doesn't seem like the owners of the company are in trouble, per se. It seems like they're going to be focusing on other areas. It looks like they run a company called Paradise Baggage as well, which seems to be doing good based on this article that I found from, like, a week ago.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And that's how a lot of the mall pin stores happen. There's a store called Mori Luggage, which is your luggage store. Well, then they'd have gift accessories in there, and you'd find Lamy in there, for example. So I wonder if that's how they got into the business originally. I don't know the Paradise pin story. But, yeah, it's kind of not a player in the realm that we're all in right now.

Brad Dowdy: And they did not adjust to the changing market for pins, so I think that's what caused this more than anything. Not as a, I don't think it's any kind of red flag, like I was saying before, like, oh, the stationary market's going down. Look at all these Paradise pin stores. They don't even register, right? Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: I don't think I've ever heard of Paradise pins.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And they don't have, like, hundreds of stores. I think they may, does this site even say maybe 10, 15, 20 stores? I don't know.

Myke Hurley: It's a big enough business, though. Like, you know, it's just a chunky-sized business.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And they've been, oh, yeah, and they've been closing down stores for years, but they actually just full swoop this time, everything else that was open earlier this week got shut. Like, they'd been closing them one off here, one off there, but it just got to the point where they just shut the whole thing down. So, it's sad. It sucks. I don't like it. Sometimes it's people's only access to discover, you know, maybe walk in and find something kind of amazing, and then you get into this hobby, then, you know, find out people like the pin addict and this whole community. And online shopping. So, it sucks from that perspective, but I can't say that it's actually surprising.

Brad Dowdy: So, there's that. What is surprising to me? I didn't know this existed until my good friends in the Slack room pointed this out. There's a new Akramon ink, and it's not just new colors. I was like, oh, cool, new colors, special series. You know, they introduced 12 new colors. That's kind of cool. Oh, wait a minute. These boxes, these bottles are gigantic. This is a double-size Akramon bottle, if you will. So, I think these are 120-milliliter bottles. Like, Akramon used to sell their large ink bottles before they made the small ones, which I want to say were 150-milliliter bottles. That's how you bought Akramon ink. It was in these gigantic bottles. Well, that wasn't, like, the thing. It's quite a commitment. Yeah, quite a commitment. And so, they made it into a 60-milliliter bottle, which, great, perfect. You know, a lot of ink bottles are 50, 60, right in that range. That's great. But the old Akramon bottles, just as a side note, they go for stupid money on eBay. Like, I saw Akramon number eight in the original bottle went for, like, $120. Like, it's insane. People really want the bottles as much as the ink because they're kind of fascinating.

Myke Hurley: They're, like, I can see how something like that could become a collector's item.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, totally is. Totally is. And these snuck up on me. I didn't know these were coming. They look like some neat colors, kind of an interesting addition to what they already have. You know, there's some more outlier shades that kind of mix into some of the things they already have. And I'm looking at these at Vaness Pens. I don't know where else carries them. We'll have a link in the show notes. But they're $38 for a 128-milliliter bottle. And, I mean, I'm completely passing. Like, I said I need to get less ink. I certainly don't need 120 milliliters worth of a single color of ink. So, but $38, they're not having a problem selling these out. So, I do like some of the colors, though. They look interesting. And they still have the marble, same bottle design. It looks like a smooth bottle, not like a kind of, what do you call it, faceted bottle. But they're pretty cool. I'm not going to lie. So, I guess I'll see these, if she has any left, I'll see these at the L.A. Pen Show coming up here in, gosh, just about a month or so.

Brad Dowdy: So, how many of these are you going to buy?

Myke Hurley: I don't think I need that much ink.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's a lot of ink.

Myke Hurley: That's a lot of ink. That's a lot, a lot.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, if I had very few bottles of ink and I was very committed to a color, I'd go for it. But I just don't need that size bottle right now. But, you know, I say that I'll end up coming home with one from L.A. You watch me once I see the colors. They might have a cool color. I was like, oh, yeah, that's pretty nice. Something I don't have in the other 50 bottles I have laying around, which is not true. So, anyway, I thought that was worth pointing out because the old Akramon bottles are still highly sought after. So, this is your chance to get an almost their size bottle from them, which is pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: All right. We have a whole host of other topics to get to today. But before we do, let me take a break and thank our friends over at Blue Apron for sponsoring this week's episode of The Pan Addict. Blue Apron is a new sponsor for the show. And let me tell you what they're all about. Blue Apron is all about giving you everything that you need to make incredible home cooking. They want to make it accessible to everyone, whilst also supporting and creating a more sustainable food system. Blue Apron sets the highest standards for ingredients, and they love to build this community of home chefs around what they're doing. For less than $10 a meal, Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes along with fresh, high-quality ingredients to make delicious home-cooked food. Each of Blue Apron's meals comes with a step-by-step, easy-to-follow recipe card and pre-proportioned ingredients that can be prepared in 40 minutes or less. So what that means is they send you the card, which is all nicely presented. It has pictures, and it has all of the recipe instructions boiled down to be nice and simple. And they also, they only send you just the food that you need. So it's easy to follow along because, you know, say, like, chop the onion, and you know you only have to chop the onion that came in the bag for that food. You know, they're, like, dumping these spices, and you already have all the spices in a little pot for you. You don't end up with extra food, and you also have just what you need to make what you want to eat. You can customize your recipes with Blue Apron each week based on your dietary preferences and choose the delivery option that fits your needs. There's no weekly commitment. You only get the deliveries when you want them. And Blue Apron delivers to 99% of the continental U.S. So it's super easy to take a break if you're going to be away, or if you decide that you just want to get some Blue Apron meals, you know, once or twice a month, you get a week's worth of food just to kind of give you a bit of variety. It's totally up to you. Blue Apron knows that when you cook with fresh ingredients that support a more sustainable food system, you can make incredible meals at home. And this is why Blue Apron sets the highest quality standard for the community of artisanal suppliers, family-run farms, fisheries, and ranches. New recipes are created by Blue Apron's culinary team and are not repeated within a year, so you get tons of variety. You can cook recipes like spicy shrimp and Korean rice cakes with cabbage and furukake. You can maybe, if you are interested in mushrooms and chipotle pepper enchiladas with lime sour cream, you can get those delivered to you. Or what about mixed mushroom and potato pizza with fontina cheese, spinach, and garlic oil? Just listen to how good these ingredients are, and you will be not only getting this crazy variety, but also with super high quality food. And when you're doing this frequently, if you get Blue Apron delivered to you frequently, you're making it frequently, you will learn new skills to make you a better chef at home, and then you always have those recipe cards if you want to recook something yourself. Check out this week's menu and get three meals for free with free shipping by going to blueapron.com slash penaddict. So that is three meals with Blue Apron for free with no shipping cost. All you need to do is go to blueapron.com slash penaddict to try it out. Like, this is a no-brainer trial. It's free food.

Brad Dowdy: That's not how I thought this ad was going. That's pretty cool. I have mine on the way. They won't be here for another few days, but I've been excited to kind of try this for a long time now. So I'm glad they're on board, and I'll get to test this all out. It should be awesome.

Myke Hurley: You're going to love how good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals with Blue Apron. So don't wait. Go to blueapron.com slash penaddict, and we want to thank Blue Apron for their support of this show and Relay FM. Blue Apron, a better way to cook.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. So things are going to be cooking at the Philly Pen Show this weekend, Myke. Are you going?

Brad Dowdy: No, I'm not. I'm not planning on it. You never know. You never know. I'm not planning on it.

Pen Shows

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So everyone's pretty anxious about getting the pen show season underway, and we've talked about it a bunch in the last few months, you know, what shows I'm going to and things like that. But Philly is kicking off the year.

Myke Hurley: First out the gate.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And Franklin Kristoff helps put on the show. They're one of the promoters of the show, and I got a question in the Slack room the other day, generally saying, how does one go about getting a Franklin Kristoff special pen show edition if you can't be at the pen show? I was like, well, you kind of can't. So unless you have some really good friends that want to buy stuff for you, take pictures. I see people, you know, they have like the mad rush. Every day they hold pens to sell first thing Friday, first thing Saturday, first thing Sunday at all the pen shows they go to. You know, different batches. You know, they don't sell everything out on Friday. They want, you know, other people to be able to get to some of the pens. And, you know, I always see, you know, that's where all the first crowd is always at in the mornings at a pen show is around the Franklin Kristoff table. And then you see people with their phones out because they're being proxies for other people who can't make it to the show. Mules, you can say. Yeah, the mules to get them to carry their goods back for them. It's really, really funny. So in a good way, I love that Franklin Kristoff, they just started really focusing on this last year, I think. Maybe a little bit in 2015, they'd have some. And then they realized, oh, this is a thing we can like expand on. And so they really did that last year. I did pick up one from them in Chicago, which is a little blue 45 that I enjoy. So it's cool. And they usually have special stamping on them for that. Like mine says IPO on it.

Brad Dowdy: And they're just cool. So there's going to be a lot of people, a lot of pen addicts at the Philly Pen Show, a lot of good vendors. And everyone, if you're in the area, you should really consider checking it out because pen shows are fun. It's just a cool atmosphere. Even if you don't even have to spend a dollar, it's just cool to go and hang out and talk to people. So it's very, very fun. So are we going to have a blizzard this year? Hopefully not.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I hope so. Not, I mean, you know what I'm saying.

Brad Dowdy: Although, hey, the show went on and they had a blast last year.

Myke Hurley: I forgot about that. That's crazy. It was cool.

Brad Dowdy: So we do stuff with pen shows, right?

Myke Hurley: We sure do.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: We sure do.

Kickstarter Plans

Brad Dowdy: We're getting ready to work on our Kickstarter for Atlanta. And maybe something else? Why don't you spill the beans? Even though I think we've alluded to this before.

Myke Hurley: We have. We have. But we're getting all the final parts in place now. By hopefully the end of the month, we will have the Kickstarter ready to fund for the Pan Addict US Tour, I guess, where we're going to be hitting Atlanta in April. Same as last year. It will be me and Brad and hopefully Anna as well. I don't want to speak for her right now because I don't know her plans. But we will be doing a live show. We're planning on it. Yeah, planning on it. Live show with video. We'll be there the whole time on the knock booth. We'll be doing a bunch of fun stuff. But the big thing that we do in the show, we do meetups. And then we're also this year building into the Kickstarter to fly me out to DC. The DC Pen Show in August. Now, the DC Pen Show in August, we're going to basically run it like how we ran the first Atlanta show. I will be there with Brad. We will both be there. We will do a meetup, right? And we'll be able to hang out with everybody. We'll probably do. I mean, we'll do like something official, but we'll be at the bar wherever the bar is for the whole time when we're not at the stand.

Brad Dowdy: They have a great bar set up in DC.

Myke Hurley: So we'll be there. And me and Brad will be recording in person. But we won't be doing a live video or anything of this one. It's just going to be a live show. Yeah, no studio audience. No. But what I'm planning...

Brad Dowdy: Unless a few people can sit on our bed or something while we record.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But I'm planning on doing something special for the DC Pen Show for backers. I mean, we'll get into this later, but... Yes. Where I've been getting into video stuff recently. Yes. I'm planning on putting together like a special backer-only vlog of the DC Pen Show.

Brad Dowdy: I'm glad you said that because I've been writing the details of the Kickstarter and I already fully pimped you in for that. Good man. So I'm glad you committed live to that because I have written that down.

Myke Hurley: And we have a... What are they called? A reward level? Yeah. We have a reward level this year. We have a physical good as we do every year. And I think you're going to be very excited about this one.

Brad Dowdy: So... Yeah. So the first year we did a special high tower, which came out wonderful. It was forest green, yellow, and we had a Union Jack flag tag on there, which was awesome. So... It's so cool. Last year we did the Pen Addict Notebooks, which were a hit with the embossed logo and the cool cover. They were awesome. And we're not ready to say what's going to take place this year, but I think we're going case most likely. That's what we're shooting for right now. Some type of pen case. And we'll have more hopefully by the end of the month because honestly we need to get this going.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's a pen case made by Nock that you most likely don't have one of. Right? Is that fair to say? It's very unlikely.

Brad Dowdy: I would say 25 or 40 people or less have this case if we do this case. So yeah. Very few people will have it.

Myke Hurley: We just want to... We're talking about this so we can kind of let you know it's coming. If you want to put any money aside for it. Right. And also we like to talk about these things because it nails me and Brad down to actually getting this thing done by the end of the month. Which we need to do.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Yep. Then you... While we're talking you went and threw this in right under our Atlanta DC. What are you doing to me here?

Myke Hurley: So I have mentioned in the past my strong desire to go to Chicago. Just to go to Chicago. It's a place that I've wanted to visit for a long time. There are people that I want to meet there. I won't be able to do the Chicago Pen Show because... What is it? Like a week or two after Atlanta?

Brad Dowdy: No more than two. Yeah. No more than two weeks.

Myke Hurley: That one has never worked for me which is a shame. However, there is a conference that I have spoken at in the past called Release Notes. And it's been... They're doing their third year this year. The last two years have been Indianapolis. But this year in October Release Notes is going to be in Chicago. Oh, cool. So, it's very likely that I will attend. Because this is a good thing. They usually have great speakers. They usually have people that I know as speakers. A bunch of my friends tend to go to this conference. And plus, it's in a place that I want to go to. And the reason I mention this is because if I go to Chicago, I'm going to go to the Field Notes HQ. I will barge my way in there. They won't be able to stop me. And yes, as Glenn has pointed out, I will buy out the whole place.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So, finally, I might be going to Chicago.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I got a Christmas present that you're going to be super jealous of from one of our listeners who happens to be in the chat room. I'm not going to call her out just yet. But they, yeah. I just need to get a frame for it. And then you'll be super jealous.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I know what you've got. I don't know, like, exactly the configuration. But I know what you've got.

Brad Dowdy: Love you, Christine. I mean, so, yeah, you should do that. Like, I mean, I haven't gotten to see the new layout. It was under construction. They had some of the walls up and some of the flooring in. But it looks pretty awesome from all their Christmas party holiday pictures. So, I think they're pretty happy about how everything turned out. It's in the same building. It's just in the floor level of the same building instead of, like, on the third floor. So, very cool. Very cool. So, I wanted to throw in – you threw that note in. And I threw this note in right before we started. I just noticed on Twitter this morning a bunch of people retweeting that it's World Sketch Note Day. So, I wanted to throw that out there for everyone. Our good friend, Myke Rohde, got this all started up. He's the sketchnoter extraordinaire. I love looking at all of his work. And then everyone else who does this type of visual note-taking, I love looking at all their work. I think it's just fascinating.

Brad Dowdy: You know, when I was at XOXO in 2014, I met a woman named Susan Lynn. And it's because I saw her sitting there sketchnoting. So, we struck up a conversation and a friendship. And she makes wonderful sketchnotes. So, I'm always following her and Myke and everyone else who does these sketchnotes just because I think they're cool. So, today's World Sketch Note Day. We'll have a link in the show notes. You can go follow along, see what these sketchnoters are up to, and maybe join in. I think it's really, really cool. And, you know, adding to my list of people we need to get back on, Myke's been on at least once, if not twice. I think twice. And we'll get him back on here, hopefully this year.

Fude Nib

Myke Hurley: Last week on the show, I mentioned that I purchased a, what you corrected me to say, a Fude nib.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: It has arrived. Oh, nice. And I have done as promised. And I have put it into my previously inksploded Franklin Kristoff to give it a new life.

Brad Dowdy: And that Franklin Kristoff is an O2. I always call it the 20. You know, I get those transposed all the time. It's a model O2 Franklin Kristoff, which is the Pen Addict style, which is awesome. So, I'm shocked you got this nib. Like, this does not seem like a Myke nib.

Myke Hurley: I tell you why I like this nib, because I do freaking love this nib.

Myke Hurley: A lot of these types of nibs don't work for me. Like, I can't get them to work in the way that other people can get them to work. And when I say other people, I mean right-handed people.

Brad Dowdy: That's what I was going to say, yeah.

Myke Hurley: I seem to have a problem just with my left-handed writing style, getting a lot of this stuff to do the fancy stuff. You know, like, I really struggle with, like, flex nibs and things like that. Like, I just can't seem to get them to work in the way that everybody else can. But I can totally make this work, the few-day nib. Like, I can get, like, all of the three different line variants that it will give. And it can do it really easily. And it feels really smooth. So, I bought this after trying it. You know, like, I tried it. Like, I mentioned that Tiff Arment had it. And I tried it. And it's arrived. And it's just incredible fun, like, to make these super thin lines and then these huge fat lines all with the one nib. And, like, you write with it upside down, which obviously works with me very well, to do some weird stuff. Yeah, I really, really like it. I really, really like it.

Brad Dowdy: That's really cool. I am very impressed at you. Like, you are going in deep on this one. That's impressive.

Myke Hurley: It's great.

Brad Dowdy: I recommend it. What ink is in this now?

Myke Hurley: Andronople.

Brad Dowdy: Andronople. That's what I thought you put in there. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I put it in there immediately. But it just wasn't right. And it was basically, instead of pink, it was purple. Because I had blue ink in it. Or before, I just couldn't get, I just could not get the blue ink out. But obviously, when I switched over the nib and the feed, it just worked perfectly.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Well, on the pink, purple, blue train, I saw this blog post from my friend Bert Ozer at Bertram's Inkwell. And Bert's one of the awesomest guys you will meet at a pen show. He's just a really fun, positive guy. Runs his store in Baltimore.

Brad Dowdy: You know, he's been around for a while. He promotes a couple of shows. I know he does Miami and Baltimore pen shows. So, he's a really, really cool guy. And I saw this link. I think I saw it on Facebook called Fantasy Vanishing Point Pens. I was like, well, this is up my alley. Let's see what we got going here. And I saw the pictures. I was like, whoa, these look kind of cool. So, what's happening here is Bert has a friend that messes around in this type of thing. And this friend, his name's Richard. He makes some type of material. What are they calling this material here? It's like a special flexi-gran. So, it's this kind of acrylic, thin, strong acrylic. It says, it's more dense and stronger than acrylic. And best of all, has a density that allows it to be machined thinner than celluloid. Which is a quality needed to replicate the thickness of the brass body on the Vanishing Point Pens. So, I'm kind of fascinated by this. Number one, because I love the Vanishing Point. Number two, this flexi-gran material is really pretty. Like, he's got some nice swirl patterns, some really bright colors. And interestingly enough, I don't know if you caught these at the bottom, Myke. Did you see the demonstrators?

Myke Hurley: Oh, I'm very interested in the way the demonstrators look.

Brad Dowdy: So, Bert has, he even wrote in the thing, he's already sold the silver-plated demonstrator. If he hadn't, I would have sent him an email. I think I would have to have that.

Myke Hurley: Because whilst it's obviously you're never going to eyedrop a Vanishing Point, watching the mechanism do its thing, that's cool. That's like when you used to get, like, Nintendo controllers made out of clear plastic. Right. It's that kind of idea.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Like, I'm not buying this to see the ink slosh around, which I do for most eyedroppers. I'm buying it to see the mechanisms, which is just, this looks cool. Like, the gold one's too much for me. Like, I couldn't handle the gold. Even though it's funny, the gold one looks like it's eyedroppered. It looks like there's ink in that barrel section, the way it's, like, kind of plastered on the wall. But that silver one, oh, man. If, I might hit Burt, you know, maybe by DC. Maybe I can get Richard to make me one. But, it's, these patterns are really cool. And it reminds me of, you know, there's several other people that do this in different ways. One of them is Matoshi from Stylo Art. I couldn't find a link on any of his pages that showed a picture of one of his Vanishing Points. But, I've almost bought one of those at every show I've been to. Because they're really, really fantastic. You know I love his pen and his handiwork. It's amazing. He gets, he'll bring about four or five Vanishing Points where they'll have some kind of wood grain or ebonite or some kind of thing that he puts them, he puts them around the barrel. So, and I think he just does them at pen shows. So, you know, there, you'll have to go to get them there. And there's a few others that do that as well that I've seen. But I'm always on the lookout for, like, if you like something like the ones at Bertram's Inkwell, the Fantasy Vanishing Points. Pilot is actually doing more and more with some of the vendors in Japan. Like, Bung Box where you can get these great orange limited edition Vanishing Points that I didn't get. You know, and Pilot's actually getting into doing more with the Vanishing Point as kind of their playground for special editions. So, I wouldn't be surprised for me to end up with one or two of these in the coming year. You know, if I can find something, one, I like. And number two, I can buy fast enough before they sell out. So, yeah, that's very cool. Very cool stuff.

Demonstrator Pens

Myke Hurley: I mean, you know, like, I look at that. I don't think I could buy one, right? Just because it doesn't really work for me. But there are some times where you want a pen as jewelry.

Myke Hurley: And this, like, those demonstrator ones would be something like that. Like, I would love to own one of those clear Vanishing Points because I would like the jewelry of it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. That's pretty awesome. Talking about jewelry. Yeah, this next pen I want to talk about is one of the sexiest pens in the world. I'm just going to go out there and say that. The Pelican Suveron M400 in tortoise shell. And I bring this up, number one, because I reviewed it on Monday. But number two, I'm giving it away because it's an awesome pen and someone should have it. So, I wanted to mention that on the show because it's running through the end of the week. Like, they've done tortoise shell special editions for years and years and years. They're just stunning. I mean, I don't know what to say about this pen. I always love seeing them. New, old, anywhere in Pelican's lineup. They're awesome. It's just a fantastic looking pen. And, you know, I thought, you know, I probably won't use this on a daily basis. So, I thought I should give it away to someone who will. So, that's up on the Pen Act blog. We'll have a link in the show notes. And it's pretty amazing, Myke. Pretty amazing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's a good looker.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Talking about something that is pretty amazing. Let's take a moment to thank our friends over at Squarespace for supporting this week's show. You can enter the offer code INC at checkout when you sign up for Squarespace. You'll get 10% off your first purchase. Let me tell you why. Make your next move with Squarespace. They let you create a website that is perfectly suited for your next idea. You'll be able to grab a unique domain name, set it up with an award-winning template, and everything you need. They have it all. And for any type of website that you want to make. Maybe you want to create a blog. Maybe you want to create an online store. Or maybe you want to create a portfolio. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that lets you do just that. There's nothing you need to install. They don't have any patches that you need to worry about. There are no security things that you need to be concerned with. No upgrades that you have to do because there's some flaw somewhere. Squarespace take care of all of it. They have a rock-solid platform backed up with fantastic hosting and a team of people that are taking care of it. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. Squarespace have got you covered. They have award-winning, 24-7 customer support. If you need any help with anything, they let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name that will let you speak perfectly about your site. Something like The Pen Addict. It's the perfect name. They're the types of things that you can grab with Squarespace. And also build a great site like Brad does with The Pen Addicts. It's a Squarespace website. NotCo, his store, Squarespace website. It looks fantastic. All of these sites do. Brad's sites and all the Squarespace sites because their templates are designed by our professionals and they've won awards for it. They look great on all sizes of device. It doesn't matter whether you're going from a tablet, a phone, or a computer. Your Squarespace site is going to look fantastic. Squarespace is the perfect thing for you. But it's also great for somebody else in your life who's looking to start a website because you can help them get it set up if you want to. Then you can just let them go on their merry way and Squarespace will be able to provide any of that support that they need. And you don't have to worry about it. Great news. Squarespace plans start at only $12 a month. And you can sign up for a free trial. You don't need any credit card to do this. You can just go to squarespace.com, sign up, and play around with it. You don't need to give them any money to do that, which is awesome. Then, when you do sign up, use the offer code INK to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the pen addict. Thank you to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So, one quick thing on Squarespace. I did something on this giveaway that I've never done before, which is use one of those services that kind of collects the entries. And then I can just allow it to pick someone random. Like there's one called Rafflecopter, which is very, very popular.

Myke Hurley: Rafflecopter is a fantastic name.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, this one's called Gleam, and I was able to tune it the way I wanted to, to just allow people to enter once and be done with it. But what Squarespace allowed me to do is throw a code block in there, get the embed code from Gleam, click save, and my entry's embedded right there. You know, the giveaway entries form is embedded right there in the blog, which was super simple. So, that was very cool. I was happy with that.

Myke Hurley: The chat room are talking about something right now.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, let's jump to this.

Myke Hurley: So, we were going to talk about this later in the show. Sean Newton. Everybody knows Sean. If you don't know Sean, Sean is responsible for some of the most beautiful custom-made pens that you will ever see.

Myke Hurley: He uses great acrylic, great blanks that he gets from places. I don't know if he makes blanks himself, but he turns out these just one of two different things. Either beautiful pens, incredible pens, or like the craziest pens you've ever seen. Right. Right. Right. Sean operates on those two spectrums. They're either incredibly beautiful or they're like, why on earth does this have two nibs? Right. But he does that. Now, he posted something from a good friend of the show, Mr. Jonathan Brooks. It's a pen model that Sean calls the Eastman made with a blank called primary manipulation, which is, I'm going to put a link in the show notes to the picture that he posted. Like, this is one of the most beautiful acrylics I've ever seen.

Brad Dowdy: Right? Yeah. Did you see this? Yeah. So, Jonathan came up with this some point last year, I think, and actually had trouble naming it. And then he did like a whole thing about naming this material. It's awesome. It looks even better in person. It's like, it's basically everything. It's all the colors. Yeah. All the colors. It looks like melted crayons, which is fantastic. It's so cool. So, you enjoyed this one? I leveled up, man.

Myke Hurley: I've ordered one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Nice. I've ordered my first Newton pen.

Brad Dowdy: Nice. Yeah. That's really cool. This is a fantastic pen. It's just too cool looking.

Myke Hurley: I basically, I saw it on Instagram. Sean said, like, any questions, email me. I emailed him, like, immediately. I was like, I need one of these. But then he dropped the Sean Newton heartbreak. Yeah. Eight to 12 months.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I was like, no!

Brad Dowdy: I think two years ago when I ordered my Shinobi, that was like six months. So, yeah. It's a long wait, but that's just kind of what you do, you know?

Myke Hurley: So, I paid up front, right? I've paid all the money for him. And now I'm going to forget about it. Yeah. And it's a gift for me in the future.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's cool. So, did you get this exact model, the Eastman, with the roll stop? I didn't get the roll stop. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I do like the little roll stopper thing, though. But, yeah. I can see.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But it looks like it has flat edges on it. Or maybe that's just a shine. I'm fine with the... The roll stop was not expensive to add. Yeah. But there was just something about this where I was like, no, I want it just like one thing. Also, it was like, I don't know how to say it. It's like $300. Yeah. Which is... Okay, that's not cheap. Yeah. But it's not crazy. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Like, the Canaleas are going to run you close to four. Yeah. Like, it's the same kind of theory, but with a lot more branding built in. So, it costs more, if that makes sense.

Myke Hurley: Again, it's a lot of money. I understand that. Yeah. But this is honestly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Like, for me, like, this is just everything. And I want it. And I couldn't not get it. So, I bought it as a present to myself.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm tempted on this material, too. Maybe one day. It's really, really cool. So, are you, like, on some kind of different path this year? Like, are you... Do you have, like, a focus? Yeah, I do. Yeah. I... Like, this is, like, a purposeful sort of thing?

Pen Goals

Myke Hurley: Yeah. This is one... This is, like, my... My theme in pens this year is to elevate my pen addict status. Oh. So, there are, like... I think there are, like, two pillars, right, of being a pen addict.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Like, to get to that... I'd like to hear this. Like, to get to that top tier, one of them is buying a pen from Sean Newton.

Myke Hurley: And then the other is buying a Nakaya. Like, they are, like, the final boss stage.

Myke Hurley: Right? Like, they're, like, these two... Like, custom pens and super expensive fountain pens are, like, a theme in what we get into with the fountain pen stuff. Right? Like, they are kind of, like...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, it kind of became an eventuality, right? Yeah. But, you know, I don't want it to be that way. Like, I don't want... I want someone to use their awesome Pilot G2 gel ink pen and love this show the same. Like, there's no... No, no, no. This is not a requirement.

Myke Hurley: But it's... I just feel like at the point where I am now, like, having done this show with you for so many years, like, these are, like, the two things that are missing. Like, because I am a fountain pen person. Right. And I have bought many custom pens. And I've bought some very expensive fountain pens. I've had some expensive customs made. But these are, like, I consider to be two holes in my collection. Gotcha. And so I have plugged one of them now for, honestly, what I thought would be about 50% of what it would cost me to get in price-wise. Like, I was expecting to spend closer to $1,000 on a Newton pen. Like, I don't know why, but that was just my assumption. Oh, yeah. And I think it might just be because people tend to request lots of weird and wonderful things of Sean, which pushes the prices up. But what I want is exactly what I saw. Yeah. So this was, like, one of those things where I was, like, let me see how much it costs. Like, I just said, like, give me a quote. And he told me what it was before shipping, like, $200 and something. And I'm, like, yeah, I want it. Like, yeah, this is a no-brainer for me because I get to achieve, like, a little personal goal in my pen addictness with one of, like, this is just going to be a jewel in my collection. Right. This will be, like, how I have my sky at night sitting on my desk at all times. Like, I will try and find some kind of stand for that thing that can do it justice and it will just sit there on my desk in all of its glory. Like, my sky at night sits in its little stand. Yeah. You know.

Brad Dowdy: Well, just get Jonathan. I mean, he makes the materials to get him to make you put an order in for a stand at Atlanta. I was thinking that. So, you'll have it later in the year. You know. Absolutely.

Myke Hurley: I might ask him to do that. That's a very good idea. So, yeah. So, this is just something that I want. Second is an Akaya. Like, I am going to get one this year.

Myke Hurley: And I'll spoil something that I was going to talk about later. But I've ever so slightly changed the Akaya that I want to get. I was digging around on their website and they have made, I don't know how new this is, but the one that I love, I can't say the names of them very well. It's the Akaya that has, like, the lines kind of scraped out of the middle of it. Like, it's orange with, like, the black kind of scrape.

Brad Dowdy: That's the Nagoro style.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But they have made one where they've inverted the colors. Yeah. So, it's now black. And they scrape out with these. So, it has these big red lines in it. Yeah. And it looks like the most incredible evil pen. Yeah. And this is what I'm going to get.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. This is the one. I don't think it's even close. And, you know, I'm an orange guy. I love my orange Nagoro. This one's better. Without question.

Myke Hurley: I saw it and I was like, that's what I need. So, I don't know what it's going to take for me to get it. Like, this is going to be part of a journey of getting this thing from financially. And then also just, like, how you go about ordering. Like, I know it's not difficult. But it's, I know that for many people, it's a little bit daunting.

Product Development

Myke Hurley: Because it's such a big expense. And it's from, like, you're ordering it from a company in another country in different languages. And it's all just, like, this big thing for me. But in a way, like, this is part of what I'm excited about. That it's going to be this thing that I have to do to achieve a goal of mine. Yeah. And, you know, the goal is not just, like, ordering it. It's also getting the money for it. Absolutely. Like, I'm not just going to buy this thing blind. Like, I need to earn that money somehow. And, you know, part of it is in doing something I should have done a long time ago. Which is clearing out the amount of field notes that I have. That's going into the fund. And then I'm going to find some other way to invest the rest of the money before I buy this thing.

Brad Dowdy: So, I'm leveling up this year. I haven't seen that one before. So, that's really hot. I'm drooling over that. Like, I can't buy that. Like, I'm not allowed to buy that, right? No. Because I have enough. But it's really, really, really special. That's a good one. Nice job.

Myke Hurley: So, there you go. Talking about special things. Mm-hmm. You've been doing what you do.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I put this in there because I want to talk about that. Right? So, this is related to Knock and us building a new product and sharing teaser things. And what made me want to put this in there was I listened to your show with our good friends, Dan and Tom from Studio Neat. Thoroughly considered. Mm-hmm. Episode 22, I want to say. I didn't link it in the show notes. Great episode. Some really interesting and heartfelt comments from Dan at the beginning of that show. I actually messaged him after listening to that. I was like, wow, dude, you are in my head. Like, I'm feeling like the same thing. Like, it's challenging to continually come up with new products. And it's nerve-wracking to when you commit to something as if it's going to be successful. Like, when it's your livelihood. Right? We're not doing this for some other business. We're not designing for someone else. Right? We're designing because it directly affects our bottom line, if you will. So, you know, at Knock, we're known for making lots of prototypes, teasing them on Instagram. And we're making one right now. You know, we've done some in the past that have not come through. And we're making one right now that we feel really good about. And we think it's going to happen. And my question is, do I talk more about this journey? Because this is a different thing we're embarking on. It's a case that fits traveler-sized notebooks. Which is something we've been asked for. And, you know, I know a lot of people really would prefer, like, an A5 or an A6 case first. And those will probably happen down the line. Especially if we get this case right. It's an easy switch to manipulate the size. Folio! I know, right? So, it's like, do I, like, go really deep into the building of this product? Which is kind of something I want to explore. Or, but then, there is a 25% chance it doesn't happen. You know, a fairly high percentage, I would say.

Brad Dowdy: But this is such a different product for us and what we're going to do around it. It's like, do people want to hear all the things that kind of go into what we're doing? And it might not happen. It's like, it's really, really tough, like, to decide. It's like, I really want to talk about this project. It's a really long ways out. And there's a chance it might fail.

Myke Hurley: What? Why might it fail?

Brad Dowdy: Well, just, I don't know how much it's going to cost yet. You know, that kind of thing. You know, how is the construction really going to do what we want to do? Because it's a zippered case, which will blow, in my opinion, anything, any of the travelers or photories or any of that stuff out of the water in my book. Because it's a zip. And Jeff and I are going through all these things. I mean, we've got colors and labels and naming and, you know, like, numbering conventions. Like, it's going to be like a system. This is going to be like a big project for us. It's like, do I share all of that or do I dump it out when it's done? Like, all of it at once when it's done. So, I kind of want some feedback on that. People love, always get good feedback on, I'm glad you talk business stuff.

Brad Dowdy: This one's kind of interesting to me because it could be a long path. And it could be a long path to failure, just kind of like the Obi, you know. It's, like, fun to discuss, but there's, like, ups and downs and trials and tribulations. And I don't know. I feel like sharing and telling the story of how this product came together. Because it's going to be, it's not just going to be a case. It's going to be very different from things that we've done in the past. And I don't know. I'm just interested to hear feedback. Are people interested in that? My assumption is yes. But it was like, are you talking too much about that? Is when can I have it? You know, that's going to be the hardest thing is, well, you're talking about this. When does it happen? I mean, we'll be lucky if it happens in 2017, right? That's how product, you know, stuff goes. So, I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on this? As, you know, I listened to you talk to Dan and Tom about their stuff. How was the feedback on talking about things specifically like the Obi?

Myke Hurley: So, for that show and for like the types of things that we talk about on that show, it's like, it's accepted because up front, everyone knows that's what they're getting into. Right? So, like when we're talking about that stuff on the show, everyone knows that it's either going to happen or not going to happen and you're coming along for the ride. So, like me and you taking some time once a month to kind of talk about a little project that you're working on. I think people would appreciate that. Like if I was going to give you some criticism, it would be that like I think without any context, kind of just teasing these things on Instagram is, well, it builds hype. But I think you might be too early in the product development cycle to do that. Like if you took picture, if me and you spoke about it and then we took pictures and put them in the show notes, that makes sense because there's a lot of context around the discussion. Right. But like with what you're putting on Instagram, there's no context. Right. And I'm concerned that like you guys will end up going down the road of like over teasing. That would be, that would say, I'm being very honest with you here because I love you.

Brad Dowdy: No, no, I agree with that. And like Myke says it perfectly in the chat room. He says Franklin Kirstoff says nothing until they launch while TWSBI says everything and it never shows up. And we yell at TWSBI all the time. And someone in one of our cases, like someone made a comment, here's another piece of vaporware. And like I laughed, but it's like, well, that's kind of hits home too.

Myke Hurley: I already made the folio joke.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Right.

Myke Hurley: So that's, I don't want you guys to become that in the community because mostly because we make fun of people that do that. Right. Right. Like on this show, we make fun of TWSBI because they tease products that seemingly never come. And I don't want you guys to fall victim to that. But I think like me and you talking about, you know, checking in every now and then talking about development of a product. I think that's a really fun thing to talk about. But I think that it might be better for you to hold off posting pictures of some stuff until you know it's further along. Like, if you're like, we've put an order in, but we're still three or four months away, I think that's perfectly fine. Like, you know it's happening, but like at the stage where you maybe don't even know, I think it doesn't help you to do that. Right. Yeah, I'm with you. So there you go. That's my feeling. That's good. But yeah, I think if you want to talk about stuff like this on the show, like, obviously I am interested in it because I have a whole other show where, you know, where I talk to Tom and Dan about that. Like, I find development of products interesting. But it's in the same way that like, when we're working on new shows, it is very rare that we will, that we, well, we never tease. Right. We sometimes have pilots for shows that may or may not go into production, but that we're very clear with those. It's like, this is just a pilot episode. Right. But we never tease shows that we're working on. Right. For this reason, because we've had shows that took two weeks to get off the ground. We've had shows that took six months. Gotcha. And so there are times where we don't know about that. So there you go.

Brad Dowdy: Cool.

Brad Dowdy: That's good stuff. I have some ideas already from you and from the chat room.

Brad Dowdy: You know, this is, I'm glad we had this conversation. Actually, I'm glad I threw it out there because I'm already getting like good feedback on this. So yeah, that's cool. Very cool.

Paperboy London

Myke Hurley: I want to talk about something cool. All right. This is a new paper brand emanating from my hometown.

Myke Hurley: Paperboy London is the name of the brand. And what I love about them designed in London, pressed in England. This is not something I get to talk about. Right. There are not a lot of companies that create a brand around being proud to be made in England. Made in America is all over everything. Right. We mean you have had this conversation in the past. Yeah. But this is a notebook brand that is being made here. Now, the company behind this is Paperboy London is the brand, but it's owned by a company called Jolly Awesome. And Jolly Awesome make incredible greetings cards. My connection to this company is that when I worked in the bank, I worked with the guy behind this, Matt. He was like an artist and a graphic designer. And he started creating greetings cards whilst he was still working at the bank alongside me. Oh, really? And he left to start his company. And he is part of the reason that I left. Because he did it. So he went out and did it. And his cards are a huge deal. They're sold all over the world in big high street stores. There's a couple of chains here in the UK that carry them. I know that he does them in the US. He sells stuff at trade shows. He does pop-up shops. Jolly Awesome is a big deal. And he's wanted to make notebooks for a while. And me and him were chatting about this. And he's come out with this stuff, which is incredible. So he sent me some stuff. He sent me some pre-production notebooks and some production versions. And I am so impressed. Because I have never seen notebooks like this before. They are bold. And they are bright. And they are colorful. And he was talking to me. We were chatting about paper. And he put a lot of work. I can't say for sure where the paper is sourced. But he told me a company he was working with. And the company that he was working with is an incredibly well-established paper company in the UK. With an international heritage. I don't know if he was just working with them to find out what paper to go with. Or if he's using their paper. Like I don't want to say that. But the paper is really good. I asked Matt if he could kind of give me the lay of the land of the paper. And what the production is. And he told me the inner is a 120 GSM white offset. And then the covers have a special matte lamination waxed over the print. So that they age without cracking. Because the covers are amazing. They're like, that's my favorite thing about these. Like I've never seen notebooks like this before.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, these look really cool. I love the designs.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'd be interested to try. Like what size notebooks are they? Are they? A5. Okay, yeah, they look bigger. So that's a good.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they're A5. And I believe they're also. Yeah, they also have some pocket notebooks. Some of them that have googly eyes on the cover. I don't have those. But I do have the A5 notebooks. They're a great size.

Brad Dowdy: I like the spray. The spray notebooks. I like those. Oh, yeah.

Myke Hurley: They're really sweet looking. So I have the spray. And my favorite though is the Nothing Came Easy. Yes, it's this like fracture monochrome. And it's got foil stamping. Oh, cool. The Nothing Came Easy. And then it's foil stamped with the Paperboy logo on the back. I also love that brand name. Yeah, that's a good name.

Brad Dowdy: So he's doing this. He's doing this stuff. Like he's making these notebooks. Like this is his company. He's making notebooks. And he's stretching his legs in print technologies. Doing kind of off the wall things. And putting them out on these books. And the results look fantastic.

Myke Hurley: So what I love about it is it's bold designs. Like, but it's his first designs on notebooks, right? It's like this just coming out of the gate with something different. And the paper. So I've used a variety of pens in the paper. It feels good. It's nice and smooth. I've used a bunch of fountain pens. It was feathering a little and bleeding a little on some of my broader and crazier nibs. But nothing I wouldn't have expected, honestly. Because like this isn't like the paper that's intended to be made for the types of pens that I was using. Right? Like there is like very specific type of paper that you want to use if you're using a music nib. Yes. Right? Like if you want no bleed or feathering from a music nib, well, you need to buy something specific for that. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You need to shop appropriately.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So like all of my mediums, some of my broads, and obviously all the ballpoints I'm using, it will work perfectly. No bleeding. Like I was worried about the paper, right? Just from my requirements. Sure. Which is why I asked him up front before he sent them to me. Like I'm just interested, what are you using? And what he was telling me was good and then the results have come out really great as well. Like, you know, because we have this all the time. It's like so many people love barren fig paper because it works really well. But I can't stand it because I find the bleed to be too much. Right. Right? But it's like, because I have like quirky requirements for a lot of my stuff. Yes. You know? Yeah. And, you know, obviously Field Notes doesn't work perfectly with all fountain pens, but I just let go of that most of the time. Yeah. Because I love the designs. But I think that what Matt has been able to create here is kind of incredible for a first try. Like, I'm very, very impressed with what he's been able to do. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. These look nice. And I'm going to say one thing and I don't mean it as a negative, but it's something that comes up. Like the first thought popped in my head, like nothing came easy. And what's the other one? Rise and Shine looks straight out of the Nike catalog. Like, I don't know if it's the same font or the same angle. It's very similar. It's very similar. It's like, like if you saw this at a Nike store, you would think like that's the perfect Nike notebook. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I believe he's using Futuro Bold. I believe like just from my eyes, which is what I use for my vlogs, funnily enough, which is kind of weird. We both kind of gravitated to all this bold italic. But yeah, it does look like Nike. Yeah. Which is good.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, it's cool.

Myke Hurley: It's a cool, clean look. I'm a huge Nike fan. Like a lot of his stuff, I think, you know, you could see it there. I completely agree. Like some of these notebooks, you could put them in a Nike store and it would work.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Which I think is a good thing. Like today. Yeah. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm saying it. Like I didn't want to sound that as a negative. I'm just saying that's how nice these look. It looks like Nike, like marketing material, like high ends. Someone put a lot of time and effort into this kind of stuff stuff. So yeah, it looks great.

Myke Hurley: But they have an attitude that I usually don't get from my paper products. You know, like there is just like a young, fresh attitude that we usually don't get. Right. That's why I'm pretty impressed of it all. So I recommend people go and check it out. The website is paperboy.london. This stuff is, you can order it now. I think it's shipping now or very soon. But the store is open. It's available. I think especially if you live in the UK, give this a shot. And the reason I'm saying this is because I just think that I think it's important that we try and have some homegrown talent here. Yeah. You know, because it bothers me sometimes that everything that we talk about comes from the States. Yeah. I can understand that. You know, and that I even have an affinity for made in America for some weird reason.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's why I do talk about the Ajoto guys from time to time because that's all British made product. And it's amazing. And the guys that run it are fantastic. And, you know, anywhere, you know, wants to be proud of the things that come from their locale. I think it's a big deal.

Myke Hurley: And so I will also use this opportunity again to give another plug for Tessa's The Stationer. Absolutely. The Dash Stationer.co.uk because she's adding more and more incredible stuff. And it's another, like, boutique store based in England. Right. Which I'm excited about. So I will also now put out a call for if you know of a company that's based in the UK, that is based in England, I would say England maybe, especially because that's where I'm from. I would love to know about them. So please send in your recommendations to me because I'm just, now that I've seen, like, these two brands from people that I really adore, I am becoming increasingly aware of our US focus. And it doesn't need to be that way because I'm not there. I'm here. So I want to know more because I know that we have an international audience as well. So I want to try and cater to that a little bit more. But please go and check out Matt's products because he is a lovely person who makes super cool stuff. And go to Jolly Awesome as well because his greetings cards are freaking hilarious. They are so good. Like, they're just so good. And he also does, like, prints and stuff. I actually need to get some prints from him. So, yeah, go check out jollyawesome.com. The guy knows branding. Like, if there's one thing, his company names are just totally on point.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. He's got it going on. Good for him.

Myke Hurley: All right. So that wraps it up for today. A real grab bag. I love the grab bags, though. I do, too. My favorite types of episodes. If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 239. Of course, there is a plethora of links in there for you to go and check out. I want to take a moment, again, to thank Blue Apron and Squarespace for their support of this week's episode. If you want to find Brad online, he is over at thepenaddict.com and knock.co as well. And he is at dowdyism on Twitter and penaddict on Instagram. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.