I often get comments about my notebooks. In order to help to solve the problem of fancy notebooks being too good to use, I knew I needed to make my own. For the project to make sense, they needed to be quick, cheap and easy to produce. These notebooks take a few minutes to make and cost almost nothing.

The Benefits of Packaging

While it makes sense to reuse materials destined for recycling, saving resources is not the only benefit of using packaging for notebook covers. Packaging is designed to be attractive and durable, which happen to be useful qualities for notebooks too.

Food packaging in particular is designed to stand out on the shelf, so pleasing materials, imagery and special finishes are often used. Expensive techniques and processes not normally seen on notebooks are routinely used in the production of food packaging. It’s not uncommon to see beautiful imagery, die cut uncoated card stock, spot UV varnish, embossed typography and metallic foil blocking.

Puff pastry packaging makes a nice shopping list.

This perfect bound cassette tape book comes with a durable plastic case.

These are my favourites. When reframed in the context of a notebook, these old Betamax graphics lend themselves beautifully to their new role.