Brand It!

Since I first saw them in a shop in London 10 years back, I have always been a fan of the Moleskine notebook.

Whatever the merits of laptops, PDAs and electronic devices there’s something special about capturing thoughts and notes with pen and notepad.

Joe Mansfield is a designer with a great concept: have your Moleskine custom engraved. The result is engraveyourbook.com where Joe offers off the shelf designs to customise the cover and spine of your Moleskine as well as the opportunity to upload your own artwork and create your own design. A fantastic idea. I just ordered a couple of ones using my own photographs and they look great. You can see some examples of custom designs on Flickr.

I’m all for customising things to make them more individual, to make us stand out, to put our personality on stuff. As kids we used to customise notepads and journals with stickers, sketches and doodles. This enables both people and brands the opportunity to make their notepads just a little bit more special.