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A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 18th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions.

TLDR Version: 2025, Boxers, Subscribe, Pen & Press, The Rooster, Bi-Coastal, Commonplace, Contest.

Three Out of Four

Our next three Quarterly Limited Editions are all in production. Two of them explore specific, largely unknown, chapters in the history of American design. The other is a collaboration with an author. We can’t wait to show you the notebooks and tell these stories. Winter, on the other hand, is totally up for grabs.

Outside the Box

There are many advantages to starting and maintaining a subscription to our Quarterly Limited Editions. The primary benefits are outlined on this page, along with links to the 65 limited editions we have created so far. We would appreciate it if you would consider joining the thousands of other folks who have come along on this ride with us.

In addition to the other benefits, the first shipment of every new subscription, or renewal, comes in a custom box. Each year we produce a new box by cajoling an artist we admire into creating something special. Our pitch goes something like this, “We will pay you to illustrate the exterior of these boxes and we will approve whatever crazy idea you have.” In our experience we have found that artists generally have an affection for money and freedom. So our plan works really well. Here are the complete transcripts of a couple of previous proposal meetings.

Artist: “I’m thinking of a whole mess of grade school desks.”
Us: “Great!”
Artist: “An astronaut and a old-fashioned deep sea diver.”
Us: “Perfect!”

Our 2025 Subscriber box was created by Chicago artist Landis Blair who describes himself as a “crosshatcher with a variety of other problems.” The box is on press right now and we’ll show it to you as soon as it arrives at HQ. Landis’s work is amazing, and his style is all his own. He also collects pencil sharpeners. Lots and lots of pencil sharpeners.

Fighting Words

Chicago artist and letterpress printer Jen Farrell of Starshaped Press took the words of Chicago writer/journalist Dan Sinker and made a print that makes an excellent point. By the way, Starshaped was one of the nine independent print shops that helped us create the “The United States of Letterpress” Edition in the fall of 2020. You can meet them all in this mini-documentary.

Bookapalooza

The 2025 Tournament of Books kicked off last week. We are the long-time sponsor of this yearly celebration of, and competition among, the year’s best novels. Each year we produce a custom memo book featuring the mascot of the tourney, a rooster.

Proceeds from the sale of this book are going to the American Library Association’s Unite Against Book Bans, which empowers people everywhere to stand up in the fight against censorship. There are fewer than 200 left for sale. The book was created and illustrated by the newest member of the FN Crew, designer Casey Rheault.

The Twain Shall Meet

Our limited-edition for the Spring of 2018 was the “Coastal” Edition, a celebration of the left and right edges of the U.S.A..

Each “Coastal” 3-pack displays an American coastline mapped across three memo books in two bright holographic foils, stamped and debossed into a “Cadet Gray” 100# cover stock from Neenah. When you line the three covers up vertically, “Coastal: East” reveals the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. “Coastal: West” features the Pacific coast from Puget Sound to the Mexican border.

For the film accompanying “Coastal” we flew to JFK and then drove to Long Beach, New Jersey in the middle of the night, set up a camera at the shoreline and filmed a time-lapse sequence of the sun rising out of the Atlantic Ocean. Then we packed up, went back to JFK and caught a flight to LAX, where we rented a car and drove to Long Beach California, set up on the beach and captured a time-lapse of the same day’s sun setting into the Pacfiic Ocean.

That was fun.

The Whole Pasture Looked Like Our Meal

As noted in a previous Staple Day, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“Porridge and delicious blueberries.”

Note: The Groundhog Day episode of This American Life was great all the way through. But one five-minute segment absolutely floored me. Producer Talia Augustidis asked the same question while setting audio levels to prepare for the recording of each episode of a radio show. “Act Two: I’ll Repeat the Question.”

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

Note: A long time ago, before Field Notes, we did a thing online titled Verse by Voice. We asked people to call a phone number and read their favorite poem into our voicemail. Lots of folks left us a message, including, to our surprise and delight, this one: Zadie Smith reads Frank O’Hara’s “Animals.”

Here’s the text of the poem. And, if you’ve never read it, Peter Schjeldahl’s obituary for O’Hara is remarkable. The Village Voice, 9/11/66.

Note to Self

Folks use Field Notes for all kinds of reasons but almost everyone uses them, at least occasionally, to jot down reminders to themself and I’m betting that we all use language and abbreviations that only we understand.

What’s something you’ve written in a Field Notes Memo Book that makes perfect sense to you but would be completely mysterious, and maybe even poetic, to someone else reading it? For example, last week I wrote myself a note that said “Lobby 10, Mayhem 11.” We were in Denver for a film shoot and had agreed to meet the person we were interviewing in the hotel lobby at 10am and drive to meet the crew at 11am on location, which was near the Mayhem Gulch Trailhead in Clear Creek Canyon. A beautiful place btw.

Send your “Note to Self” to pages@fieldnotesbrand.com and include a short explanation. We’ll choose a dozen fun ones to publish and send those folks something very old and very sold-out from The Archives.

As always, thanks for paying attention.

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 17th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions.

TLDR Version: Looking Ahead, Promises to Keep, LMM, Looking Back, Commonplace, HQ, Currently.

The Thing with Feathers

Jayme Morgan is a Washington state firefighter. His crew was in Los Angeles helping to save homes affected by the Eaton Fire. There was not much that could be done in one area, where virtually everything in the neighborhood had been destroyed. The only thing left standing was a “little library” at the curb in front of the ruins of one family’s home.

Morgan wrote a note about how sorry he was to encourage the residents to “find courage, love, resilience and togetherness through these difficult times.” He tore the page from his memo book and left it in the library.

When neighbors found the note they contacted Mike Rogers, a reporter at the local CBS television station, who set up a video call so the homeowners could meet and thank the firefighter for his thoughtful and inspiring words. One Altadena resident said, “It’s not just a note for us. It’s an instruction manual.”

A Winter’s Tale

Like snowflakes, every Field Notes Memo Book is different. While for our “Snowy Evening” Edition that was literally true, what really makes every Field Notes unique are the notes we write to ourselves on its 48 pages.

For the winter of 2020, we produced a run of 33,333 3-Packs. By combining algorithm-based computer generative artwork with digital printing technology, each of those 99,999 individual memo books was numbered and each had a beautiful and unique snowflake on its cover. “Snowy Evening” was created with the help of artist and technologist Brendan Dawes. The “Snowy Evening” we were initially inspired by was created by Robert Frost.

The Drawer Where it Happens

“And sometimes your wife will be looking for something to write down a shopping list and find Little Mermaid draft lyrics in the tiny notebook next to the scissors.”

Did I Say That?

In “Take Care of Your Little Notebook,” a 2011 essay for The New York Review of Books, poet Charles Simic noted that “Inevitably, anyone, including its owner, perusing through one of these notebooks years or even months later, is going to be puzzled or embarrassed by many of the entries, surprised by others he has forgotten . . . and impressed by an occasional striking passage, which, lacking the quotation marks, he is not sure whether to attribute to himself or to someone far cleverer, funnier and more articulate, whom he happened to be reading at the time.”

Charles and Edgar

As noted in a previous Staple Day, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

THE WIND HAS DIED

My Little boat,
Take care.

There is no
Land in sight.

Note: After stumbling onto his notebook essay I quoted above, I did some research about Charles Simic and read many of his spare and beautiful poems. My local bookshop had just three of his many collections in stock. Naturally, I chose the one with the nicest cover, which was designed by John Gall. It was only as I was just about finished reading that I realized it was Simic’s final book, and its title comes from its final poem.

“It’s good. But if you continue at this pace you are going to run out of commas before you graduate, and then what are you going to do?”

My Dad, a newspaper man, after reading an essay I wrote for a college course in Modern British Literature.

West Side Story

So you know, everyone who makes a purchase at The Shop at HQ in Chicago receives a “Guest Pass.” We’re open Thursdays and Fridays and for special events like the Launch Party Happy Hours we host to coincide with new Quarterly Limited Editions. Our “Rarities” shelf is always stocked with sold-out previous releases and other oddball stuff from The Archives. When you’re here the best Italian sub you’ve ever had is just one block away and, of course, we know all the good taverns in the neighborhood.

A Flurry

Our Spring, Summer, and Fall Quarterly Editions are all in various stages of research and pre-production. Film shoots are being organized and we’re sourcing references and materials. If you haven’t picked up a “Vintage” Edition 3-Pack, now would be a good time, or better yet, start a subscription and you’ll get them all.

I know, I know. I promised a ridiculous contest. Next month for sure.

Also, thanks for the flock of responses last month. Yes. There will be more birds. Including this one.

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our sixteenth monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions.

TLDR Version: Looking Ahead, Archive Packs, Joan (Again), No Erasing, So Bright, Amid Old Paintings, One Touch of Nature, 20ish.

Home and Away

We’re deep into research and pre-production for our Spring and Summer Quarterly Limited Editions for 2025. One is a deep dive into a fascinating chapter in typographic and design history that is tactile, hand-made, and very local. We’re excited for the final product to be announced but, as is frequently the case, we’re just as excited to tell, and show, the story of the people behind it.

The other project couldn’t be more different. Our partner is looking for the answer to a simple and important question and the search has taken him to amazing places. We consider ourselves lucky to have been invited to tag along.

Right now would be a very good time to start a year-long subscription to our Quarterly Limited Editions. Subscribers are the very heart of Field Notes. Your faith inspires us to be ambitious and take chances with what we make next. Just wait, you’ll see.

We Forget All Too Soon the Things We Thought We Could Never Forget

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.”

Excerpts from and comments on Joan Didion’s essay “On Keeping a Notebook”, by Maria Popova. I have quoted Didion in previous Staple Days. I’m not done yet.

Onwards!

Jared Newman describes an under-appreciated benefit of writing notes on paper, in an essay for Fast Company.

“Perhaps best of all —at least for me— is that you can’t delete what you’ve written in ink. I’ve tried using an iPad with an Apple Pencil for handwritten notes and have reviewed a few digital writing tablets, and they always feel counterproductive to me. As an obsessive self-editor, I can’t resist the erase and undo tools that digital notepads provide. The only option with paper is to forge ahead.”

Raise High the Roofbeam

Over the course of the last couple years we have received a number of emails from wood-workers and other handy people that said, “Hey, I love your Carpenter Pencils but can you make them a bright color so they’re easy to spot in my toolbox?” Orange you glad we paid attention?

Ala Frescos

As noted in a previous Staple Day, I’m keeping a commonplace book† to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.”

J. L. Carr, from A Month in the Country.

Note: The film of this just-about-perfect short novel features very early roles for Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh, and Natasha Richardson. It’s pretty good, but start with the book. Read it slowly, you only get one first time.

“What was beautiful in the painting was not like words, it was like paint — silent, direct, and concrete, resisting translation even into thought. As such, my response to the picture was trapped inside me, a bird fluttering in my chest. And I didn’t know what to make of that.”

Patrick Bringley, from All the Beauty in the World.

Note: Guy quits his job at The New Yorker. Signs on as a museum guard at The Met. Stays ten years. Writes this amazing book.

We Get Mail

I journal incessantly and have done so for most my life. But these new ‘Birds and Trees of North America’ notebooks have changed my writing. I have designated them for only writing about intentional observations in nature. If I’m with my son fishing or at the park, these notebooks are reserved for documenting the movements of birds and squirrels, or of flowers and trees, or anything of the sort.

I’ve found, now, that they have increased the desire and, thus, the effort to intentionally pursue outings wherein I may write — and find some quiet from the cacophony of life. Thanks for that Dean.

Currently

The “Vintage” Edition, our limited release for winter that dropped a few weeks ago is, to me at least, a surprising hit. (I’m notoriously bad at predicting that sort of thing.) Also, “The Birds and Trees of North America” series is getting close to selling out. Maybe we should make more. What do you think?

Twenty Something

As Bryan points out in a Dispatch published today, a case can be made for celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Field Notes this month. Or “an” anniversary anyhow. Whatever the date we appreciate the support of our customers, subscribers, partners, retailers, and you, for reading these long-winded updates.

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

^† “A commonplace book is at once a book form and a method of reading. Commonplacing was a system of using books in which readers digested the books they read by extracting, ordering and recording particular phrases or passages in notebooks of their own.” –University of Chicago Library. For my current one I’m using a “Dime Novel” Edition.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

This Staple Day went out at 11am CST and the Dreamers’ Bundle sold out a few hours after. Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our fifteenth monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else.

TLDR Version: Please Check for Personal Belongings, Dreaming, Ted & Joan, 224 Rep. John Lewis Way South, To Every Season.

Lost

Just about every one of the millions of Field Notes Memo Books we have produced has included a space on the inside front cover for the owner to include this information: If found, please contact (blank) Hence there (is/isn’t) a handsome reward waiting.

Except for my ever-present Steno, which never, ever leaves my desk, I always fill that section out. Do you? Here’s a story.

Chicago artist and screen-printer Jay Ryan was a vendor at our Holiday Market at HQ this past weekend. He recently returned from a trip and after it was too late to do anything about it, he realized he had left his trustworthy and beautifully beat-to-shit “Everyday Inspiration” leather cover, containing his current, working Memo Book (a “Snowy Evening”) in the pocket in front of his seat on the plane from Boston back to Chicago. And the book contained a ton of details and measurements for a big mural project he was working on. Ugh.

Jay always fills out that section on the inside cover and adds “$50 if found.” He contacted the airline, posted about it online and hoped for the best.

A few days later he received a padded envelope that was mailed to his studio from Irvine, California. Inside was his cover and Memo Book. There was a sticky note attached with an arrow drawn, pointing to the $50 reward note and the words, “Please donate to a local charity. God bless.” I like to think that, just maybe, the person who returned the book was a Field Notes user. Or, if not, maybe after this they’ll become one. Either way, I’m pretty sure they will be careful to fill out that section of the inside front cover.

A Dream Project, Literally

By now you’ve probably seen our latest collaboration, the “Dreamers’ Bundle” and “Dream Journals,” created with East Fork Pottery of Asheville, North Carolina.

As I mentioned in last month’s Staple Day, “We pay special attention to other small and medium sized brands... In a lot of the collaborative things we have done, we started out as lurkers, and then customers, before we became partners.”

When I wrote that I was thinking of East Fork.

As lurkers we admired the brand’s open and honest voice and the way they photographed and presented their made-in-the-USA products.

We became customers. I mentioned East Fork to someone very close to me and she purchased a few small bowls from their site. On the day they were delivered she placed a second order for an entire set of dinnerware for our home. Consider yourself warned.

As partners we had a blast creating the products for this collaboration. We also witnessed a small team pull together in the face of adversity as Hurricane Helene disrupted the lives and businesses in East Fork’s hometown, including their own. That delayed our product launch a bit, but only increased our admiration.

Nicole Lissenden, East Fork’s Head of Design, and the illustrator behind the edition’s intricate, dreamy artwork, talked about the creative process taking place during a challenging time for the company and the community. I encourage you to read that Journal Entry at the East Fork website.

Right Back To It

As noted in a previous Staple Day, I have started a commonplace book to record quotes, lyrics, poems, and conversations that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“Something went wrong, says the empty house.”

A line from Ted Kooser’s poem “Abandoned Farmhouse.” Kooser’s plain-spoken style leaves everything in the open. He doesn’t tell us a story, he simply records his observations and we tell it to ourselves.

Note: The book Braided Creek is a conversation in poems between Kooser and novelist and poet, Jim Harrison. Kooser had given up on poetry after being diagnosed with cancer and found a way back to it through his correspondence with Harrison. Just beautiful.

“See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do... on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there.”

Joan Didion, from Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Note: I love this Paris Review conversation, published ten years after STB. Note that Linda Kuehl, who conducted the interview, died not long after it was was transcribed, leaving Didion to write the introduction herself.

Bumping Elbows With Ghosts

Judging from my Staple Day inbox, folks seem to like the “process stories” about previous editions. So here’s another one you may have missed.

America’s most renowned letterpress print shop was founded by the brothers Hatch in 1879 and remains the living heartbeat of classic American poster design and printing craft. Since the early days of our Quarterly Editions, we have known that the road to explore the history of American printing, publishing and design runs directly through Nashville and Hatch Show Print.

Hatch is famous for letterpress-printed posters. For 145 years, they’ve found ways to recombine their enormous archive of historic images and type in ways that always seem fresh and vibrant, but also timeless. Hatch makes large posters. We make small notebooks. Here’s how we worked together.

We imagined a three-poster public service campaign about effective poster design, which we named Pressing Issues: A Series on Ink, Paper, and Muscle. We wrote some copy and made a couple of really rough sketches and then left it to the crew at Hatch to design and print. And. They. Killed. It.

Next, we cut up the three finished posters into covers for our Memo Books. Each poster yielded six covers, and we included one book from each poster in the 3-Packs. As a result of that, and the natural variations in letterpress printing, there’s a ton of variety in the run.

BTW: We sent Field Notes co-founder Aaron Draplin to Music City while the Hatch posters were on press. He explored their archives, learned a ton, and for the most part, managed to stay out their way. Check out the film of his visit.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Our Fall limited edition, “The Birds and Trees of North America,” which celebrates the art of Rex Brasher, continues to sell very well and we’re grateful folks are getting to learn about Rex. If you haven’t already, please take eight minutes to watch our mini-documentary.

This release is helping to raise awareness and funds for a museum. If you’d like to go a step farther, please consider giving to The Rex Brasher Association’s Annual Fund. Thanks.

The “Vintage” Edition, our limited release for winter that dropped last week is shipping right now. We revisited some of our favorite materials, details, and production processes to create a brand-new and old-fashioned set of Memo Books. Start (or gift) a year-long subscription with “Vintage” and you, or the lucky gift recipient, will be all set to come along for the ride next year.

In a rare spasm of punctuality we already have our Spring and Summer releases for 2025 mapped out. We have a ton of research and design work to do on both of them, but we’re not complaining. To be honest, that’s our favorite part of the process.

Sorry I wrote such a long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one. Happy holidays.

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our fourteenth monthly-ish newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions.

TLDR Version: Partners, Laughing Jays, Making Mistakes, Register Redux, James & Calvin, Typecast, Shopapalooza.

Allied Forces

Since the last Staple Day we have announced our collaboration with GOT BAG on the new “Pitch Black Rolltop Backpack,” which was born like many of our concepts, by chance. We were pitching our products to retailers at a Chicago trade show focused on men’s fashion. On the last day, traffic was pretty light so we walked around to say hello to some of the other brands and struck up a conversation with our eventual co-conspirators at GOT, which led to a meeting for drinks at HQ and a quick agreement to make something together.

We had always wanted to do some sort of Field Notes backpack, but never found one we felt really good about. Until now. The bags are made from recycled materials, including ocean plastic collected by GOT BAG’s clean-up programs in 17 Indonesian communities. They’re beautiful and functional.

Next week, we’ll be announcing another collab that has been in the works for a while. At Field Notes we pay special attention to other small and medium sized brands, and the way they talk about their process and products, the attention they pay to details and the importance they place on story telling. In a lot of the collaborative things we have done, we started out as lurkers, and then customers, before we became partners. Stay tuned.

Bird is the Word

Of course we’re always happy when a product connects with people. The reception to “The Birds and Trees of North America” has been especially gratifying. We have received a ton of comments from folks excited to learn about Rex Brasher, who The Washington Post referred to as “The greatest bird artist you’ve never heard of.”

While it’s his lifetime of paintings that get the most attention, Rex’s writings and personal observations allow us to get to know him a bit. And the birds too.

“Blue Jays have a sense of humor. I have watched them play tag with small hawks and their notes of derision when a hawk missed its swoop, were as close to laughter as birds can voice.”

If you haven’t already, please take eight minutes to watch our mini-documentary and meet Rex Brasher and the Rex Brasher Association.

Bad Intentions

Bryan coined the term “Forensic Design” to describe the process of dissecting vintage print ephemera and investigating the historical techniques and processes that can be used, or simulated, during production as a way to pay tribute to the traditions of American printing, publishing, and design.

Where it is not physically possible to employ a specific printing style or technique, our aim is to reproduce it honestly, in an analog manner wherever we can. For example, for 2013’s “America the Beautiful” Edition, it would have been relatively simple to fake the out-of-register effect we were looking for in Photoshop, and then print the faked image conventionally. But there’s beauty in mistakes made properly, so we asked our printer to mess up the alignment of the cyan “film” on press, to give us the mushy, slightly screwed-up effect we were after.

There is another detail I love about “America the Beautiful.” While looking for an off-white cover stock to simulate paper that had yellowed with age, our printer tracked down a palette of coated-on-one-side stock that had been sitting in a warehouse for years, and had yellowed naturally. It made a perfect complement to what Aaron Draplin called “our gorgeously shitty covers.”

Note: This entry is adapted from an essay in Fifty, the Anniversary Desk Ledger that subscribers received with shipments of our 50th Quarterly Limited Edition in 2021. Check it out here.

Sidewalks of New York

As noted in a previous Staple Day, I have started a commonplace book to record quotes, lyrics, poems, and conversations that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, ‘Look.’ I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, ‘Look again,’ which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw.”

James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78, The Paris Review. Early in Baldwin’s career Beauford Delaney mentored and encouraged him. Later, when Delaney was struggling Baldwin provided him support and protection. Learn more about their relationship in this piece by Victoria L. Valentine, written to coincide with a 2020 exhibition at the Knoxville Museum of Art.

Note: I have subscribed to The Paris Review for years and love the print editions. Having online access to their archive of in-depth writer interviews going back to the 1950s is also a great benefit.

“The chicken plays every day.”

While reading Calvin Trillin’s new collection of essays, The Lede, I was reminded of his New Yorker piece in which he describes taking friends to Chinatown to play tic-tac-toe against a chicken. They would look at the arrangements and say, “But the chicken gets to go first.” He would respond, “He’s a chicken. You’re a human being. Surely there’s some advantage in that?” Then some of them would say, “Yeah, but I haven’t played in years, the chicken plays every day.”

Thank You Mr. Renner

I had a lot of fun talking about Field Notes and related subjects with Carl Unger on Monotype’s Creative Characters podcast recently. Of course, I had a few things to say about the Futura typeface.

Futura has a unique combination of serious, announcement, public information, even governmental official-ness, but at the same time there is some warmth and maybe even a kind of a smile to it. Especially when you set it with healthy letterspacing and let it breathe a little bit. Futura is challenging in the text weights but I think it really wants to be all caps. Like “I’ll bring all the other clothes with me on vacation but every day I wind up wearing this sweatshirt.”

Next Up

Our winter limited edition is on press right now and will be announced in a few weeks. No spoilers except to say that people who like this sort of thing will find it exactly the sort of thing they like.

If you’re in Chicago or can get here, we’ll be hosting a Holiday Market with friends at HQ in Chicago on December 7th and 8th. Full details soon. Thanks, as always, for paying attention.

Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our thirteenth monthly-ish newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions.

TLDR Version: Who Knows Best, Oh Shenandoah, A Real Rarity, Left Unsaid, Your Hood, Duly Noted, Visitors.

The Painted Bird

Over the years I have been consistently poor at predicting the relative success of specific products before they are released. Given my track record, one might do a better job of prognostication by simply fading me. That is to say, just take the opposite side of whatever I predict.

Our seasonal limited editions do always sell out.^† Knock wood. But some sell out faster than others, and while we think we know our customers pretty well, we’re frequently surprised at how individual releases perform.

There is however, one indicator that is almost never wrong. The catch is, we don’t get to see that data until the very last minute. Here’s a little inside baseball about our product releases. Several days before we make an edition public we share it with our network of wholesale buyers in a “for your eyes only” email. A large percentage of the stores that carry Field Notes are independent retailers, whose success depends on consistently and correctly anticipating the needs of their customers. They are very good at that. These proprietors don’t just offer opinions, they place bets. With cash.

When I heard about Rex Brasher and saw his magnificent work for the first time, I immediately felt like the making of The Birds and Trees of North America was exactly the sort of story that we tell best: through research, text, documentary film and especially through the products themselves. Let’s just say I was cautiously optimistic. Our buyers had a different viewpoint. More stores ordered more copies of our fall release than just about any product we’ve ever created.

Pick some up at your local Field Notes retailer or at our site, and please take eight minutes to watch our mini-documentary and meet Rex Brasher and the Rex Brasher Association. This project has been a joy to work on and we’re excited to help to get the word out and raise funds for a future Rex Brasher museum in Kent, Connecticut.

Wild and Tremendous

Like headwaters that stream downhill, quickened with snowmelt, to gather and flow into a large river, multiple inspirations sometimes result in a single Field N0tes limited-edition release. An early spring drive along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a chance encounter with Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, and the power and poetry of the name itself resulted in the edition we called “Shenandoah” and the film we made to accompany it in 2018.

NOTE: This entry is adapted from an essay in Fifty, the Anniversary Desk Ledger that subscribers received with shipments of our 50th Quarterly Limited Edition in 2021. Scroll down on this page to see it.

Quoted and Not Quoted

As noted in a previous Staple Day, I have started a commonplace book to record quotes, lyrics, poems, and conversations that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries. One from bird research, natch.

“When will they master the lovely ‘peter-peter-peter’ tune the chicks’ parents sang to them when their whole world was the interior of an eggshell?”

That’s from novelist Amy Tan, writing about young Tufted Titmice (Baeolophus bicolor) in her book The Backyard Bird Chronicles, in which she tells the story of learning to observe, identify, sketch, and understand birds by close daily observation of the bird feeders outside her California home. Tan’s insights are amazing, and her drawings lovely. BTW, she dubbed the juveniles of this species “Titmousekateers.”

Note: During his lifetime, the aforementioned Rex Brasher sketched every species of bird in North America, so of course he drew the Tufted Titmouse. (Plate 731).

“Quote Redacted.”

In this particular case, I’m not including the actual passage I wrote in my commonplace book because it is the final line of “Vocation,” a poem by William E. Stafford. If I posted it here you’d miss the rush of excitement that comes from reading it in its proper place, concluding a poem that in a few short lines tells the story of childhood, a marriage, and pretty much the entire history of the American West. Remarkable.

Note: This poem came to my attention when Sean S. of Eugene Oregon added a link to it in the notes section of an order he placed on the day of our most recent newsletter, followed by “---This.” Thanks Sean.

The Shop Around the Corner

Is there a store in your neighborhood that would be a good fit to carry Field Notes? It doesn't have to be a book store or stationery shop, lots of unexpected places stock our Memo Books: bait shops, barbers, taverns, gift stores, cafes, etc. Just send us a Shop Tip and tell us about it. We’ll reach out and if they agree to give us a try we’ll send you a nice Box-O-Swag.

Easy For You to Say, Pat

Based on a tip from reader Lee A., I picked up a copy of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. Allen surveys every type of notebook imaginable, citing famous and not-so-famous examples through history. Highly recommended. I loved this, from novelist Patricia Highsmith. “It’s surprising how one sentence, jotted in a notebook, leads immediately to a second sentence. Close the notebook and think about it for a few days — and then presto! You’re ready to write a short story.”

Full House

Thanks to the 1,500 or so people who visited HQ last week for our Launch Party Happy Hour, and during the Chicago Architecture Center’s Open House Chicago event. It was great meeting you all and sharing some nerdy notebook discussions and a lot of laughs. Mark your calendars, we’ll be hosting some sort of Holiday Market shenanigans on Saturday and Sunday, December 7th and 8th. Details to come.

Stay tuned. We are justhisclose to announcing a pair of collabs that we have made with people that we admire. Can. Not. Wait.

Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

^† Occasionally a quarterly limited edition, or a remade version of it, will become a part of our regular line of products. Putting aside those; Expedition, Byline, National Parks, and Heavy Duty, 54 of the remaining 60 limited editions are now sold out forever. Also, only one of the three United States of Letterpress packs is still available.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our twelfth monthly-ish newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions.

TLDR Version: An Introduction, Lion and River, In the In-Box, Follow the Lines, This and That, C’mon By.

A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day

“I didn’t think of a Field Notes collaboration until this morning, but now I can’t unthink it.”

Warning. I am not including any spoilers in this section, so skip ahead if you’d rather not be teased. Anyway, we receive lots of communications containing ideas for Field Notes and we appreciate all of them. In some cases they are ideas we have considered previously, or have already written down in “The Book,” our long-running list of potential concepts for future Quarterly Limited Editions. We are grateful people feel strongly enough about the brand to let us know what they’d like to see next.

Once in a while however something hits our inbox like a bolt out of the blue. To us, the perfect quarterly theme will result in a product that is unique in its appearance, utility, or material, or in the process employed in its production. It’s a bonus if it fits well in the history of American design, printing, publishing, and art. And finally, if the theme unlocks an engaging story that we can tell, all the better.

Our Fall release checks all the boxes. It’s on press right now and we can’t wait to share it, and the story behind it, with you. Suffice it to say that if you’re a Field Notes fan the protagonist of this story is someone you’ll enjoy meeting. We look forward to making the introduction.

Notes to Self

As noted in last month’s Staple Day, I have started a Commonplace Book to record quotes, lyrics, poems, and conversations that resonate with me right now, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“Who peyntede the leoun, tel me, who?”

From The Wife of Bath’s prologue in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” where she references a fable in which a painting of a man overpowering a lion is used as evidence of man’s superiority. By asking “Who painted the lion, tell me who?” Alison, aka The Wife of Bath, is insisting that generally what art reveals is determined by the prejudices and position of the artist, and specifically that men’s writings about women cannot be trusted. It also seems like a good question to ask when reading social media these days.

Marion Turner’s The Wife of Bath: A Biography tells an entertaining story that is scholarly without being stuffy and it really brings Alison alive. Also, I first heard about the book via this interview with Barbara Bogaev.

“My ordinary style is better than ordinary speech, but not so much you would notice it.”

This quote from the late Norman Maclean seems like an excellent goal for any writer. From a recent piece by Kathryn Schulz for the New Yorker. Also, I learned a lot from Norman Maclean: A Life of Letters and Rivers, Rebecca McCarthy’s new biography of the author of A River Runs Through It.

A Very Chicago Connection: Audio of Maclean chatting with Studs Terkel in June of 1976. So great.

A Letter

“Some of my Field Notes books are simply beautiful vehicles for things I don’t want to forget... and some of them carry memories that will last my lifetime.”

“At 90 years old, my mom passed away in June. Her last written note to me, was in one of your ‘MLBD Edition’ Memo Books. I had to decipher and re-write it below her entry. One line that stays with me everyday is. ‘There is no one like you for me.’ There is no one like her for me too.”

Thank you for sharing Kathleen.

“Get Inside the Drawing”

About this time in 2021 we released the “Harvest” Edition which sold out quickly. Noted American artist John Burgoyne’s illustrations graced the covers of six Memo Books in the series, featuring fruits and vegetables commonly harvested in the Fall.

John’s intricate and instantly recognizable illustrations regularly appear in Cook’s Illustrated, National Geographic, and other publications. We visited him in his studio on Cape Cod and had a chat about his work and career.

Various and Sundry

Painting the Town: We were happy to see the the “Flora” Edition pop up on Caroline Williamson’s Design Milk recently. Flora artist Emmy Star Brown stopped by HQ last week for a chat, and showed us some of the terrific mural projects she has been installing around Chicago recently.

Tearing it Up: Check out our musical collaboration with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. These 3-Packs are available at the merch table at Jason’s current North American shows, and we have some for sale at our site too. Jason’s probably best known as a singer and songwriter but he is flashing some other skills on this tour too.

Taking Us With: “A little more luxurious and adventurous.” Our Memo Books are one of the things The NYT/Wirecutter crew can’t leave home without.” Thanks for that.

Catching the Light: This year’s books for the final XOXO Conference in Portland were produced from a cyanotype captured by Ellen Wilde. We used the large image she created across all 18 covers of a standard press sheet. 3-Packs are still available.

Open House

If you’re in Chicago, or planning a visit, we’ve scheduled the Launch Party Happy Hour for our Fall Quarterly Release for the evening of Thursday October 17th. As usual we’ll provide snacks, drinks, free parking, and nerdy design and printing conversation. More details soon. That same week we’re taking part in the always-fun Chicago Architecture Center Open House Chicago program. HQ and the shop will be open for visits Saturday and Sunday, October 19 and 20.

No contest this month, we’re a little in the weeds at the moment. Thanks for reading. We’d love to see you at HQ next month.

Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.