A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES
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Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is Edition 7 of our monthly mail which contains a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. |
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TLDR Version: Sprung, Classic Bands, Wearing FN, Fire Spotting, Jack, Inventory Alert, Read Anything Good Lately? |
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Barring last-minute complications, our Spring Quarterly Limited Edition will drop on Tuesday, March 19th. We’re very proud of this one and excited to have created it, and the film that accompanies it, with a talented and insightful partner. |
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As usual, subscriber shipments will go out first. They’ll get two packs of Memo Books, a fun extra item that is perfectly appropriate for the season, and a significant discount on something else. |
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Then on Friday, March 22nd from 4-8pm we’ll host a Launch Party Happy Hour at HQ in Chicago and hope you can stop in for a drink and some nerdy typography, notebook, printing, and design discussions. |
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One advantage of having a Shop at HQ is that we get to see how customers interact with our products in a retail environment. Our little shop acts as a proxy for all the stores that carry our line. |
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Our web site does a good job of explaining individual products and displaying and listing their attributes. But, especially when the individual books that make up a “pack” have unique cover designs, or the three covers of a pack work together in some way, our standard belly-band doesn’t give us the room to communicate enough information. This is most problematic when the product is in a store and has to speak for itself. |
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So, we’re starting to use backing cards which have much more room to show details, rather than belly-bands, on new packs that need to tell a little more “story.” Of course, Original Kraft, Pitch Black, Expedition, etc will always proudly sport the classic Field Notes band. |
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One other interesting thing is that Lukas, like myself, prefers his Field Notes broken in, showing signs of age, and beaten up a bit. Of course I love a pristine 3-Pack right off the press, but a well-used one shows character in a way that makes me feel the connection to the farmers’ notebooks of the past that inspired Field Notes in the first place. I dig this idea for working in his notebooks. |
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I’ve developed a system where I will take out two Field Notes at a time. I’ll take the one I am currently using and also take the next one I am going to use and carry it with me at the same time. I take it in and out of my briefcase, it travels around with me. I use it as a coaster and that all kind of “pre-wears” it so that by the time I come to use that one as my new Field Notes. it’s already worn in. |
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I suppose you can see what caught my eye about the title of Philip Connors’ excellent memoir, Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout. A discussion of the book at HQ sparked some research about Midwestern fire spotters and we were excited to discover that two Aermotor Company Fire Lookout Towers from the 1930s were still standing, and one was just four hours north of us in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin. And we were even more excited to realize that if we acted quickly we could film the tower, and from the tower, at the height of the autumn leaves changing. And, oh yeah, we could make some Memo Books too. |
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The above was excerpted from “Fifty,” the Anniversary Desk Ledger, a gift to subscribers that was included along with shipments of our Spring 2021 Edition. You can read the whole thing here. |
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BTW, the music in the “Firespotter” film is Carnival of the Animals: VII Aquarium by Camille Saint-Saëns (Spotify) which first came to our attention in the title sequence of Terrence Malick’s pretty-much-perfect film, Days of Heaven. |
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“Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.” ― aka Jack London |
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In last month’s Staple Day I asked the question, “What Are You Reading?” in a quick photo contest. We got a ton of entries (and some very good book recommendations) and randomly chose ten and sent them each a long-sold-out “End Pages” Edition. There is no contest this month but we have something fun, and possibly insane, in the works for April. |
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You’ll hear from us next week when the Spring Limited Edition drops and we hope to see you at HQ for the launch party. We have a couple fun brand collabs in the works for the summer and fall that we can’t wait to get to work on. Thanks for following along with us. |
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* 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. |
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