These notepads were designed to sell out. Ana Reinert and Bob Atkins took a limited amount of vintage typewriting stock, wrapped it in a letterpressed cover, added some well-designed writing templates, and then priced it so low that no one could say no.
Ana Reinert is the owner of WellAppointedDesk.com and has a great online shop. Along with all the stationery products she reviews, she makes and sells some well-curated items. She has an excellent sense of what makes a good fountain pen paper and one of her best selling items (I am assuming here) is the Col-o-ring Ink Testing Book. Her husband, Bob Akins, is the owner of Skylab Letterpress which he founded in 2006 located at 1968 Linn Street in Kansas City :)
The two of them came across a box of vintage typewriter stock and it turns out that it is a great fountain pen paper! More on the story of how they came across the paper in my Q&A with them below.
The paper is a cotton blend and is very light which gives it a Tomoe River feel. The ink has a slight drying time, but it does promote some great shading with fountain pen ink. The paper also has a bit of tooth to it which is not something I am accustomed to. Not a bad thing, just a different style of paper.
In the image above, you can see the dot grid layout coming through the pre-printed templates. I have seen these kinds of see-through templates before, and they are a perfect addition to this notepad. There are 4 layouts, dot-grid, square grid, college ruled, and wide ruled. Such a good design element and makes these the best notepads I have seen around.
I asked Ana and Bob about the notepad and they were kind enough to answer some of my questions:
1. How did you come across the paper that you used for the notepads?
Bob attends a lot of print shop auctions. He went to one particular auction and saw the boxes of typewriter paper and nonchalantly asked if I had any interest in it. I said unequivocally “yes”. He wasn’t sure it would be usable for anything but I had a good feeling about it. So, we lucked out. We got the paper at a good price and I was right in my suspicions that the paper would be useful.
2. What makes it work so well with fountain pens!?
There is a coating applied to some typing papers to make it easier to “erase” typing ink that just coincidentally works great with fountain pens too.
3. I know the books are sold out but do you offer the template sheets for sale separately?
We hadn’t considered selling the guide sheets separately but it’s we can definitely do that if there’s interest.
4. Do you have any new products we can start to get excited about?
We have several other products in the pipeline. I don’t know that they will create quite the stir that the vintage writing paper pads have but we like to keep trying new and different things.
Now, while these notepads are sold out, I do still recommend you check out Ana’s shop. Not only does she have good quality products, but her site is a refreshing reminder as to how online stores should conduct business. No annoying popups asking for email, no highly over-priced inventory with 25% off sales, just a clean, simple, and well organized site.
I also suggest you get in Ana’s email list for any new products.
I don’t often compliment online stores, but Ana’s site is a quiet simple shop.
Speaking of how online shops can build better shopping experiences, check out the packaging. The box is the exact right size for the materials, and the notebooks were carefully wrapped like a present.
I feel bad for hanging on to two of these notepads when they sold out so fast so I am offering up the red notepad as a giveaway!
Next week is another review so stay tuned! As always, I purchased these notepads and my thoughts are my own.
Cheers,
Mike
PS. If you like this review, please consider following me on Instagram. I am almost done with prototyping a new notebook and tablet case and will be sharing all the details on IG. Thanks!
