Lego Moleskine notebooks

I already have a lifetime supply of notebooks, but I'll be buying these Lego Moleskines just in case there's a mortality cure coming down the pipes.

Buy Lego Moleskines on Amazon.com

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Richard Dagenais

I do quite like you BoingBoing but, sometimes, your brand worship worries me.
- http://twitter.com/Bodminzer Kieran Manners
  
  For real. The unquestioning consumerism of nerds far outstrips that of any social group I can think of.
retchdog

a triumph of style and marketing (no insult intended; the included brick is almost ingenious. moleskine is brilliant at this and i still have a soft spot for them). however, moleskines are fairly shoddy paper with a lot of show-through, and almost totally unsuitable for fountain pens. i’ll wait for the moleskine/clairefontaine collaboration (which won’t ever happen).
- Grey Devil
  
  Not sure i agree with the shoddy paper comment. I’m an artist and do a lot of ink work and have never had any issues drawing on my moleskins. Unless they’ve changed the quality of the paper within the last 2 years or so.
  
  Anyway, the lego moleskin is amazingly awesome, almost as cool as the pacman one. I’m really tempted to jump on getting one.
  - retchdog
    
    really? they might have changed the paper… i’m not an artist, but the feathering i got from my noodler’s bulletproof black (lamy “XF” nib, which is really more like an F) was enough to make some of my writing almost illegible. simple copy paper works much better, and for nice things i use rhodia/cf.
    - Grey Devil
      
      Hm. Might be the difference in using an inking pen and a proper pen for writing. If that’s the case i can imagine that the paper isn’t holding up well for writing.
    - Jaron Hendrix
      
      I’ve never had any trouble using Noodler’s brown along with my Mont Blanc or Pelikan fount pens on Moleskine’s paper. Have you tried Noodler’s anti-feather black?
      - retchdog
        
        no. regular noodler’s behaves well on almost everything except newsprint and moleskines. makes more sense to change my paper to, well, almost anything else…
- raidendaigo
  
  Different moleskin notebooks have different paper thickness.
  
  The long ledger has really thin paper as does the graph and writing notebook, The artist sketch has thick stock and works well with nibs and brushes and smells delicious.
  - retchdog
    
    so i’m paying a significant premium, and they’re still playing games with how good the paper is? (i’ve now read on many review sites that there is substantial variation even /within/ product lines.)
    
    screw that. ink and paper are primary; notebook style is secondary.
- http://twitter.com/The_Paper_Blog ThePaperBlog
  
  Clairefontaine <3 <3 <3
  
  ThePaperBlog
- oasisob1
  
  I love the style of the mole, but for sheer paper joy, I fell in love with Clairfontaine, too. Even casual pencils just slide right across the paper. If mole paper satisfies you, you want to keep the format, and you don’t hate money, I recommend Piccadilly Essential notebooks.
  - retchdog
    
    good call. and if you hate money and/or want a moleskine with real paper, try a rhodia “webnotebook”; i’d call it a knock-off except that it’s better (and sadly more expensive) than the original. also, it comes in dot-ruled, which is like graph paper before the edges are connected; my favorite.
    
    if you don’t hate money and want good paper, get a clairefontaine staple-bound notebook; it’s not sexy and it doesn’t lay flat like a moleskine, but the paper is wonderful; “le douceur de l’écriture.”
Adam S.

Would this be considered the moment Lego jumped the shark or Moleskine jumped the shark? I’m this close to reaching my overmarketed tolerance level on both. Combining them might send them speeding up the ramp and over the shark together.

Even “Bohemian Rhapsody” can be overplayed.
- Eric Roberts
  
  Blasphemer!
  - oasisob1
    
    I’m with Eric on this one; Bohemian Rhapsody cannot be overplayed.
- Mark_Frauenfelder
  
  Go ahead and scoff. I pre-ordered mine. It’s a *limited edition,* and I won’t shed any tears for you when you start aching for one and they are $300 on eBay.
sigdrifa

*facepalm*… I’m not sure whether I should attribute this to the fact that I just got out of bed or get used to the idea that I have arrived in the modern world, but I just looked at the headline, looked at the picture and thought: “Funny, this doesn’t look like a laptop at all…” Of course, the fact that, because English is not my native language, the word “moleskin” isn’t exactly in my daily vocabulary didn’t help, either. (I know what it is, it’s just not a very common word in my daily life.) *Sigh*
Senor Schaffer

Aw, cram it. Nobody likes nothin’ anymore.
- Brander Roullett
  
  Seriously. I love this concept, but the elitist bashing of all the whiners is super annoying. I
  
  That being said, I’ve pre-ordered one, and am considering order several more just in case I run. I go through about one a year at work.
Mark Neumayer

So whatever happened with the “contest” Moleskine ran where the “winner” would get their art used and the company was horrendously out of touch in responding to the backlash against their spec request? I can’t find anything about the aftermath although I do remember many people being quite angry. But what the heck, they added shiny plastic to it, right? /sarcasm
http://jxc.ca/ Jon 丘

It so happens that the anniversary of Lego’s patent happened on this day (January 28) in 1958:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lego#Early_history
- Wreckrob8
  
  Ah! Therein lies the rub. Patents may protect good design from imitation thereby allowing the inventors to establish their position in the market, but in doing so a design risks becoming iconic – open to any and every and even no possible meaning. We are all susceptible. Ask the Catholic Church.
sam1148

The lego worship is kinda weird. Where’s the Erector set love?
- Tom Forest
  
  Lego is more international. Not quite sure what an ‘Erector set’ is. Something like Meccano?
- zarray
  
  hehehe, you said erect.
- Brander Roullett
  
  Lego is awesome. My 4 year old is obsessed with them, and we play with them a lot.
- AviSolomon
  
  My six year old son is hooked on playing Chess with the LEGO Star Wars Chess set I made for him (with his input):
  http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/131
http://twitter.com/The_Paper_Blog ThePaperBlog

We’re still waiting on the samples here in Norway (everything comes so sloooowly here…) – the distributor is showing them to me on Monday, looking forward to it!!!!! It might very well be I need one to, to fill My lifetime supply of notebooks… ;) And think of all the cool stuff you can do with displaying these books in store!!
noah django

“merchandise, it keep us in line
it condescends us by design
what could a businessman ever want more
than to have us sucking in his store.”
–FVGAZI
- http://twitter.com/snarf Snarf
  
  Ah yes, Fugazi. One of the best bands ever in every way and those words are spot on.
http://twitter.com/jmtd Jonathan Dowland

I’m very curious as to *why* you have a lifetime supply of notebooks. Sponsorship? Competition win? I can’t fathom why else it would make sense, from a storage or a financial POV.
- oasisob1
  
  I have a lifetime supply for myself and both my kids. There are so many out there, in so many cool designs. Plus it’s better than drinking all my money.
  - Richard Dagenais
    
    says you! *hic*
Stephen Johnston

BoingBoing: A directory of ‘cool things’. This is clearly a ‘cool thing’, regardless of which corporate monoliths bumped licensing uglies to bring it into being. I shudder to imagine the price tag.
- Brander Roullett
  
  Right now it’s $14 on amazon.com pre-order. Not bad for a notebook I use for a year usually.
Dicrel Seijin

I love LEGO and I like moleskine (I have a couple lying around, but use composition books for preference), but I have to say that I balked at the price tag. If it were halved or the proceeds going to a charity, I’d consider it. As is, I will have to tearfully pass.
http://twitter.com/snarf Snarf

While I will admit that it might be that I am well on my way to becoming a bitter old man, I really fail to see how a lego brick, some lego embossing and some lego stickers can improve a notebook? I do like the Moleskine books though.
http://casacostello.com/ Helen Costello

Love these! I cannot imagine continuing life without one.
Hanglyman

I miss the days when LEGO was a toy aimed at kids, with generic themes like “space” or “castle” that encouraged them to use their imagination, instead of being made almost solely to cash in on movie franchises or, in this case, adult nerd demographics.
- rcmckee
  
  As always, today’s kids get most of the toys their parents wish they’d had growing up, I think. There’s some sort of comment about imagination in that.
http://twitter.com/illwrks Shane McCarthy

Fail. Where’s the lego clasp?
Jack Everitt

This is Tired.
Wired: Minecraft moleskin notebooks.
Jaron Hendrix

Wasn’t ”Think With Your Hands!” the mantra for the Battle Toads? Zitz, Rash and Pimple want a word with you, Lego.
http://profile.yahoo.com/VNTTBNVPN7HMRJLO6GIJZVMVSU Bram

Shouldn’t this have a Lego grid (2:5 ratio to match a 1 x 1 plate) instead of ruled lines?
dcorbett

I just don’t get the fascination with all things Lego. Seems to me that BoingBoing is going way overboard on this one. Just sayin’
http://twitter.com/TerryBorder Terry Border

BoingBoing is 3D printer, Lego, and that kooky band from South Africa crazy. Positively everything to do with those three things has to be posted immediately here. It’s the law.
(but I may buy one of these anyway. ;)
- Richard Dagenais
  
  I agree. To prove it, I am working on a stop motion animation video using a Thingomatic and Lego pieces with Die Antwoord soundtrack.