Cool Custom Notebooks For Designers (2018 Edition)

You never know where inspiration will strike—you may be finishing your coffee at Denny’s or simply watching a movie before bedtime. That’s why you need these custom notebooks for designers to jot down your creative ideas!

Busy designers, for instance, find inspiration in everything, and that’s because they like their job rather than perceiving it as a stressful experience. In fact, the design is more than that—once you’ve mastered the craft, it becomes your way of life.

An interesting way to capture those thoughts is to have a notebook nearby, either in your bag or next to the mouse pad, to avoid missing the fleeting moment.

Cool design notebooks are a smart habit, even for the least talented artists out there. At the end of the day, you’re not expected to paint a masterpiece.

All it takes is a sketch, doodle, or scribble that will remind you of your idea. When it comes to design, the old-fashioned paper and pen are still unsurpassable.

Besides, a design notebook is a great way to become familiar with this profession and a great way to personalize your projects. Ideas come out easily, and you will definitely find yourself sketching at least five wireframes (or thumbnails) before you’ve come up with the ideal solution. Designer notebooks and journals can make the design really unique, and make you discover a talent you weren’t even aware of.

Here Are Some Great Notebooks For Designers

The Baron Fig

The Baron Fig is certainly the best notepad or notebooks for designers in terms of usability and simplicity, and one which ensures you’ll have a number of fellow co-users to consult. But how did it come to be so popular?

The flat opening is one of the reasons! In the case of best paper notebooks for designers, the worst possible option is a curving one, since you’re automatically losing 10% of your sketching space. Baron, on the other hand, comes in three different editions, each of which is made from another type of paper. You can choose Ruled, Blank, or Dot Grid, depending on whether you need it to write, draw sketches, or create diagrams.

Also read: From Prototype to Profit: How to Turn Your Ideas into Products

Moleskine Smart Designer Notebooks

Moleskine is another representative of the best smart notebooks for designers and is extremely popular among artists because of its Creative Cloud connectivity. But what does ‘smart’ actually mean? While you’re using it and drawing on one of the pages, the Creative Cloud App on your iPhone is immediately transforming the sketch into a JPG/SVG image, and syncing it with Photoshop or illustrator for further alterations.

We know it sounds like something cool and quite impossible, but trust us, it works! There are many Moleskine alternatives to consider too, but we believe this is the best smart drawing solution you can find on the market nowadays.

Improve your design proficiency with these graphic design tips.

Livescribe Notebook By Moleskine

Moleskine also designed a solution for Livescribe pen users, namely the Livescribe notebook, which reminds of the original one but has some extra features and controls displayed on the pages’ bottom as bookmarks.

Also read: Wireframes Vs Prototypes: What’s The Difference?

Evernote Sketchbook with Smart Stickers

The smartest notebook idea for the thousands of Evernote users out there is the Smart Sticker Sketchbook, which allows you to tag your pages with one of the many stickers available in the system. Once again, the Evernote app allows you to take pictures of your drawings and transform them into images to be kept on your phone and your cloud Evernote account.

Another good thing about this notebooks for designers is that it costs almost nothing to use it, especially if you need it for personal purposes.

The Browser Sketch Pad – Smart Notebooks For Designers

The Browser Sketch Pad is one of the simplest drawing programs, as the only thing you’d see going inside is a basic sketching window and few essential markers (100, 600, and 768px). The foundation is a dot grid with an overall width of 1024pixels, and it works best with an average 960 grid.

The paper, however, is different than the one you use for standard printing, but it is perfectly suitable for a sketchbook.

Responsive Design Sketchbook – Best Notebooks For Designers

One of the best notebooks for designers. This book is known by the fact that pages are divided into two separate layouts, one of which consists of four small windows where you’re supposed to sketch small wireframes.

The width of all windows is different so that you can replicate the same wireframe in various sizes, which is exactly what makes the sketchbook responsive. The width of the windows is adjusted to one of the actual screens (a double-oriented 1024 x 768 one, a divided 320 x 768 one, which can also be used with a 480 line, and the standard 600 x 1024 one). Thanks to such division, you can plan the block-level preview of your design on multiple devices.

The other layer is not divided and has an overall length of 800 pixels. However, you can plan your sketch using some of the breakpoints on it, such as 320, 600, 768, 1024 and 1200. Basically, this is the part of the screen that allows you to plan larger versions of the same design.

Essential by Piccadilly

Piccadilly is probably the best a Moleskine alternative can get, and that has more to do with price than with functionality. The Essentials collection includes four specific notebooks: plain, ruled, graph, and soft cover, all available in different colors.

Designed to resemble Moleskine, Picadilly comes in a small, pocket-size edition of 89 x 137mm, where pages are sewn by section and have the same thickness as their Italian counterpart does. In fact, the two models share even the same top line spacing and straight spine.

Also read: What Is Prototyping In Design?

Field Notes Memo Book – Cute Notebooks For Designers

The memo book is Field Notes’ proudest product, being a rough 48-pages sketching blessing which comes in a package of three. As it is produced and sold in the States, the memo book is sized 3.5in x 5.5 in, comes in a plain, ruled, or graph edition, and has stitch-bound pages.

Of course, you can always go for a premium edition, such as the Field Notes Expedition notebook, which is highly customizable, tear-resistant, and waterproof, and it is thus your best notebooks for designers for protecting valuable drawings.

Whitelines Link – Superb Notebooks For Designers

Whitelines is a Swedish company that promised to introduce a revolutionary type of writing paper and did so. Their unique lined paper technology helped them develop a thin-lining writing concept, keeping lines way lighter to allow the pen/pencil to stand out. In fact, the whole page there is lightly grayed, and lines are almost invisible. As it probably occurred to you by now, the name of the company was inspired by the very same concept.

Also read: All You Need To Know About Rapid Prototyping

Of course, Whitelines didn’t stay that far behind with digital technology either and wrapped up a joint digital format and a personal app that partners with Moleskine and Evernote. The app is called Whitelines Link, and it is one that allows you to work corner to corner, export digital pictures from your doodles, and even upload them directly to your email, Evernote, or Dropbox account.

myPAPERCLIP Notebooks

One of the best notebooks for designers. The popularity of Moleskine was not neglected even in India, where the commonly produced notebook is myPAPERCLIP. These products are used for diaries and journals all around the world, the most popular being the City Series, a set of hardcover pads and Munken Polar Rough 100 GSM paper stock.

Another reason why the socially conscious among you may choose myPAPERCLIP is that the company donates a large portion of its sales to the Educational Fund for unprivileged children, and uses environment-friendly sources to produce their paper.

Code&Quill Notebook for creatives

Code&Quill was a Kickstarter design notebook idea, as these products are specifically developed for creative designers. The pages on the left side are dot grid ones, and allow the artist to draw, sketch, or wireframe the drawings, while the right side intends to reveal the specific Indentation rule—in fact, it represents a vertical, narrow ruling dashboard with 5mm boxes for notes, paragraphs, or even lists that need to be prepared for coding.

As for the paper, we must praise their durable and thick choice, ready for all design ideas. The pages are carefully bound with high-quality thread, while the overall form allows the notebook to remain in a flat position regardless of where you’ve put it, or how you’re using it.

Also read: The Difference Between High And Low Fidelity Prototypes

Magma Sketchbook

Another catch for artsy designers is Magma Sketchbooks, being among the most artistic and reliable sketchbooks. Each of them includes art info and references and is crafted with handy back-sleeve pockets where you can save random papers you may use. Overall, it has 152 pages, while the paper is a absorbent, which will ensure there are no ink smudges to mess up your design.

The Pocket A6

As you can guess by the name, Pocket A6s are small and cute designer notebooks that help artists in need of a reliable and playful solution. You can find them in all colors and patterns, each with a flexible cover, and an overall number of 121 pages, a total of 8 detachable and perforated sheets, and a unique table where you can list your content with the numbers of the pages.

It is because of that we believe Pocket A6 is perfect cute design notebook for notes and sketches, especially if you’re a busy designer who needs to keep track of his work.

Mod Notebooks

Mod notebooks are known for their beautiful design, being traditionally bound, and being flexible to carry around. Overall, we can say they’ve kept the loveable looks from the past, with few modern features sprinkled here and there.

Also read: Prototyping And Its Pitfalls

Grand Voyageur

Similarly to Mode, Grand Voyager is an overwhelmingly beautiful notebook with a slim and flexible shape, aromatic leather covers, and an overall feeling of class that experienced designers like to ‘carry around’.

Within the leather covers, you will find 3 refills of highest-quality paper, a passport holder, and an elegant pen, which is why we believe Grand Voyager was indeed made for traveling notes and memorabilia.

Also read: Product Prototype Design: How to Make a Product Prototype?

Grand Budapest Hotel Notebook

Grand Budapest Hotel Notebook is one of the standard 40-pages notebooks, which, however, made it to the top of most attractive and pretty designer solutions.
The fans of this Anderson movie choose the model quite often, even if there is really nothing that outstanding about it.

The pros of drawing wireframes and prototyping on paper first

This part of the article will discuss few of the main advantages why you should sketch wireframes, or do prototyping on paper first.

The reason for that is that your ideas stay in place, and you don’t lose them. The piece of paper is next to you, and you can quickly submit your idea to the design team to test it or discard it.

An electronic tool may have the technical power to come up with elegant solutions, but they certainly constrain the flow of your thoughts and transforms your ideas before you’ve rounded them up. Therefore, a carousel widget for interaction is a desirable addition to your electronic prototyping suite.

Another downside of electronic prototyping is that it hinders the initial improvement of your idea, and it does so in a very sensitive stage of your project. Doing it on paper would be much better for adding and removing ideas, testing them, and spotting the best parts to be combined into a single, converged solution. There are not many electronic devices that can support your divergent ideas, and that is why going back to the basics can be most useful.

As you can see, it doesn’t take much to detect the pros of paper prototyping: it is fast, affordable, reliable, and quite collaborative.

Also read: Prototyping Since Static Is Now Outdated!

On top of that, it is rapidly integrated, and that’s a real blessing in disguise, knowing how unreliable and time-consuming coding sketches can be. Instead of spending hours in front of the computer, and creating waste due to the dynamic nature of the process, why don’t you try sketching instead? On average, the best sketchbook designs took 20 minutes to be drafted and approved.

Paper wireframes also eliminate budget concerns, built using the supplies you already have available. All it takes is a pencil/pen, a piece of paper, eventually scissors, and a lot of your creativity. The fancy and artsy designers may even consider Post-Its, index cards, and so on.

As we mentioned, sketchbooks are also an interesting way to collaborate with colleagues and to create that special art bond you were missing behind the desk. It is paper that encourages communication in every setting, especially in fresh teams which are still getting to know each other.

The organizational benefit is also present. You get to document the previous versions of your prototypes easily, add technical notes to them, or write the prototype’s name straight next to it.

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