I saw this shot in the young Hollywood Issue of Vanity Fair. (You know, the cover where Kristen Stewart looks like she just tied off and wants to ride it out on the lawn.) It had been sitting around for sometime and finally went to magazine heaven under the blade of my scissors.

The caption reads:

A collection of the director’s (John Hughes) notebooks, the pages crammed with his tiny handwriting. Hughes never went anywhere without one.

I love that the notebooks vary in size, color and type. It’s almost as if he would fill them up so quickly, even with his little handwriting, that he would have to buy one immediately wherever he was whether it was the Rite Aid or the airport gift shop. Imagine him rushing into one of these places holding onto the tail end of a fleeting ah-ha moment and buying the first notebook he saw in the same way a die-hard smoker would buy a pack of cigarettes after a six hour flight.

Most writers or artists are very very particular about what they scrawl their ideas into. For a writer, I can imagine the spiral coil irritating their hand placement. What about wide or college ruled? The darkness of the lines that you are going to write onto?

For an artist there are details like paper weight to counter bleeding. Some want bible thin sheets. Others only want acid free paper or a hard cover.  And let’s not even branch off into the selection of a writing instrument.

Here is some randomness I got in the mail from Anhie in La La Land. It’s a baggie of neoprene crinkle cuts from designer Alexandra Cassaniti.

She makes very nice minimalist papery tops. She has a very nice brand identity (looks like a Helmut Lang baggie) and a sense of humor. See below.