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Designers know and love French Paper. We love their range of colors and weights. We love their consistent quality. We love their website. We love their whole CSA-directed aesthetic, their 140-year history, and their long-time commitment to the environment and hydroelectric power.
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Everyone has a job to do in this world, and some of our jobs are more glamorous than others. Paper manufacturing is not glamorous. It’s messy, dark, often smelly. It would have been easy for Big Ed, or Jerry, or Brian, or Kim French to say “Paper is boring. Paper is not for me,” and go off and try to make a fortune doing something more interesting, but they all threw themselves into their family business 100% and made it interesting, made it fun. They’ve brought more color, more creativity to paper, and bigger companies are still trying to catch up.
We've been using French's 80-lb “Dur-O-Tone Packing Brown Wrap” covers for our kraft memo books since the beginning of Field Notes. And the majority of our Quarterly Editions feature French paper covers. I ditched my family for a day while visiting Michigan to tour the French paper plant in Niles back in 2009, and it was the highlight of my summer. Brian told me a Notre Dame design student asked to hold her wedding there, and they actually looked into it, but health/safety issues ruled it out.
Do you get excited when a salesperson visits you at work? When Jerry, Brian, or Kim come to our office, it’s like Christmas. And once in a while, the unthinkable happens: they present you with an all-new swatch book. Except this time, it was even better than that. We’ve been lucky enough to get to know French pretty well over the years, and they were kind enough to give us an advance heads-up on their new Kraft-Tone line. We had a headstart on the design of the Field Notes Workshop Companion and our memo books were on press before anyone had even seen the swatch books. When we used up their whole batch of “Standard White” body paper before it was even announced, Brian and Jerry put all hands on deck to make more and get it to us in time. Totally clutch. Thanks to everyone at French, from top to bottom, not only for this Workshop Companion edition, but also for helping our Great Lakes neighbors, the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, with Two Rivers, and for everything else they’ve done for us, all the way back.