A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, including occasional one-day-only offers, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 29th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email with comments, questions, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you. You can find recent Staple Days here.

Short Version: Spring and Fowl, Elemental, Deal, Pressing Issues, Commonplace, Bird from Malta, You and I.

Counting Crows

Thanks to everyone who has ordered a copy of this year’s Rooster Book. We’ve been the title sponsor for The Tournament of Books since 2010 and have produced a custom Memo Book for each year’s tourney. Over the years we have raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity and this year we’re once again donating to the American Library Association’s Unite Against Book Bans program.

The ToB kicks off in March. Whether you have read all, some, or none of the entrants (I usually get to five or six) it’s fun to follow along. The individual match judgments are always smart, surprising and elicit thoughtful responses in the comments.

Stuffed

Speaking of 2010, for our 6th Quarterly Limited Edition, “Packet of Sunshine,” we went beyond simply choosing new colors and paper and created a custom top-loading, string-tied envelope, which was inspired by vintage American seed packaging. Inside was a bright yellow 3-Pack of Memo Books and a small zip-sealed plastic bag containing American Marigold seeds of the “Crackerjack” variety, plus growing instructions.

At the time it was a big print run for us, but we figured it would be relatively quick and easy to assemble the 4,000 packs. As we sat down to get started at our conference room table we discovered it was neither. But the edition was a hit and it wasn’t too long before we started receiving photos of young marigold plants blooming in window boxes and in gardens. Our next Quarterly was “County Fair” and with that one we started making films and left the product packaging to professionals.

Birds, Trees, Words, Pictures

“Behind every creative work is a ruling force, usually ambition to leave our little mark on the sands of Fame. With me this impulse was shame—a feeling of chagrin that Americans had no complete pictorial colored record of their birds and trees.” — Rex Brasher

When Rex was eight years old he wrote in his diary that he wanted to paint every bird in North America. He did that, and by 1933 he had completed 100 sets of The Birds and Trees of North America which included 87,400 hand-colored plates.

The Rex Brasher Association has recently reached a milestone of their own. “All twelve volumes have now been fully transcribed, photographed, and prepared for digital access. While individual volumes are still being released, the record itself is complete.” We are proud to have played a small role in telling this story through our “Birds and Trees of North America” 3-Packs, our short documentary film about Rex, A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day, and by providing financial support to the association.

Remember it Now

“Across 24 studies, college students who took handwritten notes were 58 percent more likely to get A’s in their courses than those who typed notes on laptops.” The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education, by Jean M. Twenge for the NYT.

Set List

Over the years we have been fortunate to have collaborated with some of our favorite bands and artists to produce custom packs to be sold to fans and displayed on tour merch stands. It occurs to me that if we somehow got them all together it would make for a great day at a music festival: Wilco, Maggie Rogers, Jason Isbel, Bon Iver, and with the release of her new record, “Creature of Habit,” we can add Courtney Barnett to the line-up.

Related: We happened to notice that Pixies, Flaming Lips, and Brandi Carlile are all touring this summer. We’ve got a couple slots open in our imaginary festival. Just putting that out there.

Craft Work

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

A chair, a bed, a pair of boots. His act of painting them was far nearer than that of any other painter to the carpenter’s or the shoemaker’s act of making them.

Note: John Berger’s short essay on Vincent Van Gogh can be found in Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, his final book. I’ve just read and enjoyed Joshua Sperling’s biography of Berger, A Writer of Our Time. If you’d like to dive deeper (and you should) start with Portraits.

Very small and damaged and quite dry,
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone

Note: The first stanza of Alice Oswald’s “Dunt: a poem for a dried up river.” In an interview in the current Paris Review, Oswald talks about finding the structure of poem. “There is still only one way a free poem can be, it’s just that you’ve got to keep tinging it until the tinging comes out right.”

A Change of the Seasons

Our Spring Edition tells the fortunate story of an American icon that is also a bit sad. The Memo Books are on press now and we’re in pre-production for the film that will accompany it and we can’t wait to share them with you. Consider joining the thousands of people who have signed up for a year-long subscription to our limited editions so you’ll be the first to get it, along with all the other benefits of being a subscriber.

Thanks for reading. I’m working on a fun contest for next month, cya then.

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, including occasional one-day-only offers, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 28th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email with comments, questions, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you. You can find recent Staple Days here.

Short Version: Spring and Fowl, Elemental, Deal, Pressing Issues, Commonplace, Bird from Malta, You and I.

In With the New

The new year’s calendar is coming together. We have the Spring Limited Edition heading to press shortly. It’s a beautiful package with a surprising and familiar theme. Aside from restocking just about everything after a crazy end of the year (thanks for that) we have two other products on press currently.

You won’t be surprised to hear we’re sponsoring The Tournament of Books again this year. For the first time, one of my recommendations to the ToB made it onto the short list, so I’ll be pulling for the The Director by Daniel Kehlmann. This year’s ToB Memo Book design is fun and sales will raise funds for the American Library Association’s Unite Against Book Bans program.

The other product in the works combines a really old, really sweet story, a linocut from a favorite Chicago artist, and a ton of scholarly research from Bryan. You’ll see that in a couple weeks.

Periodically, We Get Mail

“Color war is an annual tradition at my high school. My class had the potential to be the first ever to win three color wars across their tenure, so pressure was high.”

“Everyone began strategizing, figuring out which events they would best serve our team in. I typically participate in ‘the big moment,’ a head-to-head competition where students from each grade are given a mystery challenge to study for and then complete on stage, in front of the entire school. I didn't know what to expect, and was concerned when I was handed my task: recite the entire periodic table of elements, in order! My competitors turned to ChatGPT, or an earworm-y song. But I knew what I had to do: go analog.”

“This single Field Notes page was crammed with my various memorization tactics. The most effective is boxed in blue, where I clumped elements into groups of 2-5 in a row. On stage, I got over twice as far as my competitors, passing 60 consecutive elements before skipping two due to crowd pressure.”

“We won color war by 950 points, a 25% margin. And it was an incredibly collaborative effort. But my piece of the victory is partially yours, and I thought it was worth sharing.”

Congratulations to Pierce M. and the Class of 2026. As you might expect, we’re sending Pierce a “Group Eleven” Edition 3-Pack.

Ink, Paper, and Muscle

Here are the three finished posters we made with Nashville’s legendary letterpress shop, Hatch Show Print. After they printed them we cut them up to make the covers for our Fall 2022 Memo Books. Aside from a small number of packs on the Rarities Shelf at HQ, the “Hatch Show Print” Edition is now sold out.

Related: We sent Aaron Draplin to Hatch to document the process in our film, Rubbing Elbows with Ghosts.

Singular Perspectives

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

We are here on earth to fart around. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.

Note: It’s a lovely thing when one of your children discovers one of your favorite stories on her own, and then tells you about it. My daughter recently sent me a note to check out Kurt Vonnegut’s tale of heading out to buy a single envelope. Watch KV tell it himself in a 2004 lecture at Case Western University, the story starts around 24 minutes in. Also, the story originally appears in A Man Without a Country.

In unease the earth turned itself inside
out when its gravity fled. All of us
fell off the earth.

Note: Jim Harrison died on March 26, 2016. He was found at his writing desk with a notebook opened to this page, a draft of an untitled poem. For twenty years Joseph Bednarik served as Harrison’s poetry editor. He also made a pilgrimage to view the Harrison archives.

Blank First Page

We’re always happy to see a new episode of Lukas Grech’s video series about Field Notes and other stationery issues. He recently focused on our “1943” Edition which includes 2-Way Memo Books and the Field Notes Brand Books reprint of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

Note: Lukas was born and raised in Malta, so he probably knows the real story behind the Falcon and The Grand Master of the Order of St John.

Always in Love

Remember when we paired each member of Wilco with an exceptional artist, handed them all the same limited palette of colors, and let them improvise? Yeah, that was cool. Steve’s film rocks too.

And like pretty much everything Field Notes related, it came to you via Chicago. Talk to you soon.

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, including occasional one-day-only offers, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 27th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email with comments, questions, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you. You can find recent Staple Days here.

Short Version: 1943, Deal, Pod, J’Accuse, Mother Road, Wrap, Poetry & Prose, Chronological, 60642

Things were very busy for Black Friday-Cyber Monday. We have extra hands in the warehouse and are cranking the orders out. If yours hasn’t shipped just yet it will be on the way in the next couple days.

Over There

Thanks to our subscribers and everyone who has purchased our new “1943” Edition and The Field Notes Brand Books reissue of The Maltese Falcon in the format of the World War II Armed Service Editions. I’m frequently asked whether we worry that we’ll run out of new ideas for our limited editions. But really, there are unlimited ways to go. Look at it this way, it took us fifteen years and 69 releases to figure out we could put the staples on the short side of a memo book. For Rick Kogan’s piece about this release in the the Chicago Tribune we talked a little about that and I said that we don’t really worry about things, we just take it on faith that if we are curious about something and excited about the research and process, people like us will dig it too.

Talking Book

We started a new podcast to dive a little deeper into subjects that are best examined through conversation. I’m not sure how often we will record new episodes, but when we can bring new voices and expertise to a subject, we’ll take advantage of those opportunities.

By hosting a conversation between Kevin Guilfoile, who edited, and wrote the forward for our Field Notes Brand Books reissue of The Maltese Falcon, and Molly Manning, author of When Books Went to War, we could really get into the story of the Armed Services Editions that served as the inspiration for our “1943” Edition.

While setting things up we discovered that there are a bunch of podcasts with “Field Notes” in their title. None of them have anything to do with us, but it seemed wise to use a name that would be unique and easily searchable. You can find out more about and listen to the Staple Day Podcast at our site and subscribe to it on Apple, Spotify, and pretty much everywhere else.

Related: An excellent illustrated article by Jennifer Schuessler from 2023 on “pocket-size paperback weapons in the fight for democracy.”

Whodunnit

Our Wednesday Murder Club Memo Book, which we gave away as a gift-with-purchase in late October, contained a puzzle. The challenge was to identify the killer and the weapon used in a crime. Not many people got it right, and we randomly chose ten of them as prize winners.

The puzzle was created by Sandy Weisz and Mao Reynolds of The Mystery League. Sandy has explained how the whole the whole thing worked. Look at the photo at the top of his solution. The weapon seems obvious, and by now you know we had other plans for the murderer too.

Page 362

“Here is the diary of a book and it will be interesting to see how it works out.” June 1, 1938, John Steinbeck starts writing The Grapes of Wrath.

Martini Shot

While were were constructing a film set, and also a big mess at HQ, we shot a quick behind-the-scenes sequence about the making of Spade and Archer, our homage to the opening shot of the great 1941 film version of The Maltese Falcon. Like all of our films, this was produced and directed by Steve Delahoyde, and like most of them (and our notebooks) it was made using analog, practical methods.^†

Digging

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

Noli timere

Note: Poet Seamus Heaney texted this Latin phrase to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died in August of 2013. It translates as “Do not be afraid.” Ulta O Broin wrote about this in Multilingual Magazine back then. I’m thinking about Heaney this week while waiting for my copy of the new compendium of his work. The Poems of Seamus Heaney. Here’s a lovely review by Robert Pinsky.

A character “is making their case to you the reader, like they’re making their case before God, and while you might not agree with them, at least you get the world according to them.”

Note: Author Spencer Ackerman talking about his novel Sheepdogs. I was happy to see this wildly entertaining tale on the just-announced Long List for the 2026 Tournament of Books. If the ToB awarded its annual prize for “the novel that would make the greatest Coen Brothers movie,” Sheepdogs would be a shoo-in to take home the Rooster.

Clicking Through the Seasons

We needed a quick way to click through to the product page of any of our Quarterly Limited Editions, going back to 2009. So I put together a simple list and thought it might be handy for you too. To see what we add next to this roster, consider joining the thousands of people who have signed up for a year-long subscription.

In Person

A week from Saturday, December 13th, we’ll be hosting our annual Holiday Market at HQ in Chicago. It’s going to be a blast. Here are the details. Also, the Shop at HQ is open from 9-5 every weekday until 12/23. Hope to see you here soon.

Um, there’s a reason we selected the books we selected on the inside back cover of The Falcon. Drop me a note if you noticed that. TTY soon.

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

^†Field Notes is, and will always be, 100% A.I.-free. We proudly take full responsibility for our own hallucinations.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, including occasional one-day-only offers, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 26th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email with comments, questions, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: Deadline for Murder, Disarray, A Deal, Forensic Design, Writing for Home, Leads & Lists, Frank and Rembrandt and Jeff, Market at 401 North Racine.

Cracking the Case

A quick reminder to all the detectives out there working to solve the murder mystery contained in the Halloween memo books we gave away with every purchase made on Wednesday, October the 22nd. The deadline to submit your entry for a chance to win one of ten year-long subscriptions is Monday (11/17). While hundreds of folks have already entered, you still have a pretty good chance to win. Sandy and The Mystery League, who created the puzzle, don’t mess around, and as of this morning less than ten-percent of entries submitted have correctly identified the murderer and weapon. So, the game is still afoot.

HQ is a Mess

Carts of equipment are everywhere. Power tools and paint cans too. Furniture and rugs have been moved to inconvenient places and stacks of lumber are leaning against random walls. Nope. We’re not remodeling. We’re getting ready to spend way too much time and energy to produce a relatively small, but ambitious, film. You can see if we were successful next week, on November 20th, when we roll out our 69th Quarterly Limited Edition for the Winter of 2025. Oh, and there will be a podcast too.

At Once Enticing, Gratifying, and Satisfactory

“I always say ‘Vintage’ and ‘Modern’ are both great, but ‘Retro’ is usually a disappointing compromise. We try not to get nostalgic so much as learn from the past to make a useful, attractive, sort-of-hopefully-timeless product.”

Becca Quon chatted with Field Notes designer Bryan Bedell for the Northern Illinois University Council on Library and Information Resources about where we find inspiration and reference material when designing and researching our Quarterly Limited Editions, and specifically, how CLIR helped us create one our all-time favorites, the “Dime Novel” Edition in 2017. This discussion is particularly relevant to the production of our 2025 Winter Edition.

Focus on What’s Important

Pretty much every one of our products includes this line. “Tell us how you use your Field Notes. Please submit a scan or photo, accompanied by a brief description to pages@fieldnotesbrand.com.” We love getting these mails. Thanks to Braden for this one.

“I have a couple notebooks in which I’m currently writing down an entry each day when I think about my wife and son. I’m deployed and they are back home, on a completely different time zone, and we don’t get to talk much. So this helps me when I’m really missing them, I jot down my thoughts and keep my mind focused as much as possible. I love your products, and these are going to be very special ones. I have one for my son and one for my wife that I’m going to give to them once I get back home so they can read all my entries.”

All the Groceries that are Fit to Print

“Even if you’re not a reporter, the narrow width of the Field Notes Front Page Reporter’s Notebook is ideal for making lists or taking short notes.” Michael Hession, NYT/Wirecutter.

For the fifth year running, our Front Page has been named to The New York Times Wirecutter list of The Best Notebooks of 2025. While lots of folks in the press swear by our reinvented Reporter’s Notebooks we have noticed another very popular way they are being put to use. The tall, ruled, and easy-to-tear-out pages make them perfect for grocery lists. So, whether you’re chasing down leads on a big story or want to make sure you don’t forget the avocados, leave one on the kitchen counter.

One Point Perspective

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

I look | at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world | except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick | which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time

Note: I rediscovered Frank O’Hara’s lovely poem “Having a Coke with You” and saw Rembrandt’s Polish Rider at the Frick Museum a few weekends ago in NYC. In person, the painting is overwhelming, and you can walk a few steps to the right and find yourself standing in front of Rembrandt’s self portrait which was made just three years later. A memorable afternoon.

I get so far behind I forget I’m following
That’s the kind of sad I wallow in
I’m the last in line and the line’s moving fast
No one stands a chance getting caught up in the past

Note: Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override is in heavy rotation around my household. Here’s John Pareles on the record for the Times.

Holiday Market

Saturday, December 13th we’ll be hosting our annual Holiday Market at HQ in Chicago. (We should have the current mess cleaned by then.) We’ve invited a bunch of friends who make cool stuff to set up shop and we’ll have coffee, snacks and some other surprises too. It’s one day only this year, watch your mail for details.

Talk to you next week,

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, including occasional one-day-only offers, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 25th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: Redrum, Abracadabra, Sub Deal, Paper Flowers, Write-Only Memory, On a Whim, Developments, Pinned, Racine & Kinzie.

Most Foul

We’re working on a devious little project with our pals at The Mystery League. Sandy and company were the masterminds behind the puzzles in 2018’s “Clandestine” Edition, and the crazy-popular online puzzle hunt that accompanied it. Watch Deep Cover, for a recap on all that. You may have noticed that over the years we have gotten into the habit of announcing giveaways on Wednesdays. Nothing like that is happening today but next week does contain a Wednesday. Huh.

NOTE: The Mystery League has also created a great, daily word transformation game. It’s a blast. Give today’s Raddle a try.

Gaga

Hrishikesh Hirway, the host of Song Exploder, interviewed Lady Gaga about the making of her mega-hit “Abracadabra” for the 300th episode of the show. He told a lovely story about the experience on his blog and, lucky for us, Field Notes played a small part in it. Thanks for that.

The Art of the Fall

Coneflowers, Foxglove, and Chicory is the film that accompanies our current limited edition, the “Fall Flowers” Edition. Its hero is the intricate art of Laura Garcia, who fashions blooms from cut and folded paper. The voice-over is Tyler Meredith, whose sly and intimate interpretation really brought our copy to life.

Spring flowers get all the press.
Showy daffodils, lillies, tulips.
But it’s the fall flowers that do the hard work.
Combining forces with the maples and the birches
They stand as a rear guard to protect the retreat of summer
Coneflowers, foxglove, and chicory.
Like cut and colored paper.
Delicate, yet defiant.

Remembrance of Things Last

Based on a couple studies that I have cited in previous Staple Days, I’m trying a small trick to hopefully improve my memory. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology concluded that “intricate and precisely controlled handwriting movements have a beneficial impact on the brain’s connectivity patterns related to learning and remembering,” A Dartmouth study showed that “writing leads to higher rates of retention.”

Like many people, as I get older I find myself occasionally unable to recall a name, place, or title that I absolutely know. The forgotten noun (and for me, it’s always a noun) pops into my head in a few seconds or a minute later. The joke I make is that I must have that data stored on a bad sector of my brain’s hard drive. But since I’ll randomly forget the same name more than once, I think maybe the bad sector metaphor might be sort of valid.

As a fan of single-use notebooks, I’ve assigned one of our “Hatch Show Print” Memo Books to this task, and whenever I temporarily get stuck for a name or title, I write it down as soon as I recall it. My theory is that by doing so I'm adding it as fresh entry in my database. I’ve only made a handful of entries to date so it’s too early to draw any conclusions, but one benefit is that the list makes for a random poem of sorts. Anyhow, despite our Field Notes tag line, I guess I am writing it down to remember it later.

You Should Absolutely Buy That Stupid Thing

Advice from a recent post on John Birmingham’s Cheesburger Gothic, a “dive bar on the internet.” John is referring to our Memo Books, but we’re taking it as a compliment.

Things Develop Over Time

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“The events of our life are like photographic negatives. The few that make it into the developing solution and become photographs are what we call our memories.”

Note: From Janet Malcolm’s Still Pictures, a collection of essays in which she examines her past through a series a ordinary family photographs. Highly recommended.

“You could of said no and I could of not believed you.”

Note: This, from Raymond Chandler’s The Long Good-Bye, is one of dozens of examples cited by Stan Carey in his excellent essay and recent reconsideration on the topic of modal-of construction. When phrases like “would have” and “must have” are shortened to “would’ve” and “must’ve,” they become phonetically identical to “would of” and “must of,” resulting in hundreds of years of grammatical mistakes. Or, what Carey has come to see as, “a good example of language change – a natural, essential characteristic of a living language.” I should of known that.

Pinback Wizards

So you know, we’re down to the last couple hundred of the Busy Beaver Button 30th Anniversary 3-packs that we dropped last week.

1200 West and 400 North

Our 2025 Winter Edition and its related subscriber bonus item are both on press. It’s an ambitious undertaking and we’re planning on announcing that and the date of our Happy Hour Launch Party at HQ in a few weeks. Also, keep Saturday, December 13th open for our annual Holiday Market. Watch your mail for details.

Saturday & Sunday: We’re taking part in one of Chicago’s great fall traditions. Open House Chicago is this weekend, and we hope to see you at HQ for that. By the way, you might want to wish FN Co-Founder Aaron Draplin a happy birthday today.

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 24th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: All Hands, Big Days, Some Advantage, Flash Sale, River Bridge, And... Action, C’mon By.

Gang Activity

I write a lot of copy, headlines, film scripts, and of course, these newsletters. But Field Notes demands much more than any single writer can produce.^† For example, just about every edition we create includes 30-90 “Practical Applications,” a specific list of suggested uses for our notebooks that appears on the inside back cover. Including our Quarterly Releases, our regular line of products, and a whole slew of custom books we’ve made for various organizations and brands, I figure we’ve written somewhere north of 7,000 practical apps to date. The only way to keep that going is with the hive mind.

Bryan is usually the master of apps. He starts a shared spreadsheet and everybody pitches in. Then it’s a matter of curating the contributions to produce the final list. Copywriting by committee is employed in other situations too. For our “Dime Novel” Edition we wanted to include a list of “Other Publications” in the same way the Beadle Brothers promoted their own back catalog in the 1860s. The result was 177 titles, mostly inside jokes about Field Notes, written in the breathless, overheated style of the originals.

The reverse side of the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways Map, that was a subscriber bonus to accompany the the “Mile Marker” Edition, was also a collective wise-cracking project. It featured 28 panels completely jammed with useful, sorta useful, and some fun-but-not-at-all-useful information. Another example of us going on, and on, is the back of our yearly Workstation Calendars. Aaron started the tradition of including a list of “Big Days” on the back, and every year since Dawson has managed, and selected from, a growing database of important dates. Seriously, how else would you know that second of February is the anniversary of the 1874 issuance of a patent for Samuel Francis’ spork?

So You Know: As of this morning, our 2026 Workstation Calendar is available for purchase.

Our upcoming Fall Edition contains a list of seasonal Practical Apps, natch. Producing our 2025 Winter Edition and its related subscriber bonus item requires special attention and a ton of text. So, we brought in long-time co-conspirator, novelist Kevin Guilfoile, as editor-in-chief for the project. Start a subscription today. You won’t regret it.

A Troublesome Thing

“It is a troublesome thing for a lazy man to take notes, so I used to try in my young days to pack my impressions in my head. But that can’t be done satisfactorily, so I went from that to another stage – that of making notes in a note-book. But I jotted them down in so skeleton a form that they did not bring back to me what it was I wanted them to furnish. Having discovered that defect, I have mended my ways a good deal in this respect, but still my notes are inadequate. However, there may be some advantage to the reader in this, since in the absence of notes, imagination has often to supply the place of facts.” Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume I 1855-1873. Via Notebook Stories.

Overflow

Pam writes, “The Bestoff Sculpture Garden, at the New Orleans Museum of Art, has this beautiful bridge on their grounds. When we were there, I spent some time looking at the flow and the water below... Once again, Field Notes melds with my life!”

Note: The artist is Elyn Zimmerman and like us, and our collaborator Robert Macfarlane, she was inspired by the maps made by Harold Fisk in the 1940s. The project is titled Mississippi Meanders. It’s a lovely installation, and perfect for a city so deeply entwined with the Big River. If you haven’t yet, pick up a 3-pack, or start a subscription with, our current seasonal release, The “Is a River Alive?” Edition.

More Than One Direction

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“Exit, pursued by a bear.”

Note: On Saturday afternoon, I was fortunate to attend a performance of Shakepeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wisconsin. It was great and I enjoyed seeing Shana Cooper’s dramatization of the most famous stage direction in theatrical history. I’m pretty sure Antigonus did not feel the same way.

Related: Listen to actor David Tennant’s debut on Radio 4’s Just a Minute, a long-running game show in which the contestants are challenged to speak for one minute on a random subject without hesitation, deviation, or repetition.

“So the fact that there’s someone who’s planning what happens to the characters, writing it down, means that the characters always have a fate. And when we think about fate, we tend think of it as the thing we would have if we were literary characters, that is, if there were somebody out there, writing us.”

Note: From a Guernica Magazine interview with Daniel Kehlmann. His novel, The Director, is my favorite book of the year. I hope to see it in the 2026 Tournament of Books.

Around the Big Table

A heads up on future events at HQ so you can plan a visit.

Our Fall Limited Edition will be announced in a couple weeks and we’ll be hosting a Launch Party Happy Hour at HQ from 4-7 on Thursday, September 25th. We’re taking part in one of the the city’s great fall traditions, Open House Chicago, on October 18 and 19. Our annual Holiday Market at HQ will be the weekend of December 13th. Looking forward to seeing you.

Thanks to everyone who bought a Mystery Box last month and especially those of you who shared your unboxing online. That was fun and maybe we’ll do it again sometime. We’d appreciate it if you’d consider joining the thousands of year-long Field Notes subscribers. As always, for our Fall release, sub shipments go first.

Spoiler alert. Maybe you missed this on Insta yesterday.

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

^† Field Notes is, and will always be, 100% A.I.-free. We proudly take full responsibility for our own hallucinations.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 23rd monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: 50, Noted, Mystery, Independents’ Day, Mapping Time, Commonplace, Mid-Step, Relics.

Back When We Were Fifty

To celebrate our 50th Quarterly Limited Edition in 2021 we created an “Anniversary Desk Ledger.” This was just about the most complicated (and most fun) thing we’ve ever made. The book features six 16-page signatures with an exposed binding Smyth-sewn with silver and black thread. The first signature contains carefully die-cut pages of various French Paper colored paper stocks from past editions. A “By the Numbers” section indexes a slew of facts, trivia, and wisecracking. Next is an essay about the Quarterly Editions series, and then six “Top Ten” lists and a checklist to track your collection.

Initially, the physical “Desk Ledger” was a exclusive gift for subscribers who received the “Fifty” Edition as one of their subscription shipments. Currently, when folks sign up for The List (to receive these Staple Day mailings and other announcements) we send them a link to download a free digitial version of the Desk Ledger. It occurred to me that many of you have been on our Mail List for, like, ever. We appreciate that and if you’re interested, here’s the link to download that file.

This is The Way

In the late 1950s, longtime education professor Walter Pauk developed a method for taking lecture or reading notes. Known as “The Cornell Way,” his system helps clarify meanings, reveal relationships, establish continuity, and strengthen memory. It’s the simple act of dividing a page into three sections for notes, questions, and a summary that leads to the deeper understanding and greater retention of the material. Maybe we should make some lecture-specific note books?

The Staff Recommends

Let’s try out a new Staple Day feature in which we will periodically profile an independent book store. I’ll go first. It would be great if you’d like to nominate one to be included in the future. Email me a link and a few sentences about what your favorite shop means to you.

Note: Your store doesn’t have to carry Field Notes to be nominated, but if they don’t, you can be sure that the FN Crew is going to reach out to them.

A couple weeks ago I was in San Francisco to visit family and 180,000 other friends. One day we took a drive, wound up in Point Reyes Station, and stumbled into Point Reyes Books. I saw a guy methodically straightening the stacks, so I said hello and met Stephen Sparks, who owns the store with his wife Molly Parent. It’s a bright, welcoming spot that the SF Chronicle called “the platonic ideal of a modern indie bookstore.” We immediately hit it off when we started talking about Robert Macfarlane and Is a River Alive? See this profile in Alta for more about that. I’m proud to say they’re a long-time FN retailer.

Maps for Getting Lost

I’m always excited to quote a real, honest-to-goodness, personal blog, including this one. Here’s Nancy from Thoughts from the Back on Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive?, our current Limited Edition, and the related, incredible maps made by Harold Fisk in the 1940s.

“Above are images of three of the map panels, courtesy of Field Notes (to whom I subscribed to a year’s worth of notebooks that I DO NOT NEED, just so I could get these three pictures and a mini-poster.) I love them. I want them as wallpaper somewhere in my house. I want to find them on display somewhere so I can spend hours staring at them. Making these personally meaningful to me, in the middle panel above is False River, an oxbow lake in Louisiana where my mother-in-law grew up and several members of her family still own property and live ‘on the island.’”

One Point Perspective

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

“In the same way that a river begins far before we meet it, I imagine this music starting long before I play the first note; I just have to join it.”

Note: Yo-Yo Ma plays Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, live from a glade in the Smoky Mountains. Sublime.

“I tell him I am proud of his genius for construction, but he says he has no genius for anything, he just never knows when he is beaten.”

Note: I recently re-read Wallace Stegner’s great novel, Angle of Repose and found it a very different book from the one I read years ago. I remember finding Lyman Ward, the protagonist, admirable but cranky and stuck in his ways. Now he seems less sure of himself, maybe even vulnerable. I guess that says as much about me as it does about him. In an interview Stegner said, “When I get through a book that involves some aspects of my own experience... I often don’t know myself what I invented and what I didn’t.”

The Gray and the Rain

In last month’s SD, as an aside, I posted a link to one of my favorite photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson. That got a reader’s attention and inspired a poem. Thanks for sharing Jason.

Also, an Excuse to Buy Cool Old Stuff

This is the original 1860’s Beadle Brothers Dime Novel that we purchased and used as a production and design reference while creating our limited edition of the same name in 2017.

Similarly, research into the origins of the American postcard industry sent us deep in the stacks at Chicago’s Newberry Library on a hunt for information and inspiration for the subscriber bonus postcard sets that accompanied 2022’s “Great Lakes” Edition.

We love exploring relatively obscure chapters in the history of American publishing, design, and printing, and then translating them into modern products that can tell their own story.

Later this year, our Winter Limited edition, along with a very special subscriber bonus item, will tell such a tale.

Now would be a very good time to start a year-long subscription. Our Fall release just went to press, and while it’s completely different than Winter, we’re pretty sure you’ll dig that one too. Good luck with the Mystery Boxes. Talk to you next month.

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 22nd monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: FNFF, Over Iowa, Boxing, Paint By Numbers, Used & Abused, Personal Space, Various.

An Evening at The Music Box

Thanks a million to everyone who came out for our film festival and filled up the Chicago’s premier movie house a couple Mondays ago. We really didn’t know what to expect and to be honest, we were a bit nervous about the whole thing. But after Aaron warmed up the audience and the silly gag at the end of the first film got a big laugh, we could take a deep breath and enjoy it. It was great to see everyone and we appreciate all the posts and pics. Who knows? Maybe we’ll do it again some day, or take it to another city. What do you think?

Contest: Attendees received a custom letterpress-printed FNFF 2-Pack and we have few of those left. So here’s a chance for Staple Day readers to win one. Send an email to pages@fieldnotesbrand.com with FNFF in the subject line and include a favorite quote from one of our films. We’ll select fifty entries and send those folks a festival 2-Pack.

Commencing Countdown

We were asked a couple times about this description in our film festival program, “Three Field Notes Memo Books have been to space; the two we launched for this film and one we can’t talk about.”

Our “Three Missions” Edition from 2018 celebrated American space flight. We thought it would be fun to organize a launch of our own in order to capture a key shot for the film about the release. To achieve this we decided to mount a “Punch-Out and Assemble” Apollo Crew Capsule (which came with the 3-Packs) to a rod. Connect that rod to a box containing a camera and GPS tracking unit. Attach the box to a parachute and a big weather balloon filled with helium, and then send the whole rig up into the sky. Easy, right?

Bryan told the story of two of the space flights in this Dispatch, Small Steps and Giant Leaps. Mum’s the word on the third.

True to the Blobbiness

This film, “A Six Tone Scale,” didn’t make it into the festival, only because it’s not specifically about Field Notes. It documents the creation of a 12 x 8 foot mural that we commissioned for our HQ in Chicago. We had long-admired the dynamism of a painting that once hung on the north side of the Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of Commerce, on Ashland Avenue. When we moved into our new studio space, we decided to track down who was responsible, with the idea of doing something similar for our main work space. Thankfully, the artists, Gwendolyn Zabicki and Kent Smith, were up for the idea, and also for us filming them while they painted.

Fresh from the Brain

While we were in Clear Creek Canyon in the Rocky Mountains with author Robert Macfarlane, discussing Is a River Alive?, he took a few minutes to show us the Field Notes he used while researching the book. Watch that chat here. We’re always interested in how our note books are used and where they’ve been and with Robert, they have been all over (and under) the world. The “Is a River Alive?” Edition is the second time we have worked with Robert and artist Stanley Donwood. In 2021 we collaborated on a release to accompany his previous and amazing book, Underland.

A Fine and Private Place

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

It’s funny, when I took this studio ... I thought it was tiny ... But the longer I stayed, the bigger it became. I could fit anything I wanted into it.

Note: Sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti worked in the same twenty-three square meter studio in Paris for forty years. Ernst Scheidegger made beautiful photographs of the space which illustrate a feature at The Tate. Also, I love Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Giacometti Going Out for Breakfast, Paris 1963.

“It wasn’t that I was happy — but that I was okay. And okay was even better than happy because I thought it had a better chance of lasting... Okay is underrated.”

Note: When you read Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness, somehow, right from the first chapter, and completely without your permission, you are transformed into the narrator. Amazing.

Miscellany

Thanks to GareTheBear for reviewing everything BUT the note books. And to Elissa Sanci at Wirecutter for getting her ideas out of her head (and her face out of her phone).

For the balance of the summer, HQ is open Monday through Thursday for local pick ups and The Shop is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9-5. Come see us when you’re in Chicago.

We’re currently working on a couple fun collaborations, with old and new friends, and putting our Fall and Winter limited editions together. Now would be a good time to start a year-long subscription.

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 21st monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: Fast Co, This Monday, Riverrun, Box it Up, Grads, Johannes & Frank, Next.

Seasonal Effective Order

Aaron Draplin and I sat down for a really fun interview about Field Notes with Zac Petit for Fast Company. It was just published yesterday. My mom would definitely have had something to say about me dropping an f-bomb in a national magazine. I don’t doubt I said it, but I am a little surprised they printed it. To be fair though, it does accurately convey our excitement about the 2010 event we were discussing.

Doing a little research for background material for the piece, I came up with this. Since we started our subscription service and quarterly limited releases, we have made 67 seasonal editions. Seven of those are still currently in stock. Five have been adapted to become part of our regular line of products. In order: Expedition, Front Page, National Parks, Heavy Duty, and The Birds and Trees of North America. The other 55 editions are sold out, never to be re-issued. And, just totaling up the original print runs for the 67 editions, we have produced well north of five million note books.

Since 2010, we also have made a film for just about every release and some of those are what we’re screening this coming...

Monday, Monday

If you’re in the area or can get here quick, on Monday, June 23rd at 7pm, join us for a screening of selected films at the first, and likely only, Field Notes Film Festival at Chicago’s incomparable Music Box Theatre. Tickets are $35 and include admission, plus one of just 700 special Festival 2-Packs, each hand-letterpressed by the Field Notes crew. Tickets available via Eventbrite.

Pregame: FN co-founder Aaron Draplin will be here for the festival and HQ in Chicago will be open to everyone on Monday the 23rd from 10am to 3pm. Come on by to say hello, pick up some merch, and browse the Rarities Shelf.

Meandering

Our current Quarterly Limited Edition was created with artist Stanley Donwood and author Robert Macfarlane, whose book, Is a River Alive? features Donwood’s cover art, which was inspired by 1940s maps of the historical course of the Mississippi River, created by surveyor and cartographer Harold Fisk. Field Notes subscribers are also receiving a Fisk Map reproduction with their summer shipment. Here’s a passage from the book.

Fisk “had found a means of representing in a single image the many past lives of this huge and wilful river. He had mapped the Mississippi’s memories.”

“Fisk’s fifteen plates, tracking the meander plain contiguously from north to south, are works of art. In them, the Mississippi comes to life: rising like mating snakes, writhing with river ghosts. Seen in Fisk’s catographic imagination, plotted colourfully across both time and space, the Mississippi becomes an itinerant, wandering being.”

Tangentially Related: Watch this excellent video from Practical Engineering on the unintended consequences of trying to control the course of rivers.

Pomp and Circumstance

In the spring we frequently get mail inviting us to weddings where our notebooks are used for writing vows, or as wedding-party gifts, or even to indicate seating assignments. Then, in early summer we always get a slew of graduation announcements from students who have used Field Notes in their studies. Like so.

“I’m proud to share my law school graduation with you. Through lectures, court observations, and moments of sudden inspiration (or complete panic), my Field Notes were never far from reach. They captured half-baked arguments, quotes from professors, and the occasional existential crisis scribbled in the margins.”

“In a world full of distractions, there’s something grounding about putting pen to paper. Those little note books held the chaos together. Thanks for being a constant companion on my journey.” Thanks for sending a handwritten (natch) note Kimberly A., now also J.D..

Time, Water, Sunshine

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. I’m using a “Dime Novel” for the task. Here are a couple recent entries.

“In front of a Vermeer woman exactly turning her head, reading a letter, pouring milk, trying on a necklace in a mirror, raising a glass, we become aware of the flow of time itself. That is why the light seems like water.”

Note: From John Berger’s Selected Essays from 1966. Also, if you’ve never watched it, Berger’s BBC series, “Ways of Seeing,” is a good place get aquainted with his work. Also, his other collection, Portraits, is available in a beautiful edition from Verso Press.

“I talk to the sun when I need sun. I talk to the clouds when I need clouds, and the rain, and the moon and the stars, I talk to all of Mother Nature’s creations. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least they know my intentions.” —Farmer Frank

Note: Filmmaker Megan Sweeney of Big Heart Films, reached out to us a while back and shared a rough cut of a sequence from a documentary she is working on. One thing led to another and we’re helping to finance her post-production work. Here’s the trailer for Talking to the Sun, which she describes as “a short documentary of astronomical proportions.”

Onwards

We’re working on our Fall and Winter limited editions. The more we learn about the story behind the Winter release, the more we can’t believe that we had never heard anything about it at all. That’s thanks to FN Designer Casey Rheault, who, on one of his first days at HQ, casually asked Bryan and I, “Have you ever seen one of these?” You will be very happy to already be a year-long subscriber when that one rolls around.

As usual, we’re taking Fridays off between Memorial Day and Labor Day. A note to other bosses; The secret is that we don’t work 25% harder or longer Monday through Thursday to make 4-day weeks successful, we just screw around 25% less. Cheers,

---

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.