Starting back in 2012, Field Notes has created a unique memo book for every XOXO Conference, an experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online. Each year, XOXO has brought together writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, game developers, coders, cartoonists, and more to share their stories and struggles in Portland, Oregon.   

After a five-year hiatus, both the festival and the Field Notes limited edition 3-Packs are back for one final time.

After starting with a few bright-colored covers and a tribute to mistakes, our last several XOXO memo books included work from XOXO-affiliated artists such as Brendan Monroe, Shawna X, Maja Dlugolecki, and Mark Weaver.

This year’s books were created from a cyanotype captured by Ellen Wilde. A cyanotype is created by treating a surface with a UVA-sensitive chemical, exposing it to light, and developing/fixing it in water, resulting in a blue-and-white negative image. It’s the same process used in grade-school “Sun Print” kits, or architectural blueprints. In this case, Wilde treated a large swatch of treated fabric to capture the light coming through a pair of oak trees outside Portland, Oregon’s Washington High School. The 2024 festival events will be held at various venues within the former school.

Wilde sent us a scan of the fabric, suggesting we use it across the full 25"×38" press sheet to make 18 different covers, and that’s exactly what we did. The covers are printed as a duotone on Sappi McCoy 100# matte cover stock, using two blue inks. The inside cover features the same portion of the image, flipped and ghosted.

The books feature 48 pages of Domtar Lynx 60# opaque text stock, printed with a light-blue graph grid. They’re bound with three silver staples and sold in 3-Packs.