The act of writing just feels more pure, more revelatory, when using a moleskine. Combined with my love of travel, I’m excited about the new Moleskine City Notebooks. Convergence of the travel notebook and map/guidebook that just makes sense. I have always wished Lonely Planet or Rough guides provided larger spaces in the margins or blank pages for writing notes, for correcting the inevitable mistakes or highlighting odd recommendations (touring Alaska gave me an entirely different perspective on using Lonely Planet and similar guidebooks, a tale for another time).

I made the switch to the small moleskine notebooks for travel notes after testing an array of notebooks and strategies. Using a clip and loose sheets of paper is suprisingly effective, yet the user experience of a moleskine simply lends a greater weight to one’s words. It’s not just the history of moleskine, the dedicated souls such as Hemingway, Picasso, Van Gogh that used moleskines for the notes and sketches that became masterpieces of culture. The size, feel, texture, sturdiness, paper weight, line size, binding… all are key to finding the right medium for your words. Quality does breed quality.