The origins of the Day of the Dead can be traced back to pre-Hispanic cultures in Mexico. The holiday was originally a two-day festival that marked the beginning and end of the agricultural year. The festival was celebrated with feasts, music, and dancing, and it was believed that during this time, the spirits of deceased loved ones would visit their families.
Over time, Catholic missionaries began to convert indigenous people to Christianity, and the Day of the Dead began to incorporate elements of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. These Christian holidays were celebrated on November 1st and 2nd, and they were used to honor the saints and the souls of the deceased. The indigenous people of Mexico blended these Christian traditions with their own, and the Day of the Dead gradually developed into the holiday that we know today.
One of the most recognizable traditions of the Day of the Dead is the use of sugar skulls. Sugar skulls are handmade candy skulls that are often decorated with bright colors and patterns. They are used to represent deceased loved ones, and they are often given as gifts or placed on altars as offerings.
Another popular tradition is the building of altars, or ofrendas, to honor deceased loved ones. These altars can be simple or elaborate, and they are often decorated with flowers, photos, and favorite foods and possessions of the deceased. Altars are typically placed in homes or cemeteries, and they serve as a way to welcome the spirits of the dead back to the world of the living.
Traditional Day of the Dead foods also play an important role in the holiday. Foods such as pan de muerto (bread of the dead), tamales, mole, and atole are often prepared and eaten during this time. These foods are often used as offerings on altars, or they may be served to guests who come to visit during the holiday.
In addition to its rich history and traditions, the Day of the Dead also has its own unique culture. This is evident in the way that the holiday is celebrated, as well as in the art, music, and dance that are associated with it.
The Day of the Dead is often celebrated with lively parties and parades. People dress up in costumes, paint their faces like skulls, and dance to traditional music. Families also visit cemeteries to clean gravesites and place flowers on tombstones. These activities help to bring loved ones who have passed away back into the lives of those who are still living.
The art, music, and dance of the Day of the Dead are also deeply rooted in Mexican culture. Traditional sugar skull designs often incorporate brightly colored flowers and patterns. Day of the Dead music is typically upbeat and festive, and often features traditional instruments such as mariachi bands. The dance of the Day of the Dead, known as the danza de los muertos, is a lively dance that is often performed in costumes.
The Day of the Dead is a holiday with a rich history and many unique traditions. From sugar skulls to traditional foods, there are many aspects to this festive holiday that make it special and memorable. Whether you are celebrating the life of a loved one or simply enjoying the festivities, Dia de los Muertos is a holiday that is sure to leave a lasting impression.
]]>Any notebooks bought between Monday 4th April and Wednesday the 5th May will not be sent for delivery until the 6th May while we take a break from the workshop for the first time in 3 years.
Get your orders in now to avoid any delays, and we will re-annouce when the orders are shipping again.
]]>The Dia de los Muertos skull, or commonly known as a Sugar Skull/Day of the Dead Skull/that skull thing from the film Coco, is a wonderful colourful piece of art that anyone can draw.
The day of the dead falls so close to Halloween that you can probably get away with getting these decorations up now and double up on their enjoyment.
The reason I'm writing this quick post is because my little boy Noah showed me this tutorial while he was doing his almost-daily drawing process using Art for Kids Hub.
For those of you that haven't come across the Art for Kids Hub channel (and with 3.25 million subscribers I'll be surprised if you haven't), it's a very charismatic guy who partners up with a younger kid each week to draw something. They use a sheet of paper and a sharpie and he goes through each step of the drawing using basic shapes. The young child with them follows along and you can see how each of the drawings develop side by side.
Noah, who turned 7 in September, has been doing these since the UK went into lockdown in March and the schools first closed. We have literally hundreds of drawings in the house now, many of which are done across the pocket notebooks he keeps "borrowing" from our home studio.
Below is the tutorial that we will both be following together this weekend.
But what about if you're more of a digital drawing person? Well I've got you covered too.
I'm a huge fan on the Art with Flo You Tube channel in which Flo takes you through a bunch of different tutorials to provide you with the foundation you need to create amazing art using procreate.
See the tutorial below on how to draw the sugar skull for the Day of the Dead.
You might be wondering why a notebook business spends time looking at the creation of content on a digital product like the ipad, but the truth is this is where 90% of our products are developed (the others like our Coffee Cup Notebooks and 27 Club notebooks are illustrated by hand through some of our favourite artists).
We do of course use our own notebooks in the development of the initial ideas and scribbling sketches, but the final artwork is done digitally (these days on the ipad with Procreate, but previously on a mac with Illustrator).
With the release of the Disney Pixar film Coco the Day of the Dead Sugar Skull design reached an even more mainstream audience. We even came across two amazing prints from artist Stacey Aoyama which you can see below.
If you haven't seen the movie, that's another thing you can do this month in the lead up too.
Of course, you can also pick yourself up a Day of the Dead Notebook to do all these drawings as well.
]]>The decision you make about what you put on the inside pages of your notebooks can make or break a sale, and even a life time customer.
The obvious options are
We decided to go with a really light cool grey dash grid for our inner pages because it's the exact kind of inner page paper that I wanted to use and, let's face it, if I'm going to be left with thousands of unsold notebooks I should at least enjoy them (fortunately that didn't happen).
The dash grid is light enough for me to ignore it completely when I'm sketching landscapes, but provides me with with some structure when I'm sketching the layout of a website module.
The extra tiny dash also gives me the starter for drawing grid lines when I need them, and keeps me a little more balanced when I'm writing content. It also got away from every other notebook using dot grid lines, a point of difference if you were.
This point of difference doesn't define back pocket notebooks though, we also went with a much lighter colour for the dash grid and for anyone that has used one of our notebooks you will agree that it really all comes down to the paper.
]]>As someone who loves science, which can be seen through some of our space notebooks range, I loved the elemental notebooks and their journey through all the elements in the periodic table.
The design of the notebooks were really clever too, with the atomic element shown like the solar system on the front page (Bohr model), and the best part was the way in which they printed the outside edge of the pages.
Every element has it’s own emission spectrum, and these are printed on the edge of the paper so that you can see them when the notebook is closed. It’s such a beautifully designed touch.
We wish the team at Elemental Paper all the luck in their future endeavours, and hope to see them producing more sciency stuff sometime in the future.
]]>I thought now is as good a time as any to go through some of the uses you can have for notebooks while we're all under lock-down.
Finally, depending where you are you can always use them for toilet paper in an absolute pinch, although I'd suggest that the paper is far too nice for that area and the risk of paper cuts.... OUCH!
How are you using your notebooks during quarantine?
]]>Aside from donating money to various causes in Australia I wanted Back Pocket Notebooks to provide additional help through both awareness raising and donations.
These illustrations tell a harrowing tale of the awful conditions which the helpless Australian wildlife have faced. The should act as a reminder that what we are doing today has a significant impact on the worlds environment, and it's not always us that will suffer the immediate effects.
Back Pocket are donating all profits from the sales of these notebooks to the WWF Bushfire fund that will help:
We will be producing these notebooks in the UK as well as in Australia and will be working with our paper manufacturers and print family to lower the cost of producing the notebooks to maximise the donations.
Along with the image on the promp list we'll also include an ordered list for those of you that prefer a copy and paste (or rely on speech rather than sight). As the month goes on I'll like out to the one's that we do, ideall as other blog posts but they might just be links to Instagram.
Let's see the list!
Good luck to everyone that is taking part!
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Trying a new notebook (swipe, swipe! ⬅️) BackPocket notebooks are somewhat under the radar. There were positive reviews by @gourmetpens and other stationery connoisseurs, but we don’t see much of BackPocket stuff around. Got a three-pack from @cultpens, and now, I can wholeheartedly recommend these notebooks to anyone who’s in the market for a reliable EDC. 120gsm paper is almost bulletproof and very pleasant to write on. Ink appears a bit chalky (and I love it). Smart unobtrusive grid. Solid cover. Lies flat. No affiliation with BackPocket or Cult Pens - just a very happy customer. Pen: Lotus Vikrant Honeydew Celluloid B. Ink: Diamine Autumn Oak
See the review from Instagram blow.
We are always on the look out for artists to take our Kraft Notebooks for a spin as well. In the paset we've had some very talented UK based artists work their magic inside and outside the books, and we recently went all the way to other side of the world and ended up collaborating on our 27 Club Covers with @uniquelab. If you would like to be the next artist to try out please get in touch with why and we'll get the ball rolling.
]]>We've been busy churning along over here at Back Pocket headquarters and I realised that we've been so busy without letting you know what has been going on.
Shame on me.
Well, over the next couple of weeks I'm going to (try) and post here on a bit more of a regular basis. We'll be putting up some amazing content that we've come acorss from our Stationery friends, giving you the inside scoop on some of our latest sets of notebooks, and taking you on the a couple of stationery walks around London ( thanks to some of our old friends who are doing a series themselves... but credit will be given of course).
Before I go here are a few pictures coming from one of our next articles (and likely a new set of notebooks) around Sir Isaac Newton.
]]>I've been toiling away over the Christmas Holidays and have the final boxes ready for the Solar System Set of notebooks.
For those of you that might not have been around since the beginning I'll give you a reminder about what these notebooks are and when the idea arrived.
Shortly after the success of the SpaceX Notebooks I wanted to do more space themed items and the Solar System Notebook set idea was conceived. I created the Sun notebook to start with, almost entirely yellow with just a hint of the Sun's outer edge running along the front edge of the notebook.
The rest of the planets were then created to scale based on the size/diameter of the Sun notebook, and on the inside of each of the notebooks contain facts about that particular celestial body and it's reference to Earth (again, for scale).
These notebooks are done now, but it was really hard to put them into a container/belly wraps to put on the shelves and send to folks like yourself. I then embarked on finding something that would contain them as a product, but something that would also be kept for more uses afterwards (I hate waste).
The journey for packaging has taken a lot long than I had anticipated, but I'm happy to say they're almost ready to go out now.
To celebrate this I'm going to add another little touch to the set of notebooks, and that is to include some markers for each of the planets which will then allow you to compare the size of the planets next to each other, but this time via Augmented Reality.
I'm really excited at how they're going to look alongside the existing layouts of the notebooks that you can also see below (although please note that Saturn and Uranus are not to scale in those trial versions, the planet was sized but included the width of the rings in the scale which means they are much bigger in the final version).
If you want to be one of the first to get your own set then make sure you subscribe to these blog updates, and follow us socially on @backpocketco everywhere.
]]>For the past 9 years Jake Parker has been running Inktober as a way to improve his own drawing skills. He sets out a list of prompts for 31 days and encourages everyone to pick up a pen or pencil and start drawing.
The prompts for this year include:
The prompt list for the 2018 Inktober includes:
So far we've added the following to our growing list
]]>I was delighted to see that Tommy Morton had not only just purchased our set of Night Sky notebooks, but he then made a cover to hold them in.
These are one of my favourite types of pocket notebook covers for a few reasons.
If you're looking for your very own set of leather notebook covers then you can pick yourself one up from Tommy's Etsy store. I'm going to work with Tommy over the next few months to see if there's a couple changes I can make and then get a few listed on this site as well.
Here are some more pictures....
]]>The short story, we’re not.
At least not in the way that you might expect.
AVERY is a company that has been around for a long time and there is every chance that you will have purchased a set of their famous AVERY labels, and if not you can be sure you’ve received something that was using an AVERY label.
So what is Back Pocket’s link to AVERY? Why is this even an article?
Well, I get a report each week to detail how this site is performing on search engines, mainly Google. The report tells me what terms are being used to find us, and where we are ranking for those terms.
One of the terms it seems people have been using are AVERY Notebooks, and recently I’ve been getting emails asking why our range of pocket notebooks can not be found on the AVERY site.
The only link is that my surname happens to be Avery, and that appears on most of the pages in the site (although my first name is Justin and I don’t get a bunch of Bieber fans asking for Bieber Notebooks)
So there you go, while Back Pocket is heavily/entirely associated with Justin Avery, it has nothing to do with AVERY labels (although we do use them for printing postage stickers when we send you the notebooks you buy).
]]>
One of my favourite ways to procrastinate while I should be working on our pocket notebooks is to click through the pages of Kick Starter.
I've backed a number of projects in the past, usually ones that are something space related with the latest ones being a set glass spheres of the Milky Way and Universe...
During the week I spend a bit of time on twitter and navigating the web and this new site which is a parody of Kick Starter stood out.
Flop Starter is a platform of terrible ideas and allows you to submit your own idea as well (chocolate tea pot anyone?). There's ideas for potato skin jackets, 1D printer, coconut shampoo for your coconuts.... it's nuts.
One of my favourite ideas from the list is an authentic mole skin notebook made from the skin of real moles.
Pretty gross.
Now we don't condone the harm of any Moles, we find them incredibly sweet and cuddly (although quite annoying on the cricket oval or golf course), but I do like the puns on the site.
You never know, maybe we'll make a set of pocket notebooks made out of old pant back pockets..... there's a flop starter idea if I've ever heard one.
]]>We had some fantastic news the other week.
Back Pocket Notebooks have been selected as one of the winners of the Launch Pad competition and invited to the London Stationery Show to showcase our awesome notebooks.
If you're going to be at the show (it's free) feel free to come and say hello, we'll be on stand GL827, and take a look at some of the new range of notebooks we're unveiling as part of the show.
The new sets of pocket notebooks include:
Here are some previews....
The most popular of the notebooks will go into a larger production, which is your favourite?
]]>I’ve attended a couple of the Beyond Tellerrand Conferences in Dusseldorf in the past and it is hands down my favourite conference. The very first time I attended the conference there was a feeling of returning back home to comfortable surroundings and conversations with good friends, a feeling which is quite unique when it comes to attending conferences.
Marc, the sole organiser, does a wonderful job of making everyone feel welcome and at home, and his easy going approach to things seems to rub off on all of the attendee’s as well making it the easiest place to make new friends.
This year I had the additional pleasure of working with Marc to design and print a Conference notebook that would given out as part of the swag bag for all of the attendee’s.
Initially, I sent Marc a few mockup ideas for the pocket notebooks that we could print onto either the Plain Kraft or Accent Antique you find on our existing products. These mock ideas were based on some of the previous artwork that had been produced for the conference.
At this point I was also looking at a new product that had been produced by GF Smith, Extract paper.
Extract paper is a beautiful stock that is produced by recycling some of the 7 million disposable coffee cups used in UK every day (the ones you find in Costa, Nero’s, Starbucks). The paper comes in 180 and 380gsm weight and a range of different colours.
The manufacturing costs of this paper stock is higher because of the process that it needs to go through.
While it was more expensive than the other options… it feels incredible and is great for the environment.
I had also recently come across an example of black foiling printed on black paper and thought that it would be an interesting subtle — yet gorgeous — way to produce these conference notebooks.
While more expensive, in my heart I knew that it was going to deliver the best results.
Before I was going to lock in more expensive option I wanted to see what else we could do if we had to stick to a budget.
As a lower cost alternative we looked at the option of going with the Kraft paper covers, the same as our Plain Kraft Notebooks, and we made a couple of mockups on how that might look with the plain Beyond Tellerrand logo on the front.
When reviewing these versions of the conference notebooks, Marc asked if we could make it feel more homely, a little more raw and handmade. We added a bit of texture to the Beyond Tellerrand logo and washed out the blacks a little more to give it a worn look
The desire for Marc to make it feel a little more handmade or personalised drew me back again to think of ways to bring in the black extract covers and the foiling, but in a way that could save some budget.
One of the ways in which you can make an expensive print run more affordable is to simply print more. There is a certain amount of paper, ink, and effort that goes into setting up a lithograph print job. The first 50 or so sheets that go through the printing press are discarded while the printers work towards getting the best possible print. That’s 50 sheets if you’re going to print 500 notebooks, or 50 sheets if you’re going to print 1500 notebooks.
I wasn’t able to magically increase the number of attendee’s to the Munich BT conference to 1500, but what I could do is design a notebook that could be personalised for each conference, but still be printed in a single cost saving run.
We ended up designing the conference notebooks so that they could be used across all three Beyond Tellerrand conferences allowing the per cost of the the notebook to come down while still allowing for the personalised touch for Munich, Dusseldorf, and Berlin.
This allowed me to tick the Munich option for each of the 500 conference notebooks and one or more of the “I attended, talked or helped out” options.
There are occasions when you want to approach conference swag with he idea to cut a few corners to save on costs and maximise profits when it comes to ticket sales or sponsorship offers, but in this case it was all about delivering something of amazing quality that wouldn’t simply be discarded on a table or in the bin when you unpacked your bag after getting home from the conference.
The response from Marc and the speakers was fantastic with everyone loving their customised sets. The attendees’ I spoke with were impressed, but more importantly there were no notebooks discarded and the extra copies were quick to be snapped up.
Take a look at the final result:
IIf you like what you see and have an idea that you would like us to help you with please get in touch.
]]>Nintendo have outdone themselves again and continued to show that they’re all about fun and play first and foremost with their unveiling of the Nintendo Labo, a cardboard physical extension to their Switch console.
Ever since a trip to the Adobe Creative Conference last year where I came across the International Paper booth I’ve been looking to do something a little more with paper.
The booth had a series of A3 sheets that were printed and precut in a way that you could fold and piece together a little robot. There were 5 kinds of robots - one for each of the CMYK colours and another as “Printer Marks”. They had an accompanying app which created an Augmented Reality experience where the robot spoke to you and explained about the colour and paper.... very clever.
I've been looking at whether the covers or an insert could be created to do something similar, but at the moment it’s proving difficult to get something substantial out of a pocket sized product.
Nintendo, however, are REALLY coming to the party with these cardboard creations that allow you to create a piano, robots, fishing rod, and other curious tools to extend an electronic game into the physical space.
We will continue to explore this as well and hope to have something ready for you to fold and build in the next couple sets of pocket notebooks.
]]>
One of my earliest memories from primary school was an Art class with the year 7’s.We were each partnered up with an older kid to create a pirate drawing which involved us laying down in a giant roll of butchers paper while the older kids traced around us.
We were then given a bottle of Red, Blue, and Yellow paint to mix together and create the colours we needed to paint our pirate anyway we wanted.
I remember having a list of mixtures/portions to create the colours we needed.
This is what I’m planning for our next set of notebooks, going back to basic colours and building it up from there.
]]>The Ashes are now well and truly upon us and the first ball of the historic clash between Australia and England will take place on the 27th November at 11am.
The Ashes is a biennial (around every two years, depending on which country and their relevant summer) cricket competition played between England and Australia.
The very first Ashes test took place in 1882 and the term “Ashes” originated in a satirical obituary published in The Sporting Times, immediately after Australia’s 1882 victory at The Oval, their first Test win on English soil.
The headline read:
“An affectionate remembrance of English Cricket, which died at the Oval on 29th August, 1882, deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. RIP.
N.B. — The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.”
English captain Ivo Bligh had vowed to “regain those ashes”. The English media therefore dubbed the tour the quest to regain the Ashes.
With the upcoming series, it’s your chance to get the perfect gift for someone you know loves Cricket or someone that has no idea about Cricket but you still want to hang out with them and watch the game.
The cover outlines the many different fielding positions which include
These main positions are then broken down further into names like long, backwards, square, short, silly, fine… even the infamous cow corner makes an appearance.
You’ll be able to flippantly comment about “pushing midwicket back to cow” and your friends will know exactly what you’re talking about.
There are two variants on the notebooks and you can choose to have one of each or both the same. The first notebook is the standard cricket notebook, whereas the second notebook celebrates The Ashes.
On the Ashes cricket notebook, the cricket ground on the back page flies the flag of England and Australia while above it is the news article printed back on 30th August 1882 announcing the end of English Cricket.
As with all of our pocket notebooks, there is something more to learn on the inside covers. In our Cricket notebook edition, we cover the ten methods of dismissal in the game of cricket and include an explanation on each. For those of you that are unsure of what the ten ways then get your copy today and find out…. or just read on ;)
Get your set of Cricket Notebooks now.
Joe Root (c), Moeen Ali, James Anderson, Jonny Bairstow (wk), Jake Ball, Gary Ballance, Stuart Broad, Alastair Cook, Mason Crane, Ben Foakes, Dawid Malan, Craig Overton, Ben Stokes, Mark Stoneman, James Vince, Chris Woakes
This won’t be announced until closer to the games, so let’s take a look at the previous Ashes squad and compare the differences once we see them.
Michael Clarke (c), Steve Smith (vc), Fawad Ahmed, Brad Haddin, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Johnson, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Peter Nevill, Chris Rogers, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc, Adam Voges, David Warner, Shane Watson
For those of you that are interested in following the games here is the breakdown of the tour for England. (matches in bold are the Ashes Tests)
A few years ago I had the pleasure of working with Diana at a London web agency in Shoreditch and loved the kind of web design she was putting out during that time. Several years later I was looking for a designer to fill in for a couple of months and I reached out to Diana again, and as luck would have it, she took me up on the offer and I was able to work with her again for another couple of months.
During that latest stint, I noticed Diana was doodling between jobs and I was impressed with the designs that were coming from the end of the pen. I asked Diana if she would trial our Kraft Pocket Notebooks and put them through the paces, answer a few questions and showcase some of the art she was doing in the notebooks.
She, of course, said yes and I'm super excited to showcase the interview and work with everyone. Let's hear what she has to say and then check out some of her gorgeous work.
Hello Diana, and thank you so much for trialing our pocket notebooks. Before I get to your creative process could you share a little bit of history about yourself? How did you get into design — and what was your background?
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to do something related to Art. From doodling on the living room walls to oil painting my formative years were filled with all sorts of creative endeavours. But the term “design” only came into my life a few months before applying to university.
After some research, I applied to a Design degree instead of going into Architecture. Fast forward a couple of years and a series of fortuitous events, I started interning at a big Advertising agency in Lisbon as a digital designer.
I still remember that I started was just when responsive design and parallax scrolling were the “next big thing”. Hah!
Where do you find inspiration for your design work?
Magazines. I love to hold and peruse a well design magazine, trying to figure out its grid, looking at typography and the way photography interacts with the written word. Long time favourite mags are Monocle, Cereal and Suitcase.
When inspiration strikes do you have a particular workflow that takes it from idea/concept phase and right the way through to a finished piece?
It always needs to start on paper. Even if it’s just a quick scamp to get a clear idea of what needs to go on the page. Then it’s grid building, pixel pushing and iteration, iteration, iteration. In parallel to high fidelity prototypes, I’ll start to build style sheets and other important documentation for developers.
When you're exploring ideas do you have a set of tools that you always reach for? Paper, Pencils, Pens, software etc etc
Paper and pens for sure! I have heaps of fancy pens, some of them are probably all dried out…
Before you go if you were to go back to your younger creative self what would the one piece of advice be?
Don’t focus too much on finding a distinct style. It’s overrated.
Thanks for your time Diana. If anyone is interested in continuing the conversation how do they get in touch with you or see more of your work?
For work either check Dribbble or my portfolio. And I’m also on Twitter @define_gravity. Thank you :)
I also Diana what she thought about the notebooks prior to getting these images and the interview — here's what she thinks:
I've doodled a bit but not as much as I'd want to, however, the initial feedback is very positive. The paper is really good and there's no bleeding when I use Sakura Pigma Micron pens. Haven't tried with more heavy duty ones like Poscas or Sharpies but I'm sure it will be the same.
It's always great to get feedback like this because our choice of paper stock means that the notebooks are slightly more expensive than the popular brands, but we like to think that if you take your notebooking seriously you're more interested in the quality.
If you want to work on the same pocket notebooks as Diana then go and pick up your own set of Kraft Plain Notebooks and show us what you can do.]]>I had the pleasure of providing Hiroko with one of our pocket notebooks to try out using her own style of Art in exchange of asking a few questions and getting some feedback on the product itself.
Before I move onto some questions for Hiroko I wanted to share the amazing pieces of art that were handed back to me within the notebook.
Hello Hiroko, and thank you so much for trialing our pocket notebooks. Before I get to your creative process could you share a little bit of history about yourself? How did you get into painting, printmaking, and installation art — and what was your background?
Since I was a child I liked making things with different materials and methods so it was only natural for me to approach what I want to express via different media.
When I was a University student in Japan I became interested in Japanese traditional art techniques such as Japanese woodblock printmaking, paper making, folded screen making and hanging scroll making and that led me to learn all these skills in Japan and now I am teaching these in the U.K..
Where do you find inspiration for your artwork?
‘Nature' or 'Dance & Movements’. I like to capture the movement of nature or dance and interpret into an abstract format in my own way.
When inspiration strikes do you have a particular workflow that takes it from idea/concept phase and right the way through to a finished piece?
Not particularly.
When you're exploring ideas do you have a set of tools that you always reach for? Paper, Pencils, Pens, paints etc etc
I like to use brushes with strokes.
I think the brush makes me able to interpret the movement and speed I feel.
Before you go if you were to go back to your younger creative self what would the one piece of advice be?
Do what you like & explore
Thanks for your time Hiroko. If anyone is interested in continuing the conversation how do they get in touch with you or see more of your work?
Via my website or Facebook Artist page.
www.hirokoimada.com
www.facebook.com/hirokoimada.uk
For Adults, I teach Japanese Woodblock Printmaking via the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts. Check out the next course!
For future courses, please register with PSTA mailing list.
For Schools, I run Japanese Woodblock Printmaking one day course via the British Museum.
There’s a very good chance that you’ve seen a great looking pocket notebook online or in a store and bought it with the best intentions. There’s an equally good chance that the notebook is still sitting where you left never being used.
Many people buy notebooks with the best intentions and for a number of reasons they never get started. Do some of these reasons not to use a pocket notebook sound familiar to you…
Have you got another reason? If you do please let me know in the comments, but lets look at a couple of ways you can use a pocket notebook and avoid some of those issues.
The simplest way to make using a pocket notebook part of your daily routine is to start to introduce it into your daily routine.
For me, this started with making it synonymous with my wallet, phone and keys. Whenever I leave the house I do a quick little pat down dance where I pat my back right pocket for my wallet, front right pocket for my keys, front left pocket for my phone, then back left pocket for my pocket notebook and pen.
Incorporating the use of the notebook into your daily routine helps as well. This could be sketching, taking notes in meetings, listing songs you want to play on the ukulele, jotting down presentation ideas, creating a to-do list, or as low key as writing your shopping list. The key is to keep it consistent and soon enough it becomes second nature.
I’m a little biased here, but I think the BackPocket range of notebooks certainly falls into this category, but, do you know what is even more beautiful? A BackPocket Notebook full of sketches and ideas.
For example, the picture below is from one of our Responsive Web Design Notebooks that we gave to artist Hiroko Imada to try out.
Hiroko is a Japanese artist based out of Make Space Studios in London and does most of her work with paint. I was over the moon last week when I got the notebook back from Hiroko which showcased her amazing talents.
The point is that it didn’t matter what the notebook looked like at the beginning, it is far more beautiful now that it is full of ideas and expressions.
It doesn’t matter how you use your notebook, whether it be for shopping lists, scribbles, to-do lists, or mini canvas — the fact that you’ve used it will always make it a better notebook.
Everyone wants the first page to be amazing rather than a shopping list, we want to look more clever than we really are (or at least that’s what I strive for ;)
Try starting a couple of pages in on the notebook, or start from the back and get going. What you will notice by starting is at some point you’ll get that profound moment as you’re scribbling away… then you simply flip back to the front and amaze everyone!
Me too! I use OmniGraffle to capture the things that I want to do and have a number of different projects and contexts that keep me mostly organised… but there’s something nice about writing it down in a notebook.
I don’t always want to be “that guy” who pulls out a mobile device when catching up with people and want to jot something down. On the plus side there’s something nice about when someone writes something down that you’ve said in a notebook, it makes you feel as if what you said really mattered because someone took the time to push ink into an old tree they carry in their pocket so that they can go back in the future and read it again.
There can also be a social issue with pulling out mobile phones in the middle of conversations, it can sometimes look like you’re not interested in what is being said and, if you’re anything like me, there are far too many distractions that can be caused by email, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc etc.
]]>Why not just download a guitar app? Well, I did that but…
My phone worked some of the time, but after a few occasions of no battery (camping), someone else using the phone (kids), and the fact that playing the guitar is my opportunity to spend some time away from the computer I began to lean favourably towards notebooks. Plus, lots of my friends and colleagues wanted to or were already learning the guitar and told me it was something they would use — win win.
One of the reasons I started Back Pocket Notebooks was to create the kinds of notebooks that I love to use on a daily basis, and this seemed the perfect idea for a new set.
All of the back pocket notebook range, with the exception of the soon to be launched Plain Kraft notebook (more on that soon) contain an educational inside cover. It’s a callout back to my early school workbooks with Maths and English explanations and something which I enjoy researching as well.
The inside covers for the set of Guitar Notebooks were:
This was great! Or at least it was great until I went on holiday and wanted to show someone the chords to “What a wonderful World/Somewhere Over the Rainbow” — which got me thinking.
I thought “What better way to show how the use the chords than to give the owner a song that they can learn the chords by playing along”.
It was genius (or so I thought at the time).
The idea was to drop the history and descriptions and replace them with a song that you could learn. The songs were:
It was so perfect that I mocked it all up on my InDesign Templates and had emailed the files across to the printers for proofs.
On Saturday morning it came to me as I was spreading vegemite on toast and my little boy was asking me how factories were made (after I answered “how toasters were made by saying they were made in factories”).
Maybe, just maybe, I might need permission from the Artists if I wanted to print their song titles and lyrics in the notebooks. I was pretty sure the chords were fine because there's only so many ways chords can be arranged, but the title and lyrics could be a sticking point.
I head straight for my trusty copyright law advisor — Google.
It seemed that lots of writers had posed a similar question about the issues of including song lyrics as part of the book they were writing. The response was overwhelmingly similar — avoid it at all costs or be prepared to pay a lot of royalties. I even found an article from the Guardian on this exact topic which quotes:
For one line of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”: £500. For one line of Oasis’s “Wonderwall”: £535. For one line of “When I’m Sixty-four”: £735. For two lines of “I Shot the Sheriff” (words and music by Bob Marley, though in my head it was the Eric Clapton version): £1,000. Plus several more, of which only George Michael’s “Fastlove” came in under £200. Plus VAT. Total cost: £4,401.75.
OUCH!
I wasn’t quoting lines, I was writing ALL the lyrics!
There were also stories from a range of Guitar Tablature sites discussing the legal issues they had from publishers and labels around posting song tabs on their site.
One of the most common ways of getting around this seemed to be including a disclaimer that read something along the lines of “tab and lyrics are the users own interpretation of the song”. It turns out that this doesn’t really cut it and a lot (all?) of the tab sites pay royalties to the music owners (or the companies that hold the rights to the music at least).
Let me make this clear though — I’m not saying this is wrong and I should get to use them the way I want… far from it. This is more a story of making sure you’re covered against anything that could happen when you’re going to print with someone else’s stuff.
I ended up getting in touch with a Web Performance friend of mine who had a former life as a musician, who in turn put me in touch with someone who works in copyright infringement from one of the major record labels. We’re in email discussions at the moment but the three possible solutions I see to this are:
Unfortunately, I think the likely solution is the first one but check back here too so see how we got along.
]]>The codex is made up from Mesoamerican paper, in this instance made from the inner bark of the wild fig tree or Amate (Ficus Glabrata) and was referred to by the Mayas as 'Huun'. The Huun is made by flattening out the inner bark and applying lime paste before drying and writing.
This process was done at a similar time to the Romans however the Huun was better for writing and far more durable that the Papyrus used by the Romans.
Within the Codex are measurements that tracked the rise and setting of Venus which was used as an omen of war that guided ritual activity, prompted great battles, and was even used as shorthand for “total destruction.” — a lot different to the God of Love that Venus might be known as in other cultures.
Scientists have used these measurements to predict when this Mayan Astronomer was able to make these readings over a 25-year span within the first half of the 10th century, around 1200-1250.... AMAZING!
The codex went on further to predicted such things as the 1991 Solar Eclipse but its main use was ensuring that the rise and fall of Venus helped alter the holidays and celebrations (and sacrifices) to keep in tune with the stars.
]]>Michelangelo used his artistic skills for more than just painting and sculpting, he even worked it in to his every day life with his pocket notebook sketches.
]]>]]>“Because the servant he was sending to market was illiterate,” writes the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin in a review of a Seattle Art Museum show, “Michelangelo illustrated the shopping lists — a herring, tortelli, two fennel soups, four anchovies and ‘a small quarter of a rough wine’ — with rushed (and all the more exquisite for it) caricatures in pen and ink.”
When we launched BackPocket Notebooks we were closing in on the end of our time there but I was fortunate to be able to get a few artists to try out the notebooks and provide a little bit of feedback — artists like Amelia Durie.
]]>For 18 months my wife and I were live in caretakers at a wonderful Art Studio in the heart of London called Make Space Studios. During that time we made friends and shared our lives with some amazing artists from sculptors to mask makers, from interior designers to musicians, and from fashion designers to stationery artists.
When we launched BackPocket Notebooks we were closing in on the end of our time there but I was fortunate to be able to get a few artists to try out the notebooks and provide a little bit of feedback — artists like Amelia Durie.
Unfortunately I chose Amelia at a time when she was most busy with her work but for all your artists out there who want to know how the Notebooks stacked up here is some feedback for you:
The notebook is great, although I haven't used it much since as I've been busy working for a gallery in London. But one thing I did notice is that the quality of the paper is really good- thicker than normal note taking paper.
As an artist I wouldn't choose it for sketching regularly as I'd use a larger sketchbook with thicker art or watercolour paper but it's a great size and quality for keeping in my handbag and using for quick ideas notes and sketches when I'm on the move. (At exhibitions etc.)]]>
Recently we released our next set of notebooks based on the SpaceX tourist poster series featuring Olympus Mons, Valles Marineris, and Phobos & Deimos. Today we're sharing the final overview of the notebooks this time about Olympus Mons which also appears in the notebooks.
]]>Recently we released our next set of notebooks based on the SpaceX tourist poster series featuring Olympus Mons, Valles Marineris, and Phobos & Deimos. Today we're sharing the final overview of the notebooks this time about Olympus Mons which also appears in the notebooks.
Olympus Mons is the highest point in all of the Solar System. It’s an extinct volcano that spans the equivalent width of France or the relative size of Arizona in the USA. At a height of 21,230m Olympus Mons is almost 3x as tall as our own Mount Everest (8,848m).
If you were to reach the summit of Olympus Mons you wouldn’t realise you were on a mountain at all. Due to its overall size and relative gentle slope it would stretch out past the horizon.
The image on this cover depicts the sharp rising cliff face found at the bottom of Olympus Mons which rises up to 8km tall. With a cliff face at the base of Olympus Mons similar in size to Mount Everest you can see why they would want to build a lift.
If you're interested in picking up a set today for yourself, a loved one, a friend, or if you're sucking up to your science teacher then get your set today.
]]>Valles Marineris is 4,000 km long and reaches depths of up to 7 km. In comparison to something that we consider an amazing piece of geography on Earth, the Grand Canyon in Arizona is only about 800 km long and 1.6 km deep.
It seems Mars does everything bigger.
The canyon system is thought to be as a result of a crack in the Martian crust as the planet cooled, and further exposed through erosion and the possibility of once flowing water or moving glaciers.
If you thought that was interesting then there's 2 other notebooks in the set to go along with Valles Marineris — namely Olympus Mons and Phobos & Deimos. We'll be sharing the last of those stories on Olympus Mons next week.
If you're interested in picking up a set today for yourself, a loved one, a friend, or if you're sucking up to your science teacher then get your set today.
]]>This week we released our next set of notebooks based on the SpaceX tourist poster series featuring Olympus Mons, Valles Marineris, and Phobos & Deimos. Today we're sharing a bit more information about Phobos & Deimos which also appears in the notebooks.
]]>Phobos (fear) and Deimos (panic) are the two moons of Mars and were both discovered by American Astronomer Asaph Hall. The two moons were named after the horses that pulled the chariot of the Greek war god Ares.
Phobos is the larger of the two moons and orbits Mars every 7h 40m. Phobos is just 9,377km from the red planet and is a slow downwards spiral, expected to reach its Roche Limit (see the back page of the notebooks for an explanation of the Roche Limit plus a number of other Universal Constants) in 30-50 million years. Upon reaching the Roche Limit, Phobos will break apart to form rings around Mars (similar to those of Saturn). Phobos is one of the most non-reflective objects in the Solar System, but if you were able to stand upon its surface — as our lovely couple are on the cover — Mars itself would be 2,500 times brighter and 6,400 times larger than the full moon appears on Earth.
Deimos is further away, slower, and only half the size of Phobos, making it the smallest known moon in the Solar System.
If you thought that was interesting then there's 2 other notebooks in the set to go along with Phobos & Deimos — namely Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris. We'll be sharing those stories with you over the next couple of weeks.
If you're interested in picking up a set today for yourself, a loved one, a friend, or if you're sucking up to your science teacher then get your set today.
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