If dogs are human’s best friend, I dare to say Moleskines are artists’ and designers’ best friend. Rumors says Picasso, Matisse, and Hemingway were using their Moleskine to sketch. It was select as the best designer’s sketchbook in LifeHacker. I bet many of you guys are having one in your pocket. Here in this post, TFS will discover how to customize the moleskine to better suit for designers.
Cover image Source: Hydro74
SKETCHING EVERYWHERE
As artists or designers, the most important thing is to sketch out your idea and practising your drawing skill, there is no way better than using your moleskine as your drawing pad. There are many artist fully sketch their moleskine to an extend we consider they are art. Moleskine also held an exhibitions about their art a while ago. You may consider this how to create great sketches in your Moleskine as a good read.
Here are some sources you can find the best moleskin sketch:
Flickr Sketch Book Style Group
LASER ETCHED
If you think that the Moleskine cover is too bored to you, and you want a more personal cover, there are some artists like Hydro74 and the aritists collaboration in MODOFLY doing great laser etched covers, or you can do it on you own using your design.
Or you may consider doing it professionally: Engrave your Tech and EngraveYouBook.
DEBROSSING
If you think that laser etching is too expensive for you but you want to have a unique personal cover for your moleskine, maybe you can consider debrossing the cover of it like Todoodlist, Apple or Eric Au did. According to Putthingsoff.com, you can use a Fiskars to do the job.
GTD
If you don’t know what is GTD (Getting Things Done), you can take a look here. As designer, we always need to have a good organizer for deadlines or to do list. If you think that the planner of Moleskine isn’t enough for you, you can check it out here for the great resources.
PEN HOLDERS
I am one of those who will draw when I am on my way home or sitting in a coffee shop, and sometimes you may think it is inconenient o take out your pens from your pocket everytime you suddenly have some brainstorming, so these are the guide you can’t miss.
BIC Velocity Gel Moleskine Pen Holder
Pen holder using the existing elastic band and a button [Update 22/11/08]
If you don’t like the idea of pen holder, you can take a look at David Seah post about the flat bookmark pens, I think it is pretty useful.
WALLET
Richard Bryan ultimately use his moleskine to be a useful wallet. Man, you can use your sketchbook to put all the things in, how fantastic it is! It’s made out of duck cloth and elastic banding material bought at a fabric store. There are two pockets on the front, one for cash, one for credit cards. You can check it out here in Make:Blog.
You can also check out Brett McKay’s blog to custom make a credit card holder for your moleskine.
TAB
When you have different project carrying on, or you have don’t want to mix up multiple client, you should use some tabs to put the things into folders. There are some tabs in some ordinary Moleskine, but they are in the back part of it and they only cover a few pages, if they are not enough for you, you should consider the tab guide below:
CASE
Sometimes, you need to carry your HD to the client for presentation or storing reserch finding. Although it’s a bit ridiculous. Some people turn their moleskins into an iphone case and a External HD case. Check out Charlie Sorrel’s post for the iphone case tutorial and Zonageek for the External HD tutorial. Having one of these may Wow you clients.
STORY BOOK
For those who need to work in the animation fill, story board is a must for daily sketching. Ninth Wave Designs has a how to on turning a Large Moleskine Sketchbook into a Large Moleskine Storyboard notebook. You’ve been able to get the Storyboard notebook in pocket size, but a larger size seems to make more sense. You can download the PDF template in the post.
So any other ways you strangers for using your Moleskine?
Reference:
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Excellent post! It’s really helpful to have all of these links in one place. Lots of cool customization.
Thx Jeff~
Excellent!!
good for the new year planner!! Thanks,
Thanks for the shout-out for my elastic pen holder! It’s an honor being listed here along with all the other great design ideas you featured. Love your site!
Cheers,
Paul
[...] Thefamiliarstrangers.com has a really awesome collection of all the ways you can make your Moleskine, the tried and true sidearm of any hipster, stand out EVEN MORE. F-ing sweet. [...]
[...] at Hydro74 (Joshua Smith), who we did books for a while back of some of Josh’s sweet work (seen here), and Palehorse have teamed up for a wicked awesome t-shirt show. Check out the video, and here is [...]
Good stuff. I hacked a moleskine into a fishing journal with boxes for Time of Day, Tide, Wind, Water Temperature and of course what kind of fish we caught and how big.
Here is a source where you may find the best moleskin sketches. I hope you will take a good look at moly_x: international sketchbook exchange, http://www.flickr.com/groups/moly_x/ , and join us for some splendid moleskinerie.
Some examples:
http://moleskinex1.blogspot.com/
http://moleskinex29.blogspot.com/
http://mxportraits1.blogspot.com/
Wow, lots of cool stuff in there!
RE Oranse,
Wow, you really fully use the moleskine!!! Great!
Awesome hacks here. I love the hard drive/iphone case but I couldn’t bring myself to destroy the moleskine for it!
I just posted instructions for making a pen holder using the existing elastic band and a button. I can’t take credit for the idea, but I haven’t seen a post showing images of how it’s done.
http://scarlettcat.blogspot.com/2008/11/make-moleskine-pen-holder.html
xxx scarlett
RE Marty: Thx for your suggestion, site updated
RE Scarlett: Wow, nice hack!! I have updated my site~
[...] die Familiar Strangers in ihrem Blog: How to Build a Designer’s Moleskine. Moleskine-Liebhaber finden in diesem Artikel eine Füller weiterführender Links zu dem beliebten [...]
[...] How to build a designer’s Moleskine [...]
Thank you for the great suggestions for improving upon a terrific notebook… not sure why I didn’t think of making tabs in my journal/notebook… *smacks self on forehead*… great ideas, thank you for sharing!
[...] can become a wonderful object in its own right. The Familiar Strangers have a great rundown of some incredible modifications for Moleskines. Inside the post are lots of example pictures, dozens of links and a bit of Make and Craft’s [...]
[...] med en anteckningsbok som inte bara har en historia. Moleskine har en hel kultur omkring sig. Egna hemsidor, bloggar, fanclubs. Man kan till och med pimpa sin Moleskine, dvs hotta upp den på olika sätt. [...]