by Patrick Rhone
I picked up the Baron Fig Confidant notebook after following their progress on Kickstarter. It looked interesting enough at the time, but not so much that I couldn’t wait until they were made available to the general public. That said, I was intrigued enough that I ordered one as soon as they were.
I do have to say that they have put a lot of thought and effort into every aspect of it’s presentation. The website is beautifully designed. It features their Idea Series of video profiles of people using the notebooks from many creative walks of life — musicians, dancers, builders, etc. The story behind the product is told very well.
The notebook (I ordered the blank style) comes in a sturdy box that makes for a dramatic reveal. The notebook itself is cloth-bound in a pleasing grey fabric with a yellow cloth bookmark ribbon. It looks nice — but not too nice. If I had to pick a single word to describe it overall I would say it is “approachable”.
At $15.95, these are not inexpensive notebooks. But, it is the myriad of thoughtful details that I think ticks up the value equation. The 192 pages of thick paper that takes most pens, inks, and markers well. The 12 perforated pages in the back, in case one needs to share a note. Even the dimensions are different than many others. In fact, it is exactly the same height and width of an iPad mini (I’ve been told this was not a mistake). This gives it a bit more breathing room than, say, a large Moleskine — the buyers of which is the crowd this seems most targeted to.
Over all, I think they did a great job with this. It is certainly a notebook I could see myself using on a daily basis. Especially for the notes and writing I care about taking a bit more care to preserve. It is certainly not cheap but notebooks of this quality generally aren’t.
I would recommend this to anyone who is in the market and I look forward to seeing how The Confidant stands up to regular use.
This post was first drafted in The Baron Fig Confidant Notebook using a Kaweco Sport fountain pen with an EF nib and a Kaweco black ink cartridge. A scan of the draft is available for download (PDF).
