Field Notes Brand Ambition Winter 2014 Edition

For our 25th quarterly COLORS edition, we tried to come up with something special; something totally new and different, but also true to the FIELD NOTES aesthetic. “Ambition” is just that: a new 3-Pack that echoes some of our favorite editions, but with a few new twists. Here’s a short film to get the point across: Field Notes "Ambition"

Our old friends French Paper Co. of Niles, Michigan supplied “Olive,” “Wine,” and “Chocolate” 100# Speckletone for the covers, with production bouncing around the Midwest for the last few weeks. Printing started in Chicago’s suburbs at eDoc, then the covers were delivered to Nu Wave Diecutting & Finishing in downtown Chicago to emboss the cover logo. After a trip back to eDoc for bindery, they were trucked down to Liberty Book and Bible in Indianapolis for a process nearly as old as bookbinding, but all-new to us!

Gilding is an ancient technique once performed by artisans with gold leaf, mallets, and secret mixtures of binding paste. A century or so ago the process was mechanized, but it’s still ridiculously complex. The books are clamped into small batches, then make three passes (once for each edge) through an Ochsner edge gilder, which sands the edges smooth with varying grits of sandpaper, then fuses metallic foil to the edge with heat. It was certainly the strangest piece of printing machinery we’d seen, until a few minutes later when we saw a pair of Ochsner round-corner gilding machines in action.

But that’s not the only FIELD NOTES first in this edition. The “Olive” book is ruled in ledger lines (which you may remember from FNC-16, “Traveling Salesman”), and the “Wine” book is graph paper, but the “Chocolate” book features 56 pages ruled in a weekly datebook format! The body paper is Cougar Opaque 50# “Natural White” text-weight vellum printed in “Double Knee Duck Canvas” ink. With all that gold going on, gold staples were the obvious choice to hold the books together.

With a datebook, ledger, and memo book in hand, projects of any scope become more manageable. And we bet the elegant gilded edges will help get you out of bed a bit earlier and start getting things done. All that’s standing between you and your goals are a whole bunch of notes, facts, lists, and figures, and now you have the perfect place to write it all down.