Its that time again to take a look at the newest Field Notes quarterly release.  What you are looking at above is the Field Notes Utility (buy here on the Field Notes website) that comes in both graph format and ledger format.  For subscribers, you also get hooked up with a cool little key chain bottle opener called the After Hours Utility Tool.  The key chain bottle opener plus the early delivery of these makes the Field Notes subscription well worth it.

There is a lot going on with the new Field Notes Utility edition, but the first thing that really caught my eye on them was the black staples.  For some reason I just find the glossy black metal against the flat yellow cover to be a pretty awesome contrast not only of color but of finish as well.

Here is a quick look at those black staples on the inside center of the notebook for some more nice black on white contrasting.  Another cool feature of the Field Notes Utility release is that they come in two formats.  The one you see above is the ledger style format, but they also come in a grid format.  Subscribers got one of each format but if you are buying them you can pick a three pack of either format for yourself.

The coolest part about the Field Notes Utility release is that the inside back pocket has a ruler that flips out.  Normally the Field Notes have rulers that are just printed on the edge of the back cover, but having this flip out version makes things easier for two reasons.  First, the ruler now has two sides which allows for measuring in inches on one side and centimeters on the other side.  The other cool thing is that you can have your Field Notes Utility open to any page and still have access to the ruler, so you can measure things and jot down the measurement without flipping around in the notebook.

Here is a picture of the flip side of that ruler so you can see the centimeter markings on the back side.  It covers a full 13 cm in measuring length and neatly folds away when you are done with it.

I think the Field Notes Utility release looks cool and the functionality of having the fold out ruler is a very nice touch, but these fall in the “not for me” bucket.  One thing that would have been awesome if they had done it with the same tear resistant covers that their Expedition journals had.  All of that aside, the creativity and fun that Field Notes manages to put into their quarterly releases is pretty awesome and I’d highly recommend signing up, its like having Christmas 4x a year for office supply geeks.

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.