Quality Characteristics of a Journal

1 · Types of Binding

Casebinding
There is only one proper method to bind a journal if you want to get a lot of usage out of it: casebinding. How you can tell if a journal has been casebound? Open the book to the center and you should be able to see the threading. Most journal manufacturers "glue" their inner pages together similarly to periodicals/magazines and individual pages eventually become detached. A casebound journal remains robust despite frequent use, maintains form despite stress on the joints and does not come apart as easily.

Singer Stitch
Similar to journals, booklets go by the same rule: there is no recommendable alternative to needle and thread. Generally, booklets are saddlestitched which means that inner pages and book cover are connected with wires or staples - mostly at two or three joints. Brandbook’s booklets however, are sewn top-to-bottom along the spine and a thread keeps the book together at approximately thirty points of a needles's incision. The advantages of this method are clearly durability, no injuries through exposed sharp staples and an overall better appearance. We have coined this type of binding “Singer Stitch” since we use a Singer sewing machine we found in New York’s Chelsea fleamarket. In its previous life it was used for sewing tough materials such as jeans and leather.

2 · The Interior

Paper quality
A good journal should provide an excellent surface for writing, drawing and illustrating equally. Regardless if you are using a fountain pen, ballpoint, pencil or marker, you should not detect any bleeding or ghosting from previously marked pages. Good journals usually contain paper stock with weights ranging between 90 to 100 g/m2 and provide the strength necessary to avoid wrinkles when erasing. You can increase the paper weight to 130g/m2 for drawing and painting journals. Our favorite paper stock used in 50% of our journals is Munken Pure (90g/m2): a cream shade, smooth premium uncoated paper manufactured without Optical Brightening Agents (OBA's) and a very pleasant haptic.

3 · The Cover

Bookcloth materials
Pleasant haptic, robustness, resistance to dirt and fading are the quality characteristics of many bookcloths. We work with thousands of materials ranging from leather, leather fiber, artificial leather, linen fabrics, paper and carton. The advantage of working with Brandbook is that we offer an amazing range of diverse, unique and occasionally very unusual cover materials. In order to protect paper covers, we offer matt or glossy cellophane varnishing. Ultimately, our endeavor is not only to provide the most durable journal, but to constantly research and experiment with new chip boards, adhesives and material combinations.

Corners and Edges
Whether a notebook has straight or round corners is a matter of personal preference. Traditionally, books have rounded corners and Bauhaus-fans prefer their corners straight. A round corner should have a perfect radius and many manufactures literally just “cut corners” and claim them as “rounded.” This method not only leads to an unattractive appearance, but also early detachment of cover material from its board.
In order to achieve perfect, long lasting radius-corners, one needs the appropriate machinery and unless you don’t have access to such a tool, we recommend straight corners.

4 · Finishing

Very Special
Regardless of whether you prefer embossing, colored edging, laser engraving, silk screening, flocking or any other of our one hundred finishing options; it is important for us to offer customer service and production support all the way to a finished custom made journal. Our role is to recommend the only best. For example, flourescent paints have a greater effect when screen printed as opposed to offset printing; laser gravur requires precise heat and duration parameters to ensure a cover free of burn marks. A brass die-stamp will produce a consistently clean emboss for 300 notebooks as opposed to a magnesium die-stamp. We could provide many more examples, however our 50 expert-suppliers can speak for themselves.

5 · The Determining Details

Elastic closure
This component needs to be anchored firmly into the book spine assuring durability even after opening the book 300 times. It shouldn’t loosen or unhitch. The elastic needs to be taut and flexible never allowing it to become limp.

The bookmark
Serves as a locator to retrieve your most recent notes. There isn’t much you can do wrong here unless you don’t make it long enough for the book format or tuck it away neatly in the book spine.

Headband
Good quality notebooks have a small colored band on the top and bottom edge of the spine case. It provides a closure in the gap between the book block and book cover as well as protection from dust entering the spine. Primarily though, it is considered a nice accessory.

Accordion Pocket
Not necessarily a “must-have”, but a useful addition for A5 and A6 formats. Our accordion pockets provide a discreet, convenient, safe-keep for small notes, receipts, tickets and other valuables. They have an expandable joint and consist of a robust mesh band and carton. Accordion pockets are called “frosch tasche” in German (literal translation: frog pocket) – a metaphoric name since frogs have the ability to transition from compact to expanded. By the way, our accordion pockets can be customized to perfectly match your endpapers.

Why do we manufacture notebooks?

By now, our list of references is a comprehensive list of renowned German and international brands.
Our References


Brandbook is the first manufacturer to offer comfortable online options for configurating you very own custom notebook.
To the Book Configurator

Actually, when we first came into contact with the world of notebooks, all we wanted was to buy one. This seemingly easy task turned out to be an arduous odyssey through a sea of black and red blotters. While American Young Urban Hipsters already were happily writing down their exciting adventures into the most beautiful pieces of art, Germany didn't even know this bandwagon existed.

Whatever may be to blame - electronic ordering gadgets or a Prussian desire for hierarchical order and tight organisation - German stationary stores offered a disturbing mass of monochrome filofax and calendar specimen. Unwilling to yield to the concept of three-lines-per-day calendars, we decided to make notebooks of our own. Our first collection went down well enough - in 1998, Hewlett Packard ordered a total of 8,000 notebooks. Not bad for an IT company that we thought to be interested in replacing the paper notebook by its electronic counterpart entirely. Reassured by this success, we improved our manufacturing process to be able to offer inexpensive products in higher quality - and we begun experimenting with new papers, cover materials and printing techniques (we have never stopped experimenting, actually).

How can we offer the highest quality at low prices?

Our aspiration is to offer uncompromised quality and be cheaper than the competition.
More about quality

Our premise is never to compromise in terms of quality. This includes, for example, that all our notebooks are thread-stitched. This most noble of bookbindings consists of binding the folded, untrimmed sheets with one or more threads together, thus forming a sturdy book block. For this reason, Brandbooks are extremely robust and long lasting. Next, it's not only the devil that's in the details - it's quality, too. Brandbooks have the most cleanly manufactured edges of all books available. While 90 percent of all notebooks in Germany were fabricated in China, we maintain a local network of masters of their craft, including specialists for engraving and steel plate engraving. This enables us to offer both industrially fabricated notebooks as well as handcrafted pieces of bookbinding art. Fabricating in the bright centre of the Gutenberg galaxy also allows us to be more flexible and ship incredibly quick. Higher production costs are reduced by advance production and optimised logistics. And ultimately, our variety is our mark of quality: Always on the lookout for exceptional cover materials, new printing techniques and with an eye on current trends in design and lifestyle, we offer a unique, innovative and trendy portfolio of notebooks.

Sustainability in book production

For each incoming order we plant two trees!
www.bergwaldprojekt.de

We care for our environment – therefore we strive towards a responsible and gentle exposure with the global resources when producing our notebooks. Even when selecting all the different papers which we use for our notebooks, we put an efficient and ecology-minded commitment of the commodities in the front of our interests. But over and above this effort, we want to preserve the valuable renewable resources. Hence we donate two trees to the ‘Bergwaldprojekt e.V.’ for each new incoming order. These trees are used for large-scale reforestation in different parts of Germany.

Extracts from the interview between Notizbuchblog.de (NBB)
and Brandbook (BB)

NBB: Do you make products other than notebooks?
BB: In the meantime, we also produce books for well-known publishers. Our extensive expertise of production techniques and vast selection of bookcover materials however, are most the appealing factors for customers to choose Brandbook … as well as our ability to produce at a reasonable cost.

NBB: There are a couple of other notebook manufacturers who offer custom designed notebooks – how do you set yourselves apart?
BB: First of all, over the past decade, we have been able to set up an excellent network of specialists – all experts in their respective fields. In the business of offering custom designed products where customers can choose from over thousands of options, it is fundamental to offer excellent and reliable built-to-order (BTO) logistics.
Secondly, in order for a business to maintain production facilities in Germany (90% of all notebooks on the market are produced in China – not ours!), we are constantly optimizing our processes. For example, we pre-produce and stock large quantities of book blocks to keep the costs low for customers interested in smaller quantities. Another aspect lies in our production volume being so high, that we are able to negotiate on a different level with our suppliers. We pass this on to our customers and they benefit from this advantage.

NBB: Where do you draw your inspiration from?
BB: Essentially, from our customers’ requests. Especially designers such as Mutabor, Fuenfwerken, and major advertising networks like McCann, publishers such as Monocle – their requests for materials and execution lie beyond the mainstream. All in all, we try to get the best out of any material we can get our hands on.

NBB:Our readers complain that your notebooks have a minimum purchase order of ten and are not available in retail stores.
BB: We actually offer a selection of our notebooks in stores under various brand names. Our focus though, is manufacturing for businesses and publishers. For 2010, we have decided to carefully start targeting the consumer market. We don’t have the luxury to draw from venture capital, so every expansion needs to be financed through our own cash-flow.

NBB: How do you do to raise awareness for Brandbook?
BB: Naturally, we don’t have a conventional advertising budget. However, we do sponsor events such as design conferences and offer notebooks at manufacturing cost. In addition, we have an annual design award that gets us a lot of attention.

NBB: Are notebooks products that demand the same set of requirements from their producers?
BB: Some see it that way – just books with empty pages, or in derogatory terms “a scratch pad.” Once you dive into the subject matter, the complexities start to reveal themselves. There are people who need notebooks with content tailored for creative techniques, or corporations who use notebooks as an instrument for employee communication and motivation. Major corporations can be demanding as well, some explore combinations of bookcover materials and finishing techniques to align with their corporate design. Basically, anything that is unconventional and stands out with a unique statement. In the past, we have also tried to incorporate technology into our notebooks. We experimented with a small LCD-Display where you can view movies, but nothing feasible has really worked out so far.

NBB: According to the newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Moleskin is turning out revenue numbers in the millions. Does this make you envious?
BB: Moleskine have rolled out a well-defined marketing story on a global scale and we respect their success. It is not really something one can copy or use as a Moleskine 2.0 blueprint. Quite noticeably, Modo & Modo (Moleskine’s Italian manufacturer) is responding to financial pressures from their investors and as a result, is expanding their product range. We certainly don’t have these types of problems.

NBB: Will notebooks and books continue to be your core focus?
BB: We are in the process of introducing several products in 2010 beyond notebooks. One being a new product called Combic: a type of large “Post-It” you can stick on a wall and use for creative brainstorming or mind-mapping instrument. All in all though, our products will be paper based. I recently came across an article: “paper is the new vinyl” – something for true aficionados!

NBB: Why do you call yourselves “Brandbook?”
BB: That’s a simple one: there is (almost) always a brand on the cover or our books.

The Brandbook Team

Dirk Mahlke
Sales Manager
Phone: 069 40 80 90-100
E-Mail: d.mahlke@brandbook.de

Barbara Jensen
International Sales
Phone: 069 40 80 90-170
E-Mail: b.jensen@brandbook.de

Sabine Kochendörfer
PR & Marketing
Phone: 069 40 80 90-250
E-Mail: sabine.k@brandbook.de

Bernd Griese
Managing Director
Phone: 069 40 80 90-120
E-Mail: b.griese@brandbook.de