Lucy Mangan of The Guardian waxes nostalgic and even a bit poetic about her love of stationery and the potential they seem to hold in unleashing our collective genius.
Why she loves stationery
Laptop case roundup
MyLifeScoop has a roundup of dozens of laptop cases, from the budget to the extravagant. Pad your little precious in anything from felt to leather.
Lost Somewhere in Asia
Just a reminder that through April 27, The Well-Appointed Desk is traveling in Hong Kong and mainland China and may be posting sporadically. I hope to have a couple stationery posts up tomorrow but please be patient. After the 27th, we will be back to a regularly scheduled posts from the US.
Hong Kong Stationery Bounty
Finally, I got out in Hong Kong and got to do a little shopping. Needless to say, my first stop was the humongous shopping area in Kowloon called Harbour City. Inside was a large Muji shop and the notorious CitySuper (notorious to me since I stalk Patrick of Scription fame). Both were totally worth the hype and I’ll have several follow-up reviews of individual products, not to mention a plan to visit both of them again before I head back to the States.
Most people are already familiar with the minimalist-designed Japanese design store Muji. They sell all sorts of products for life and home including lots of inexpensive, simply designed office products. I purchased a few of their gel and roller ball pens, notebooks, stationery sets and their 3-pack of washi tape in brown, grey and tan and a gorgeously Japanese tape dispenser for only a couple dollars US.
CitySuper is a large scale international grocery store with kitchenware, liquor, stationery and gift products. If you are an American and European ex-pat in Hong Kong, you will want to know about CitySuper. I had to see the assortment of stationery products and I was not disappointed. I bought a camera charm for my Pelle though I may go back for a Midori Travelers Notebook just because I love that I can just walk in and buy it, not order it or wait for it to ship. I found a wide elastic to wrap around an A5 sized notebook with a leather divder three writing tools. I found a Faber-Castell Perfect Pencil with built-in sharpener and cap as well as replacement pencils, each under $5US. I also stocked up on Pilot Hi-Tec C Coleto refills, because I could.
I also went a few blocks over to the mall that had the CitySuper LOG-ON shop which was similar to the CitySuper at Harbour City but with more statonery, photo and personal goods and a lot less food product. I hope to go back and browse next weekend when I have a bit more time.
My last stationery find was a little office supply shop along the street that was catering more to local shops and office workers and less to the tourist trade. They had a large spinner of self-inking stamps for about $3US each that said things like “RECEIVED” with the corresponding Chinese translation as well. Do you think I need one?
There will be more in-depth reviews and descriptions in the future when I get back to the States but I didn’t want any of my fine readers to think I’d been slacking on my hunt for office goodies, worldwide.
Cheers from Asia, Ana
Ko-Rec-Type
A recent thrift score was this box of unused Ko-Rec-Type, typewriter printing error correction paper. The concept behind this material was to back space over to your mistype, insert this white paper into the typewriter, retype the mistyped characters, thereby “deleting” the original letters as the Ko-Rec-Type has white film that would cover your mistake.
Each sheet has little perforated segments of correction paper that can be used or removed as needed and each sheet is wrapped in a glossy sleeve with the same rad graphics on it that appear on the cover of the box. On the back of the wrap are the instructions for use. Crazy!
Pantone mess no more
As a designer, one of the most common bits of detritus on my desk are little squares of color known as Pantone chips. There is one or two in the dish under my monitor, a couple more in a desk drawer, a few more tacked to a 3×5 and so on. But for every one chip that is actually used for a project, there are three or four others that get pulled out of the book for comparison or consideration. The key here is that Pantone color books are VERY expensive so no one ever throws away an unused chip. So, what do we do with all those leftovers?
Enter Slip. It is a heavy-duty plastic sleeve with little slots to hold unused chips in a truly usable way. Being a little OCD, I organized my chips into the Slip sleeves by color but they can be filled by project, in numerical order or all hurdy-gurdy if you prefer. But you can see each chip so you can easily find a chip that may have been pulled out of the book before tearing a new chip. Genius!
40 iPhone Features & Shortcuts
While the iPhone, in general, is relatively idiot-proof, there are some nifty features that do require some explanation or reminders that they exist. Appstorm collected 40 such tips that can help you be more efficient and just generally do more with your iPhone. I feel so much smarter!
(via iPhone.AppStorm)