What are the positive sides? Does it work within the starting purpose? This is to understand if the solutions that have been found and applied to the new notebook are valid and working. this is important mostly not to lose track of the reasons underneath the concept and to evaluate how much the modifications worked.

why

One of the main urgency I have to talk about this topic is that both from my personal experience and the experiences of others during growth: standardisation of abilities, of desires, ways of living.

We are supposed to satisfy standards and generalisations throughout our entire lives, structures in which some people feel comfortable in and some others not at all, especially if we talk about young humans that are still building up on their personality and still discovering their abilities and strategies.

In general, in society, I don't like that we are expected or used to be all the same, that expressing who we are is not part of daily life but many times it's a shaming process that has a lot of impact on growth and development of self. And I feel like that with the arrival of consumerism we got used to the idea that we can just buy objects and it doesn't really matter if they're made for us in the same way they are made for everyone else in the world.

I would like this research to be a sort of manifesto for a general context but using the notebook as a "metaphor": who are you? how does your brain work? how do your ideas come along? what are your needs from a tool that society provided in a standardised form?

It is not only about making a notebook, is how making a notebook will put us in the position of questioning who we are and the objects we use, why we use them and how something made for us from us could look like.

how to make a notebook that

SORT OF INTRO TEXT

i wanted to make this publication to have two characteristics: modular and customisable. The modularity is something that became important to me and my way of taking notes and making notebooks. Modularity allows reconnections, both physically both content wise. In this context, I decided to have the entire publication as a physical "random choice" to access the content. It becomes customisable because of the type of binding i went for. I was not happy to go for plastic instead of metal, but i had the publication to allow a almost 360 degrees rotation so that all the content in the rows could reconnect to the other rows. I was also not happy with having the problem of being obliged to buy something specific to achieve my intent. I normally try to find the most easy and accessible options. To solve both problems, I am happy with what I chose in the end because it lets you, the user, to take possession of this object and participate in its use and creation. This type of spine can be cut in smaller pieces if you want to experiment with small notebooks, or reused if you want to try to make your own, following some instructions contained in this book maybe. You can get rid of all the pages i provided, and fill it in with yours. You can mix mines with yours. In addition, the pages can become cards and be used without the spine. Would they still be a book then? I also inserted some empty pages in the publication, to let some space for thoughts or ideas, if they come while browsing through. The main reason though, is that i have been questioning when a notebook is not a notebook anymore. I knew this publication was going to be printed, but i hope that through this different considerations, for some this could still be defined as a notebook. The content comes all from my reflections and the notes I took, both on my laptop and on my notebooks. They were notes and now, after printing them out i wonder, are they still?

The publication is also printed on an a4 to avoid paper waste. it uses 5 different types of paper to help the user try out and feel different options already intrinsicly within the publication.

I need a notebook for ideas sketching and development = where to write down a sudden idea fast and easy and then have the space to develop it in the future = organised but free space to express maybe with sum-up window/space I always feel like when I write on my paper notebooks is never definitive, i feel it like a work in progress that then is completed when I move the notes on my laptop. If I move them on my laptop not organised I feel stressed because it doesn't allow me to think/reason/process but it doesn't even allow my brain to relax because things are in order.

What is the starting need that brought to the creation and use of the notebook?** This question helps to highlight the starting point and main reason for the creation of a new notebook (or modification applied). it can be described in a few words.

A personal notebook process is the ever-changing process a person can go through, by analysing and keeping attention to their individual note-taking activity and their use of paper notebooks to understand themselves and their needs.

how did i gather all these information

let's same, as always, most of the things come from a lot of talking and thinking, as well as experimenting for years and years. in this particular case, The methods I used to feed this publication are multiple experiments and approaches I worked with between March 2022 and April 2023. The first one is my personal notebook process that consists in the creation of different prototypes to analyse and question my use of notebooks and to discover how to modify them to adjust them to my needs. The second method is discussion groups to collect opinions through conversation and questions. The third one involves gathering and analysing the work of other users to understand how they approach the same process. The last method is the Collaborative Explorative Sessions (C.E.S.): the C.E.S. are a collaborative playground to experiment with a collection of exercises together with the workshop participants. I created the C.E.S. through the knowledge adquired in the process and specifically thanks to the first three methods included in the research, as well as inspired by Generative Design Research, which includes the end user in the design process (Sanders and Stappers, 2014). All these methods will not be discussed inside this publication, but relating thoughts and opinions will be presented in some of the cards. In addition, the results of the research are published in my thesis, "Paper Notebooks: From an Industrial Model to a Tool of Expression" (2023) produced in the context of the graduation research from the Experimental Publishing (XPUB) Master course at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.

what you will find inside this notebook/book/object/publication/game

is a selection of multiple things, that all try to help you, a user that could soon become an active maker, to get inspiration and start making notebooks into your own practice. some things will stop and continue on a different card, try to reconnect them to go on reading! Nothing is in order, every piece of the publication is positioned almost 100% randomly in the different cards. You might feel lost, in that case move on, read something else, write down something. You might find an explanation somewhere else. some of the cards are pieces of my personal thoughs while, in the last year, i have been experimenting with notebooks' making. They might feel completely out of context, as also the pictures of the notebooks these comments are referred to are randomly spread around the publication. Use your imagination and get lost.