Details Matter

 

Oh, the possibilities in a blank page.

Stone Yamashita notebooks are seducing me away from the Moleskine. They’re the size of a Foreign Affairs, and have thick, creamy, tear-off pages that are lined on one side and squared on the next. The brown covers come with four provoking titles, the choice of which reveals something to you and about you. My first notebook said CH-CH-CH… on the front, and CHANGES on the back. The latest bookends DESIRE with FEAR, and I hope the sheets in between represent the middle way.

There are pages set aside for tempting lists:

LIFE
ACTION ITEMS
WISHLIST
WHAT THEY SAID
WHAT I SAID
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID
WHAT I HEARD
WORK
TO DO
TO PUT OFF

Inside, there’s a tiny, printed inscription:

This is my notebook. A collection of my thoughts, ideas, some other people’s thoughts, some good stuff, some useless stuff. All written down, mostly scribbled, some stuff that I can no longer read, in an attempt to preserve a brilliant moment in time. (Or, at the time, I thought it was a brilliant moment.) I got this notebook from Stone Yamashita Partners. They always feed me. They’re the kind of office that allows dogs. They believe in the power of good thinking to invoke change. And so do I.

On my first day, two months ago, my SY[P] co-workers gave me a neat stack of San Francisco guidebooks and a household address book that they’d filled with notes on opthalmologists, florists, car repair shops, hikes, plumbers, restaurants, dentists, and babysitters. This streak of inventive empathy, made elegantly tangible, runs through the culture from the stationery cupboard to the client presentations. It’s what makes them excellent, and it makes me glad they found me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 24th, 2005 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Work\. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 comments to “Details Matter”

1. Comment by RT:
   Sunday, April 24th 2005 at 9:15 pm

   So now that you have teased us with this tidbit of information, how do the rest of us get one of these notebooks???

2. Comment by Dervala:
   Monday, April 25th 2005 at 10:08 am

   You’ll have to sign a Stone Yamashita employment contract, RT…membership has its privileges. ;-)

3. Comment by Natasha:
   Monday, April 25th 2005 at 10:44 am

   Can I, pretty please, be an honorary employee? I think I might need to have one of these…ok, ok, we’ll talk later. ;-)

4. Comment by May:
   Monday, April 25th 2005 at 2:33 pm

   The journal is a thoughtful tool (amongst many) and something I can’t quite do without. I now have a leather jacket to protect it but I do miss the “oohh…” moments that catch me off guard. In fact, I do actually recall the journals becoming an ice breaker at a client’s meeting. Well, you may still hear chuckles in the back room (where the journals are kept) from time to time.

5. Comment by RT:
   Thursday, April 28th 2005 at 11:24 am

   I have no problem signing the contract…will they expect me to work?

6. Comment by Laura:
   Tuesday, May 3rd 2005 at 7:37 am

   You describe them so lovingly and then tell us they’re not available for sale anywhere. Argh!

7. Comment by Dervala:
   Tuesday, May 3rd 2005 at 9:46 am

   I’m feeling so guilty about this post, between the emails and comments. But hey, maybe I’ll start a little side-business trafficking in cool notebooks. It works for Merlin at 43 Folders.

8. Comment by Christopher Meisenzahl:
   Wednesday, May 4th 2005 at 4:57 pm

   Come on, you’re killing me! How can we get one of these? :-)

   Chris
   http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/