Making neat notes whilst standing up
I like to take neat notes. If I don’t concentrate when making notes they are terribly messy and worthy only of the bin. Making neat notes is satisfying and an end in itself for me. Complicating the fact that I like to make neat study notes is that most of my studying is done on my morning commute, a half-hour train journey. It’s a busy morning train, sometimes I get a seat and sometimes I don’t. So I’ve spent some time working on a system so that I can study and make notes standing up or sitting down.
At first I thought the best way to do this would be using an iPad, because I can read or watch videos on an iPad and make notes on it with an Apple pencil. However, after a lot of attempts doing this1 I decided I really don’t like writing and drawing with an Apple Pencil. It’s great technology, but it just isn’t as satisfying as using pen and paper.
1 See my essay How I improved my digital handwriting where I explain how I took notes with an iPad, and why neatness matters.
So how do I read and take neat notes whilst standing up? I cut a board out of plywood, and got a large binder clip. I stuck some hooked velcro to the on the left-hand side of the board, and I stuck the fuzzy velcro on the back of my phone. I can stick the phone to the board on one side and have my study material on the phone, and a notebook next to it, so I can make notes. Here’s the board:
I have a few pens and pencils held with pen clips at the bottom of the board. This whole setup works really well.
I’m a bit obsessive about how the notes look. If I use 5mm squared paper (a very standard paper type for notebooks in Spain and France) and write on the lines, I can either write on every line or on every other line. Writing on every line results looks too cramped and the descenders (the parts of letters that extend below the baseline in “y,” “g,” “p,” “q,” and “j”) interfere with the ascenders (the parts of letters that rise above the x-height, as seen in letters like “b,” “d,” “h,” “k,” “l,” and “t.”) But if I write on every other line, the spacing is too great.
The solution to this is of course to design my own lined paper, so that is what I have done. I made a fine pure cyan grid in Illustrator. Originally I intended to print this paper on my Brother colour laser printer, but I discovered that it cannot print fine lines in a single colour. The output was horrendous2:
2 I’ve since discovered that this is true of all home office grade colour printers - they can’t print single colours from CMYK. One idea I had but haven’t tried - I could change the black toner in the printer to a cyan one. But I’m not sure if my printer has chipped toner cartridges and would refuse to print. An experiment for the future…
So I took my Illustrator file to a local printer3. Here’s the PDF if you want to download it:
3 I printed at Print House in central Barcelona. They are very helpful and inexpensive.
The lines are very easy to remove in Photoshop, and so I can make the text and line work into a multiply layer, and then add colour in a layer below using Procreate on the iPad. Whilst I don’t like writing or doing line work on the iPad, it is wonderful for colouring. I’m very pleased with the end results:
I realize I am a bit obsessive about this stuff. I’ve spent over a year experimenting with this. I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing it, other than I enjoy it. Perhaps it will become part of a larger project one day. Do I need a reason other than I love the results?
