I’m a little behind on getting this review of the Field Notes Coastal Edition (via Field Notes) reviewed, not just because I’m a little behind on reviews, but if I’m being honest this edition just didn’t really do much for me so my energy level wasn’t there on these. Typically I find the creativity and thought that goes into the Field Notes releases to be incredible and really appealing. Obviously their level of effort and creativity was there for this edition, but these just aren’t a “Hey Brian really likes these” kind of deal, but thats just my personal opinion, so let me share why.
So let me actually start with the one thing I do really like about these. As a stand alone, I love the foil and the holographic effect that you get at different angles although its a little hard to capture in pictures. The foils range from deep blues, greens, and aqua colors to orange and amber, like those amber waves of grain. I don’t however like them on the grey background of the cover for some reason, and I’ll also be the first to say that I don’t know what might be a better background color. I like to offer suggestions rather than just complain, but I just don’t have a good answer here other than black, but I’m not sure that would look great either.
Individually each of the notebook covers are kind of a mystery if you don’t know the background of this set. I would say 5 out of the six of them are just really hard to identify what they are if you don’t have the whole set laid out in front of you. Maybe its because I’ve exclusively lived on the East Coast my whole life, but even when laid out, the West Coast version really doesn’t jump out as being very identifiable.
When I say 5 out of 6 of the covers aren’t really identifiable in a stand alone fashion, I think its probably obvious that I was singling out the version with Florida on the cover. It also extends onto the back cover, which does look pretty nice when its fully opened.
Here is one more of my little pet peeves about this Field Notes Coastal Edition. Not only am I a lifelong resident of the East Coast, but its been NJ exclusively, and look what happened to NJ on these covers. Cut off right at the bottom. Feel free to make all of the NJ jokes you want, they are warranted for the most part, but it would have been nice to have my home state completely intact on one of the covers.
Inside of the Field notes Coastal edition, there are two different colors of ink used on alternating pages for the ruling. And unfortunately for me, while I find those two colors really nice, I find the reticle grid pattern to be way too busy to actually be functional and easy to write on. I get lost any time I try to write on paper like this because its just so distracting. These just aren’t for me, although I know that a lot of this is just personal opinion. If someone presented these notebooks to me as a work of art, I’d probably have way more appreciation for them, but as functional notebooks I just cant get behind them. Sorry Field Notes, I do still love you, they cant all be winners for everyone, and I’m sure plenty of people do really like these. Check them out on the Field Notes website right here.
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