Scribe

buckle up gentlemen buckle up i want you to dig into the landscape of your mind

yes yeah all

like i really like this format and

what's his name draplin oh right right

to you thank you for having me fellas thank you we're so excited yeah

good stuff floors all you know just open book hot mic we got a hot mic hot mic this thing i was explaining before the thing went live there were two ants walking a block away and i could count their steps with the game so just all the miniature there's a leaf i just heard a leaf rustle by about two blocks

shout out to blue microphone for making

draplin forty six years old graphic designer i live here in portland oregon i am from michigan that's where i was where i grew up i was born in detroit right out of high school did a little associate's degree so seventeen years old out of high school little associate's degree that just wet the whistle for like design just enough i was into drawing all of you know high school in high school we went to a vo tech and what it meant for us was it got us out of the high school and you had to drive to this vo tech right so we would go skate on our lunch hours and then go to the votech and work now my buddies they were in the design program and i was in the computer aided drafting sort of zone and the reason i picked it is because i liked mechanical pencils i liked all the tools i liked the lead i liked that sort of tactile quality of like it wasn't even about you know i wasn't i guess i was a bit of a little artist but i liked the pragmatic quality that it offered it offered a job i had an uncle who was an engineer so to go into computer aided drafting we were using computers across the hall my buddies were in the graphic design thing so that was my first introduction into just being creative but also with an understanding that i wanted to make a living what little i knew about graphic design or even just art was art was it was harder to do to be a fine artist and to be able to pull it off so seventeen i get out of high school i go random this little two year associate's degree northwestern michigan community college that's awesome i get out at nineteen i know how to use a computer now i can build a logo i can make a layout rudimentary of course but then i take off out west with my buddies and i do five winners out west being a snowboarder and skateboarder and scumbag and going up to portland seeing bands and everything was analog i didn't have a computer a couple friends did i would sneak into a community college to use them but in nineteen ninety six after three four winters out west i went up to alaska worked all summer long bought a computer that was when things exploded for me so i guess a couple more winners out west went to school in minneapolis thinking as a good midwesterner that you had to go back to school you know no one's really going to tell you that you are good enough or whatever i didn't know i just didn't know and being the sort of perpetual always the forever underdog and sort of celebrating that also i felt i had to go back i would have been one of the first draplans to get any school done so i go back to minneapolis i get my degree it's an amazing time back there i get to see design up front all the contemporary bullshit with all the sprinkles and dinkles of like all the cool post post post modern shit but also people reacting against that stuff right people going to work for target just doing good solid design that interested me so much more so i got an mcad in two thousand i go down to los angeles to work south of los angeles in orange county to work at a snowboarding magazine up to two thousand two i did that for two years did you know i don't know twenty five issues of the magazine i go back to portland in two thousand two worked for a design place called cinco for two years and then have been on my own since two thousand four i went on my own in two thousand four and haven't looked back so this will be my sixteenth summer on my

own congratulations well thank you yeah yeah your entrepreneurship is old enough to drive

it goes back even a little farther than that yeah but it's just sort of like independence is a weird word but what it really would have allowed me to do was take on more work or how about this free myself from the constraints of like someone else saying this is what we're going to pay you this is what you're worth this is what the market rate is and that all went to hell because it was like if i wanted to work until five in the morning or get up in five in the morning and start a project i could so in the first year on my own i tripled my wage and that's what was really powerful because one year before that i was playing the game doing what i was supposed to do climbing the ladder working extra being a good citizen you know and it was awesome i was making good money but a buddy pulled me aside and just kind of said you have the work ethic and you have the wherewithal and you don't need to be in here you could go do this on your own from your backyard whatever you want to call it at the time was my basement so it was a little scary i had a couple things lined up and i'm just proud to report you know that first year i know the numbers are weird you're not supposed to talk about these things but i love to talk about it i was making sixty five thousand bucks a year as a senior designer and that was a lot of money that's a lot of money today right yeah and there's a lot to me up to that point the most i'd ever made was about thirty five or forty grand a year or something whatever it was at the magazine or something and to make sixty five it meant i started to pay down all my credit cards right so then i go on my own and i did i said yes to everything and the first year on my own i broke two hundred thousand bucks so that meant not only could i start paying off like my house loan and school loans and things and stuff because there was a surplus coming in it also meant a lot more taxes but it just meant i could get ahead faster right so no one ever i mean i just love to share that those numbers might be different today and who knows but you know i'm so thankful one guy pulled me aside and said there is a different universe to tap into so you really should go

yeah well the first thing is that's just where i feel the most free you know my field notes don't lose their charge you know and those are bumper stickers and they're meant to sound kind of cute but i can trust that anytime i grab my pencil on that piece of paper that that thing's ready to go you know there's been times on a plane where my phone's you know acting up or or i couldn't get it out of my head fast enough it was faster just to grab a scrap of paper or you know definitely in my field notes right so there is just something i come from a dad and a mom and you know my dad was a master doodler when he was on the phone or something and you know when he would get done he'd have this whole landscape of stuff built so it was you know it was like this accepted thing to be to get weird on paper we'll just say right so all the way back i always had sketch pads laying around and i would i could draw you know maybe not the best but what does that even mean it would it was never about your good or you're bad it was just you can do it so do it and it was just you know if you tell a kid you can't do it that's what they're going to remember there was none of that my dad wasn't a master woodworker he just went and did it my mom wasn't well she was a hell of a basket weaver but she was you know i remember you know the smell of the reeds soaking you know for her baskets that she made these beautiful baskets she would weave you know in the early eighties so that's what they did for fun and for hobby and of course raised us but it wasn't really like a no family you can't we just didn't know any better just went sort of did it so with paper there's just something about you know i'm not trying to be cute but grocery lists just feel better on a piece of paper you know yeah and you're not going to lose that anytime soon and i do like to think on whatever sort of what would even anthropological level if you go back to you know cave people with a stick and digging around in the dirt you know planning a hunt or you know taking the sticks and putting them in the fire then using that you know that little bit of charcoal on the end of that thing to paint on the wall that there's just something about how to get an idea into whatever medium it is that's just a quicker connection and i know the pressures now we are ten fifteen years into the iphone you know awesomeness and the sea change that happened how many times in our lives are we gonna experience that my mom got to see television come out right and you know johnny gamber got to see got to see the speaking spell you know be introduced to the masses change things forever but we got to all experience everything in the world you know a click away and then everything in the world within your pocket right so that was awesome and i use it ferociously but it also scared me because you know for every well meaning person that comes after me and then says okay draplin it's great and all field notes blah blah blah we're gonna make you an app that you can sit and draw on your phone and we'll call it field notes for the app and it's like you guys get a pencil get a pencil and paper not even field notes anything and see what happens because if i you know without trying to sound academic or too npr ish what is it at least for me that i can get something done quicker there get to something exciting there i don't know what that there's a the pipeline is a little more open you know there's there's no intimidation you know it's like if i go crack into a brand new adobe illustrator it's is going to steer me it's going to steer me what tools i have open what constraints i have set up and there's just something about starting it so like just you know examples like i have a friend who's there's really no money involved he's starting a podcast and he reached out and said can you help me with a logo and it was like of course man well how much is it going to cost rapple and then just i'll just do it and he doesn't need a lot but he's got the initials rw so for me to just climb into illustrator like i did while we're still on the phone and i just start typing out the name of this podcast and the things and the stuff i'm getting this thing going i had to stop myself and remind myself to just go in pencil paper and get going and i'm telling you within like ten minutes i had things to go after and that's just freestyle it's one three point five by five point five page and that's just the magic of this stuff that's really interesting to me that you know it's not just on that bit of paper you know i also use my big bratwurst finger to swipe inside notes and draw in there too it's about speed you know it's about it's about being loose and it's about well here just if you don't okay buckle up gentlemen buckle up i want you to dig into the landscape of your minds and i want you to imagine me buck naked i'm talking nothing just buck buck ass naked and i'm in a hot shower in an overpriced hotel on one of my speaking gigs somewhere now one of five i bring lee along for security and she helps me cry before the show and all the sort of rituals i go through stealing things out of the room using every single towel on the whole floor all that all the rituals she helps me with all that shit and you know any number of times i'm in that shower with that modern pane of glass and there's something about it's all steamed up and we're racing to get the hell out of the you know the room and i'm drawing on that pane of glass with my finger and there's something awesome about that like i've just screamed her and hey hey bring my phone in here real quick and just get a photo of this thing because even with my fingertip in the fog glass i've come up with things that i wouldn't have come up with with a tiny little pencil or whatever i'm using in my pocket right the limitation of the finger being like well let's say an inch brush right my pencil whatever brush setting for a pencil is what couple pixels or something you know you can see how i think here it's like using your fingertip there was a limitation there like you couldn't get round you know right corners you have to kind of be fluid and i hit something we recorded it and then you know i get out and you know towel off and and you know eating coffee grounds and ripping down you know curtains and drying off with them and just you know crash that room i mean just if you're planning a trip look at my itinerary and do not do not go to those towns because you just don't know what was happening if walls could talk and all those rooms people

would pay good money for that photo

of you in the shower what was happening in that room but then to go take that photo and bring it into illustrator and go and build something out of it that's the magic of paper for me or anything for the matter you know even when i'm on my workshops and you know getting a whiteboard and a big beefy you know marker and that freedom there to hit something there's something loose primal unprofessional or something i don't know what the words you just use just like it's just kind of random random sometimes there's accidents yeah we'll say so yeah you know i've learned to savor that and the faster that we're going and we're all doing it i've just learned how to take that slow it down remind myself to go back to that thing before i go too far into the micro nerdery of illustrator you know

i whenever whenever i see you in person which has happened a few times now i think i first met you in twenty

thirteen maybe when you came to fort

wayne indiana then a couple times since then at the facebook design lecture series and the adobe max conference which is really amazing i always love it when you just show me a little glimpse into your field notes that you have in your pocket because it's such a good kind of a good just view into like how you synthesize and how you think about those things so yeah so i think that's it's really really interesting to see and speaking of field notes by the way we just got our heavy duty notebooks in last week and i put a grocery list in one of those things and you're right super satisfying cool yeah so we're all three three big field notes fans and i'm sure that you have recounted many many times the story of how they came into existence but would you be would you be willing to do so

for us of course let me see if i can condense this down into the most hot three words or less focused potent forty seven minutes you've ever

i mean it's i've told it so many times it's like i tend to do a little bit of lying and cheating and stealing here and there and this fishtail you know takes off but i think you know to go back and think about the reason why these things came out of me or why i wanted to make my own you have to go back to when like i always had a little sketchbook in my pocket and it was frustrating to me that when i would travel or when i would make something they were always a different size you know so to store them things are stacked in weird ways and then they're not necessarily lined up and that's like what i remember it's like when i went back to minneapolis i would keep myself within we'll just say back pay back pocket range like i want to be able to put in my back pocket or my inner pocket and if it's a hardcover it's like this couple pounds of shit like up you know up against your inside your jacket or something and we met this young lady in minneapolis who was from japan mickey araki and mickey was going back home to see her parents or something you know for christmas and she showed us in this sort of fledgling internet all the muji stuff and of course it flipped me out because it wasn't about having logos it wasn't it was just about pure function so i think i gave her like eighty bucks or one hundred bucks and she brought me back you know in nineteen ninety nine this stack of stuff you know and i used that for years and years and years these really simple utilitarian little just you know i guess just a little memo book so i use this for a bunch of years i ran out of those things a couple years later you know i'm making my own books i'm making my own things a couple years later i went to milan and in milan i guess that would have been two thousand three on a day off i was there working on union the union binding company snowboard bindings on the day off we went down to milan to go shopping and ran around the city and got to go to these cool you know not only did we get to go to like whatever their miracle mile is where like i remember we went in there and we went into prada and there was a six thousand dollars sweater sitting there you know and me look at the guy going you don't got a three x tall no can't find the three x tall huh no no no no no no big and tall section here huh fellas on the guy get out of here whatever the hell he said get out of here you know something to that effect there's guards you have to be buzzed in we got to see that shit that afternoon but we also went to just like whatever their version of dick blick is right yeah and how beautiful every pencil and pen and pad was and that's the first time i saw moleskine so i'm never going back to milan you know much less leaving the country much less whatever and i bought like a bunch of stuff couple hundred bucks worth brought it back to the states used it used it used it would read the little thing in the back about how van gogh used these things and hemingway or whatever the hell they said and it really touched me because i was thinking wow of course this thing works this is what this is they had a version of this in eighteen eighty eight or whatever it was you know and of course it would work for van gogh or fifty years later for hemingway and then you come to find out there was a link somewhere where that was kind of just marketing bullshit that wasn't the truth you know yeah and i know it sounds like come on you couldn't have been that affected but you know what i love about the bands i love or the brands or whatever they live and die by their decisions right and you really felt like this is a real story and by me buying a couple hundred bucks these things get to last a little bit longer no it was marketing bullshit and it just hurt me and then when you step back from that you know i was trained how to go find indie record labels and support those things and believe in those things right so i knew how to go find those things so for me to go try to find what well what's the next level i can't get muji in the states i'm not going to use these moleskins i'm not really feeling what they have at target and i would always look i just went and made my own and that would have been somewhere around two thousand three four i made a couple hundred on my own with a goko machine hand scored them built them called them field notes because really what that was was you know if you go to what's the one i always like to make fun of plywood world or something right you know you go to this place that's like or just something that's real like a hardware store or like even like you know what do you call it like a nursery or something i've been to these places where you go to ikea they give you a half a pencil and paper piece of paper right to write down the numbers you go to some nursery or hardware store or feed and seed and they're going to throw you something to write the numbers down to take notes and a pencil and then that transaction right there it's a couple bucks out of their pocket who cares but it's perfectly functional it goes way way way back and i want to feel as authentic and undesigned as those moments i had experienced as a kid growing up in the rural midwest right so to call it field on so just felt like the simplest thing that's what these are but tapping into like there were actually people scientists and stuff out in the field doing the work like could you maybe make something that they wouldn't tap into whatever you know hipster sensibility that this thing has taken on at some points but just tap into that is just something that works for what i need it to work for that's where it started so you know the one typeface the really simple materials first of all it's not like we invented anything these things had been going for years and i had tons of beautiful examples from feed and seeds and haberdasheries and you know just stuff and businesses and things all across the midwest out to the west and i used a couple of those but sometimes there would be like the first couple pages would have some chicken scratch in it you know and you just felt like i don't want to be mingling with these ghosts you know someone else already started this thing other times you just kind of felt like this isn't my world you know feed and seed and corn so i would collect those things voraciously and rat home away and just tried to learn from them so the writing that you would see in those first couple that was purely just me reacting to like when there would be an extra page in some of these little farm tracks and stuff they would put jokes and shit you know so you can imagine these guys in their lunch hour doing the work and then reading this bullshit you know it's almost like a farmer's almanac or something right and like who even knows what that is you know and i remember those as a kid so it became this vessel to express you know to make fun of my buddies or to celebrate someone actually using a handful of them so i make my first two thousand for two thousand bucks and then i gave a stack of them to jim kudal and jim was a fan and turns out he knew about my shit too he was in chicago and i had been reading their daily signals for a couple years you know and sharing different things so they knew about me a little bit and i knew a lot about them and i gave a stack to jim and we just shook hands and he just said you're onto something here kid jim's got about fourteen years on me right so he had been through it and knew all about it and knew how to do all that stuff and saw something we shook hands we became a business before i knew it we had a website things and stuff and the rest we are was it number forty seven that just came out and countless others you know but yeah that's field notes i mean within a couple years we had like people working for it you know selling things planning things and my relationship changed i would do everything but then we got brian bedell and brian could go toe to toe with me you know design wise and it was like cool i'm out in portland they're back in chicago so yeah that's the whole story yeah that wasn't so bad in what seven and a half minutes not bad yeah

a podcast is like twelve minutes long for one answer that is just gross but reel me in fellas i find

yeah i think i do remember meeting her once we went out there yeah

say every time i go back there it's pretty casual for sure of all it's like what what do you what are you into what what are you thinking you know and there have been many where i had nothing to do with it you know like i would sort of show up like this last one was really fun heavy duty because i didn't really have a lot of involvement you know i could i don't i don't even know whose idea it was it was just sort of like you know i have selfish little things and that's when you see that miko rogue out here and do the debtors or the dead prints or something out here but you know it's all really very diplomatic and very democratic like how these guys come up with an idea it's like well just the funnest coolest you know most attainable like you know it's never really there's a little bit of planning as far as timing and budget and stuff but more often i mean all the time it's like that would just be really cool yeah we even do that let's do it and that is what i love about what jim and michelle and all of them have been able to sort of facilitate because i'm just shitty enough to where i would have killed it you know not knowing what i was doing that would have happened but with a little bit of you know these are like adults these people you know a little bit of adult guidance they've been able to build it into you know it's solvent it's really simple how we do it but yeah i bring ideas you know a couple times a year i try to threaten things and other times you know it's just kind of like hey this is what we're doing hope you dig it i'm all there's never been anything that i've just like you know it's always like you know make them as colorful as possible but see there's always people thinking about throwing curve balls and then what's within the budget what's just a little out of budget what did we do well on what's what are we having a hard time moving and then making decisions against that so it's all a big combination but i mean the funnest you know the funnest part for me is you know with me being in portland sometimes i'm just i'm just so busy out here doing all my other you know bullshit that like i get i get to taste a little bit of that surprise you know so you know but you know guess would be you know the middle of september when i finally get my shipment of heavy duty out here you know if anyone's listening from field notes send the goddamn shipment but no jim you know see what you can't do i you know they're always the moment they come out it's always going so fast you know i don't want to bug them and shit but i'll get my stash and i get to i get to feel that quality of like you know like wow the first time in your hands and that's my favorite part about field notes is that someone who taps into our subscription and those things show up and you don't know what they're going to be and they're fun and they work and you know i've read some bullshit comments where someone didn't like these or someone did like these you know here's what i like about this i like that there's a new model injected into the line you know yeah because cause it's not always going to be mine get a little floppy you know they get a little floppy so to use this thing you know in a way where you can lean into it i don't quite need the steno that's too much real estate for me but now you know i have any number of times someone's pulled me aside and said i need a steno at this size and was like just chill out but i took those notes and now it came to life now listen if you're not feeling it go use national parks or anything for that matter it's paper and we need to be you know moving quick and allowing for all sorts of different people to use these things you know so i love them i love them because now i get to say if you are new to our brand and you want a hard back or a soft back or a little or a big we're getting like seven eight different things going you know yeah that's what

the answer is sure i mean you know like if it goes well and we blast through those things and by the way they are selling if if it goes well well then we would go back and you know you've seen things come out and we try a little something people flip out and then they say god those are gone i want a larger one and then you see one injected into the line you know like you know the black one porter's notebooks yeah it's like so sometimes it's a bit of a test sometimes it just gets just gets weird you know the end notes were just weird but i'm just glad that because that was another weird version that we made you know when you look back at my collection of these things they weren't five by five by three point five some were like so big you couldn't get them in your pocket some were like big ledgers some were like two inches by you know an inch and a half like tiny little address books and stuff so you know what's fun about our brand is if you just want you know a set of three for just you know like the way my uncle uses them to sketch dimensions for hanging drywall for his sons that is perfect you can go in there and grab they're nondescript now if you want to get into the juicy stuff like this morning i put an order in my mom wanted a couple more sets of the xoxo because she thinks they're just beautiful and they are you know just like them because there's lots of color so my little selfish requests are always like keep the stuff that someone could just roll in and just need to just meet that need okay there's our craft okay but what about if you are young old female man what do we have you know what if you're a little kid what do you pick if you're a little kid you know and the fun part is i don't really have to bring that up much they're always thinking about that so yeah this thing goes crazy i would push to say we need that at all times you know and they're probably already thinking about that see that's you know when there's adults running the damn thing i don't have to worry about worry about that you know they're thinking on lots of different levels you

know but on the the so on the other hand a lot of the field notes that come straight from you are just really interesting like you know like the deader prince and the what is it called the eek yeah the eeks and then the one that you did like christmas twenty fourteen with the big copper and like some of those are just some of my favorite editions because you just like get a little wacky with the color okay you guys

are gonna have to buckle up here because this one's off the record but now we're back on the record but then we're not because you know what fuck it we're just off the record here we're no wait we're totally on the record i'm just gonna come out and say it keep recording wealthy turn up the volume turn up the gain to not put it on the little right setting because here's what i want to say yeah sometimes i just do them sometimes i just do them and you know they're going so fast and they're going and they're so smart with their decision making back in chicago if i try to call them and cry the phone and say jim here's my shitty idea here's what i'm going to do you know you can just hear him like shaking his head because he just knows what an animal i am and if i think about it too much i'll screw it up in a different way you know so you know i always tell jim well you you brought me into the fray you gave me you know you gave me this you know you gave me life thank you you know but i'm gonna throw some curveballs and i'm gonna get weird because we need those things because certain record companies when i was a kid you know they would have side deals and all of a sudden a band you know does a song and they do a weird little seven inch and then the record of the company didn't even see it coming and then everyone in the company wants one of those and then when we get to know about it and it gets thrown in with your order that's just magical right so you know to bring that to this thing it's like you know there's many times i want to do something and the scale is just so much bigger for our subscription and our quarterlies right yeah that it's kind of like i don't want to put those guys through that i just simply want a black cover with orange paper in the inside you know from when my book came out the eek the everything else enhancement kit is what that eek was so when you bought the book pretty much everything you got the everything else enhancement kit we sold so many of those a couple thousand sets of these fuckers it was awesome but you know knowing that that like i would didn't want to burden them with like the excess first of all we're to a point now you know when the book came out in twenty sixteen i had five thousand sets laying around they were gone in ten days and that was insane to me it's like you know the next time i did it i want to say i did seven thousand five hundred sets of something i don't know what it was like it just gets to a point where i do them on my own here that i can't even fit them in my old shop or now in my new shop right because yes we'll move them so you keep it at this attainable number to be like we're just gonna get rid of them but i'm always gonna keep a stash put away it's not just about you know sure you gotta get paid back for all the stuff is expensive to make gotta get paid back for that so you're not you know it just comes out of my pocket when i make those things but you also want to make sure that everyone can get one play with them you know enjoy them and then have a little stash to sprinkle on people later on so that's fun to me to do that out here and you know that comes with little warnings where jim will just be like hey you kind of got to let me know what you're gonna do because you're creating a frenzy you animal you know do

you put the nuts in field nuts

oh yeah yeah those field nuts they'll stab you right in the face they they'll stab with a you know sharpened by some diamond encrusted artisanally built i don't know they'll stab you right in the face i can smell them a mile away i can see them sweating and screaming from a mile away yeah you know of course i i tap into it a little bit but i love to see the fervor and i love to see the interest and just and not i don't i could give two shits about the speculation and like sort of like well i don't like it and you do like it what i like is when someone writes me and says i'm new to this and i really like what you guys are doing i like the writing i like the spirit i found this group people are trading that happens a lot more than some knucklehead and by the way it does happen i get these dipshits calling me and being like i don't like this and there's like these certain things i've gotten to you know gotten to know and all i can say is without naming any names is they're just horrible people you know i don't care if it's field notes or whatever you know i mean it's they're just people you wouldn't want to associate with and it's like god you took the time to kind of like come after me go away you know for every one of those you know there's ten james spears you know for every one of those there's you know there's people that are really into it and are great you know there's a pauline potts you know trading with people and you know may the universe rest her soul you know there's people that are just enjoying these things there's people making money sure you know there's people that are just you know there's a there's a larry grimaldi who is just burning through those things two and three and five and six a day you know yeah which is awesome i've met larry every time i go back there and it's to the point now where it's like you know i see him we hug it out how's your family how's my family you know like how cool is that you know so you know the weird stuff that comes out of any you know listen it's no different on the melvins you know there's a band called the melvins right yeah and when you go look at some of their forums or whatever the hell it's the same shit you know it's yeah there's always someone you know causing trouble and there's always someone who's pulling some shit there's always someone who is brand new to the band and that's the shit i tune into like i just like seeing people discover us you know that's really fun to me so yeah yeah yeah such a rabbit hole here also this much is the mic still hot johnny is the mic still hot because listen the better prints are long gone i mean they're long gone but i may or may not have a stash here and you'll never know you'll never know you never know come to our merch table and you'd be surprised shit just shows up shit just shows up and you keep the mic run keep the thing hot mic hot mic i already have new shit designed and i'm not going to say anything else okay next question sorry

i'd have to kill you johnny i don't want

it's all right it's worth it i

can do this by ourselves take a

yeah okay listen listen you i would love to unpack this for you i know you guys are a pencil podcast and if you guys think i give two shits about the latest black wing you're crazy but they don't fit in the pocket who cares okay what i liked you know about pencils when i was a kid was they were like giveaways and they were like little freebies and stuff and if you found something that felt good in your hand around one or a hex pencil or something and it had you know it was like a school fundraiser or from a company my dad would go to i would use that stuff you know every year when we went you know school shopping for your supplies i didn't really need to get new pens and pencils i had i had my stuff set aside you know so going all the way back i knew what worked well for me to draw it was the basic good soft number two ish kind of thing and there were certain brands and i loved anything that was made in america they always felt better and they had just a different veneer and when i started to make my own stuff it was really important to me to make pencils and pens using the simplest of chassis in a fun way you know it's a pencil these aren't gonna be ten bucks a piece they're like a buck or a buck fifty or you know like what's even a buck fifty anymore you know we're a buck ninety nine or something you get them for a quarter you put some fun graphics and that's how you keep your business running right so you know i was lucky to make my first bunch of pencils and they came back and felt really good in the hands because you know when you get into the promo game sometimes you make this stuff and you're just like they just don't feel good i've been lied to and they show up and it's got a big china stamped in the side there's nothing wrong with that but it's just kind of like oh man you told me they were made in the states i like the idea that a pencil as simple as it is someone is still making these things not for me for people who need pencils you know somewhere in tennessee which is where i make mine you know to this day my hex pencils and stuff so i was lucky to stumble onto a couple sources sometimes they didn't go well i would just give them out you know and get rid of them and then you know i don't know mid two thousands field notes has taken off and you know when you use one little piece from a promo source and i can't even remember i mean really to answer your question johnny who makes those i'd have to ask michelle she would know where to go and you know what was to do but what i remember is so in the mid two thousands there's like this sort of movement to kind of get back to where you can buy like a recycled pencil or a recycled pen case and they're really talking about how you know they they boil this stuff down and they can make and they were a little more money somewhere in there there was this cedar wood pencil and it was touted as you know the ferrule like what are all these terms you know i had to learn what went into a pencil the wood was sustainably managed the lead came from this thing it was like they just broke it down like the average dipshit they could care less about that is the thing sharp and does it work right but for me i learned about pencils i learned about what it takes to make a pencil and then i learned that wow you could make something that was actually responsible you know the way you manufacture this thing so the first one i made i just wanted to celebrate all this you know lacquer free renewable cal cedar wood i'm reading the one i have laying around here in my desk like this one i have here it's got the end is cut off because i'm sure the eraser had dried out so that means it goes back a lot of years you know and it's probably about three and a half four inches long it's getting into the graphics i've whittled it down so many times sharpened it so many times so that means it's been around a long time that's what i liked about picking that thing up the first time i picked when they when those samples came back it felt good right away and then you could print a big graphic on it you know like the pencils i make now my hex pencils they're fucking amazing because they do a hot press into them and you can feel the you know the divot and the davit and the little impression and they're just like some kick ass vintage pencil and no they were made in tennessee last week right so i just love that that process still exists and i want to you know it's gonna go away you know and then you're just what are you gonna have like a digital printed pencil or you know who even needs pencils who even needs writing instruments we can just think our shit to each other you know whatever so you know you know just a little nod to you guys i love that you guys still really you know go into this stuff and celebrate it and play with it and you know nerd out i guess like the shit you know whatever that's that's a cool term to me it's like you guys go deep in because it's a it's a story really of like production in america and creativity and functionalism and just how these things work in your hands so you know like the original field notes pencil then i remember you know michelle saying aaron the couple thousand you sent us they're gone here's the thing when michelle went and had to dig these things up it was just like please make twenty thousand of them i only made a couple thousand and we did and people dug them and they still work that's just what i like about it the first time i felt it i knew that's all i need that's a rare occurrence i guess is what i'm saying i like to celebrate those sorts of things it's like you know a pair of chuck taylors or a pair of five hundred and one s or like you know like a white t shirt or a black sweatshirt or just things that just work you know like a bandana you don't need to have like a bandana come out that's you know you know what i mean like that's like a hexagon like a square one just kind of works so there's something special about these things that you know like that's kind of what i hope a field notes would feel like it's like it just works you

bullet pencil well i remember when i was like a little kid seeing them in the pockets of old timers first of all i remember people using them in northern michigan where i lived i remember old timers with big piles of shit on their chest you know what i mean there's a memo book in there there's a little case for their glasses there's chewing tobacco there's a couple different pens and pencils there's a couple little rulers even what do you call those pocket protectors i kind of remember those these are good old boys that had everything they needed on their chest you know what i mean so you know seeing them as a kid you know and then seeing them go away and then you would come across them you know and like we'll just say the early two thousands late nineties i would see them in like junk stores and stuff and they'd be like twenty two bucks because yes it's a john deere collectible or something and it just would be like man this is i'm not paying forty bucks so i can like fund someone who's gonna die any day now at this you know this hospice or whatever the hell so i started looking on ebay and i would get you know old you know odd lots of you know odd lots of memo books off of that and then of course these bullet pencils so i've got five or six hundred of the damn things because when i was looking sometimes it'd be a penny a piece and sometimes it'd be like fifty bucks it just depends on who thinks that these things are sort of worth something and what i just loved so much about the whole spectrum is they were just completely shameless not only did they work well and they would work on the plane when i travel i still carry them i mean of course i carry my little you can hear me open up my little drawer here because of course i'm always gonna have my little space pen field notes but man i've lost so many of those things are so smooth and you know just small and you know the black one with that little hit of gold i've lost many of those things but i always have one of those in my pockets and i always have a pencil you know like a bullet pencil in my pocket so there was this something about like oh yeah i'm getting a ton of these things like if you come here you can grab a handful you know i don't you know i've cherry picked the ones i like the most out of there you know the ones i use the most but there was just something like you know like i guess i don't even know what the word is sort of disposable that i love like and i have these sales sample these sales sample sets salesman i'm gonna start over i had these salesman sample sets right and what it showed you is like okay this is the this is the entire spectrum of like promotional pencils everything from like little bowling pins that were a pen or or some little bat that was a pencil or something something something oh you know the wacky stuff little hammers and shit down to like like big thick pencils down to the bullet pencils a couple different kinds you know the one pen you know you can see the lady you know the naked lady kind of thing or a train going by so these salesman sample sets you got to see the entire spectrum that they offered in nineteen sixty two and down the corner we these tiny compact little things you could just do a little pad print on the side and that's like my favorite thing it's like just something that just says i'm looking at one right now farmers merchants bank hager insurance wimbledon north dakota you know who gives two shits about wimbledon north dakota but see every time i touch this thing i think about that little town and it works or the idea that people used to say come and get your tires rotated at so and so you know garage just the quality that someone would give you this thing you use it and every time that you would remind me that's working i just love that sort of like really simple quality to these things and in the color you know i mean you know i know we've spoken you know at different times about this you guys like different ones and different things and you know i just like the idea that like you can still go on ebay and get you know a big stack of them i look all the time

well no see this is the shitty part like you love that one but the scary part about these things is what if you lost that one right yeah man and you'd be bought whatever but i've lost like that's what i love about them they weren't this eighty five dollar artisanal overwrought kind of thing i just can go grab another one and it'll work or even this just cut a pencil in half and put it in your pocket you know then it's always working you can't have a full pencil you'll stab yourself or you know it's not going to work inside just the geometry of our legs but that little half pencil will or that little bullet pencil or that little field notes you know a little space pen or whatever so there's something about like those tools and having them around i mean there's been many many times on the plane where i've got you know like i don't have anything in my bag and i have to go into my merch grab a couple pencils and there's no way to even sharpen it on the plane so you know i'm on that plane wiggling around like an asshole because i'm using you know some little sharp piece of the you know the machinery the the seat frame to try to sharpen the sun bitch and i can get it right down to whatever so i can at just least get my ideas down in my field notes right or you know you know suck it up and just ask the lady can i get a pen or dig around and find something there you know these are tools you know for what i the way i use them it you know there's just something like why did that go away you know who like i mean i know we talked about in the podcast or whatever you know what ten years ago in a whole nother lifetime that like like umpires use them umpires still use them that's cool why because they can compact and put in their pocket you know right next to their little ass pocket of you know whatever liquor that they're swelling that afternoon you know trying to make those calls you know i i this is all just function you know so there's just something about that like quality of like you know where did that go i know there's a bunch of new versions out there i've seen the one that's like at the kicker land or something and it's like actual because it wasn't you know when you look into the lore of this and i haven't gone that far because there's not a lot of writing about it but you know these like vets you know these these like well soldiers in world war two they take a bullet casing cut the pencil off and that's where the thing went you know you take the pencil out you flip it around you have this longer thing in a bullet casing and that's where the bullet pencil thing comes from well you know to me it's more just the compact pencil that's what i like you know and there's no reason to make a pencil that folds in half you know what i mean or something like so you know those are out there they still work now granted when you go buy a bunch off you know online they're from nineteen forty or nineteen fifty or nineteen seventy or whatever that eraser is going to be you know a piece of rock hard just something you know it's long gone and dead so there are a certain there was a certain type that came with a plastic top and they were for they were for ballpoint pens that's my favorite one isn't what i do i'm using one of those right now yeah so what you do is you just put your little half you know whatever little pencil piece that you like in there and then that thing stays that way you know they crack after a while i've lost lost them any number of times and then realize shit that thing's still on that plane but there's just an ebb and flow it's like well so what there was a couple bucks or yeah that one had you know like i would just hate to think that's why my recommendation tim is like don't use that one anymore just don't put it away put it away so you can play with it because there are a couple that are so special to me i just i got a story behind yeah you just you know what's cool about these things is there's just a risk you're gonna lose it so just you know play with that you know don't take your favorite pencil you're using like there's i have this one little rainbow cup here you know here that sounds pretty good all that high gain huh well in that little in that little guy you know i'm just gonna grab some of the pencils i got here's a dixon ticonderoga here's a couple ddc ones here's something that just says midwest is best now i don't know who gave me this thing but it's got that kind of like maybe like a number two number three kind of thing going on like it's just a nice flowing pencil right like i can't around with these four h's and stuff you know that's not you know i'm not i'm not interested in you know six h or any of that kind of i like to draw just right with a fork yeah you know so you know in this little thing i have here that's the stuff that i would never grab from to take on the road you know i like having that little fifty or sixty things to go play there's a couple highlighters in there there's a couple sign markers a bunch of sharpies all these upside down you know little metallic sharpies you have to keep them upside down so those are just like within you know six inches away from me but i know better than to tap into that stuff when i go on the road it's always like ddc pencils and you always have a couple laying around that need to be sharpened and then ones that just start getting whittled down after a while i've got these ones that are probably like you know four three three and a half four or five inches because i've just used them for years you know the racer's gone you know the stuff i cut it off it got dried out or whatever but it's a pencil and it still works that's just that is why i wanted to talk to you guys because look who even uses pencils anymore you know i know we have no idea i know i know that like you know there's enthusiasts and shit you know there's mother fuckers in these what do you call them when they call it the nib what do they call it the fountain pen mafia stab you right in the eye with a with a ph factor you know whatever lammy right in the old sit right in the eyeball you know those things are cool and all but i just don't give a you know it's like i just you know just even just a simple big click pen that's enough for me

johnny cool so johnny are you alive okay there you go i

he was looking at his his fountain pens

johnny i'm not i'm not looking

yeah yeah well as i'm as i'm grabbing my lammy i bought this lammy in berlin when i went in i guess it would have been around christmas time and the sun bitch is dry as ever like remember remember you guys are you guys are you know asking me what my favorites are well this goes all the way back to high school like when i went to chicago for the first time when i was about fourteen or fifteen years old the gift i was allowed to get was fifty bucks and i got a a rapidograph pen set right from like point zero zero five up to like two or something which is probably two point line and they were amazing because at that time i was making cheat sheets for friends and i could write small i had homer's you know odyssey all twenty six books you know boiled down to a sentence for each book or whatever it was or whatever that was iliad or something under the size of a stamp you know for a buddy that i sold and i would laminate it's like of a piece put it in his mouth and cottage industry in northern michigan well you know those pencils were amazing and they were so those pens were so amazing they were so volatile because that little tiny filament inside that little you know that little cartridge or whatever like they would dry out and you'd have to kind of like go and like you know like let them soak and stuff and you know you could just only use them for just so long and that taught me this weird lesson of like those things are cool if you're like an adult and maintaining them right so like even just sitting here i grabbed a lambie that i bought in berlin back in like december and it's just dry and who knows it's gonna take me a while to get this some it's dry who knows so i have to go clean it and all just what a pain in the ass so when i answer this it's like you know first of all for field notes it's like well the stuff that we have accessible you know if i if i was to say one of my favorite you know three top three pencils i know you guys could tell me the so and so by so and so by so and so but really what i would tell you is just what's on my desk and what's sharp and what the eraser still works you know what i mean and that's just the best i could say it because it's just about like you know it just working now you know every time i've ever gone over to berlin and you grab a big you know staedtler you know pile of something over there like you know when you go to their target it's just that much cooler than our level of a target here you know like you know i remember one time i bought this and i'm looking at it it's this beautiful you know sixty five dollars rotring you know zero point seven i've never used it once because i just don't want to lose it i don't want to break it and it's just so awesome but you know it's just kind of like i didn't really even need that thing so i hide it you know it's like an heirloom or something and it's never gonna get used so you know i'm really careful when i go on the road and load up too much with this because when i come home it's just gonna sit what i'm gonna use are just shitty pencils that work right so same with the field notes it's like first of all i don't really use i won't i probably i'll use that heavy duty but it'll be something like in the garage or something because i i stick to the five you know five point five three point five you know just our classic size because i like to you know the way that they it takes me about ten to twelve days to get through through one and then i'm on to the next one so when people ask me my favorites really the best answer is like whatever the last one was you know now if it is a different format or a different size like i don't think i ever use the endnotes they just weren't for me but i love when people who were writing a certain kind of way used them a certain kind of new way that surprised me that's where i saw the brilliance you know it's like all right cool cool this thing is you know the dime novels i miss those because you know even though we have them in the general population that size i didn't really use those because it just i didn't want to crack one open if i used two pages i would have to use the other sixty four pages or whatever you know and then it wouldn't fit with my other guys so because i put them away into the boxes and then i go back into them once a year and just take a look at how things kind of played out over the course of the year so you know the things that come to mind are ravenswing and you know the snow blind and there's just so many you know yeah really lovely ones but you know also i go through phases where it's like i want the most color when i'm on the road i want the most colorful shit we make so so those like what were they called exposures or something where it came with like a pack of five oh yeah the unexposed unexposed unexposed oh i loved them because they were bright capital ones they were bright and they had a weird texture and they were just bright and it was like you couldn't lose them in a hotel room you know and you know the raven's wings it felt so sinister and cool and kind of slimy and kind of so smart and kind of spy novel and i just remember that being like wow man with just simple embossing we made a classic we made a classic here you know and it was actually if i remember correctly they were more affordable to make because you're not printing on the damn things you're just pressing you know whatever it was and it's funny when you learn those little tiny things so when i go back through them i mean first of all there's just so many but in the last couple years you know to kind of answer your question i keep going back to those wilcos because there's lots of color and that was just such a fun project obviously i love the dead prints and the deader prints because they're just bright and weird and chalky on the COVID but i have gone back and used like you know stuff that's good for stickers you know so you know i think it was like that what was the one where like what was the one that the damn names that turned blue was that snowball yeah

still work all these years five years later what are they still working i went and dug one out of the archives and cracked open a three pack and i've used all three of those over the course of the last couple years because they just felt good in the hands like i love anything soft touch always feels good but you know just as a spirit sort of thing you i'm always using the latest bullshit always and today i'm proud to report as all my shit you know on the high gain here i am using a looks like it's the morse code third man yellow book the morse code those are gorgeous they're awesome you know ten years ago we had we were really close to making a set for those guys ten years ago and it just it just didn't work you know

they had to wait till wilco did

it all right and then you know that they just did these and they're out there and they're floating around and they're awesome i just you know i'm a fan of third man number one we've met jack you know couple times and been able to say thanks and i just i appreciate his level of detail you know and i love how he curates the bands and everything you know even just the songs i'm about fifty percent of what he does you know as i actually own and like you know but i like a hundred percent of his thinking you know what i mean like he's always got good causes and good stuff and good craft and you know and also shitty little tchotchkes too you know like some of the stuff is awesome and some of it's just junk and i just like that too you know that's kind of like what the ddc is about you know but yeah so you know to go back there have been a couple that were just almost too nice like every year when those xxos come out it's always like fuck i'm like afraid to use them because they're just so beautiful and rare and special and i just really like what andy baio does you know and he's such a sweet guy great family man i just like him those andes are great you know i'm connected to these things just just by who is behind them too you know so yeah it's a hard one to answer because now we're so far in i'm still mourning i'm still mourning that we don't have any you know america the beautifuls left that's definitely one of my top three because they that one was awesome they just look shitty they look they look the part and they acted the part and they just just worked and they were tough and we you know brian told this great story how he made them fuck the registration up so they were a little off because you know if you go and you grab one hundred ten you grab ten of my finest you know feed and seed corn books from back in the day three two or three of those ten are going to have shitty registration you know they were just making them so fast and they couldn't even get the printing right and who cares it just was for royster seeds or something you know and it's like when brian went to get that feel right i mean that just made me love brian forever because he understood the charm you know it's like a big part of this it's like what does that thing feel like in your hands sure it's utah or whatever the hell it was or you know some you know golden amber waves of grain but like you know he just really nailed it you know so you know and i think i did the little flag on that one so i think you know if i had to go back and pick my favorite it's america the

beautiful yeah yeah that was the that was the one that got me into yeah the quarterlies the one i started

and i remember when it came out people hated it thank you yeah and

well i mean we well thank you guys for having me and for doing what you guys do and for loving pencils and celebrating them and getting weird with these things and just being such good sports you know what little i know about it you know i'll tune in every now and again and just kind of get lost and it's like i just appreciate what you guys do what am i working on well you know we saw a lot of dc merch i don't need to go and beat that that horse to death but i will you know drap them dot com backslash merch posters pins patches stickers decals fun shit hats goodies but yeah you know to everyone who's ever bought one thank you so much we continue to go crazy crazy with the ddc merch thank you for buying field notes fieldnotes brand dot com of course all the time how many years are we into this thing thirteen fourteen years i just so thankful that i have a life with it and that we offer you know a field note you know three pack for nine point nine nine or eleven point nine five and it's not forty bucks i'm just really proud of that and it comes with lots of fun detail everyone who subscribed if you haven't subscribed go subscribe you're going to pay more in parking you know the next couple months than you will for your subscription with field notes please check out all my skillshares you know what else there's all sorts of other shit but i mean i just would like to say you know what a weird time we're in and you know if i could if i could just be so brash and just sort of try to appeal to the listeners here in a very divided america in a very divided time and just say hey be good to yourselves be good to the people across the street be empathetic be human be soft learn read and be willing to allow new things in in the last couple weeks i don't know when you guys will post this stuff but you know with the passing of mister floyd it's been you know if you're not feeling something shame on you that's just what i would say and if you are feeling something well then go and help people and learn and share and let's change some shit for people who've been messed with for too long you know and you know you know wear your mask i mean it's so funny to me that you have to even plead for that but like i got off the phone with my uncle this morning who was like people are gonna be dying around here in michigan and you know these people it's a political issue now and he's like you know fuck it let him go you know because it's like if you want to be dumb then be dumb why do we celebrate that you know like that that is some virtue or something it's not you know we're the thing so collectively we are you know just working together to beat this shit back that's what i implore of everybody so you know you know here in portland we've been good sports and we're doing our best to do that and and i would ask the same of everybody listening so there there's my pitch for humanity and my pitch for you know goofy little posters and merch and things and stuff and thank you for having me you guys always thank

you it's been an absolute pleasure thank

you thank you all right

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