Whitelines Perfect Bound Square Notebook

Ever since I saw the new Whitelines squared paper at the National Stationery Show I've been meaning to try the new style in a notebook and finally had the chance. The Whitelines Perfect Bound Square Notebook with a black cover really is a perfect notebook, with the great whitelines paper but in a square format that's fantastically readable and writable.

The Perfect Bound notebook has rounded corners which is a nice detail, and the medium size A5 notebook has 48 sheets of 80gsm paper. The squared grid is similar in size to Rhodias (5mm I think), but the white lines don't get in the way of writing (and disappear when photocopying).

This has to be the first notebook I've used where the first page isn't bound tightly to the cover, making it almost useless for writing. I was very surprised and pleased that the first page lay flat against the rest of the notebook, and I didn't have to skip over that sheet or rip it out and undertake a repair job.

The paper is fantastic, truly fountain pen friendly so ink saturates the paper quickly and thereby dries very fast. The heavyweight paper doesn't let the ink bleed through, although there's something of a shadow as you can see in the above picture. But double-sided writing should be not problem, and you get used to the ghosts of sentences past.

One thing I didn't really notice but will mention: at the bottom of each page is a large rectangle 3 grid lines tall with very faint lettering denoting that Whitelines has a patent pending. This didn't really matter to me, but I wasn't put off by the Rhodia trademark in the bottom corner of the Webbie 1.0 either. If that's something that bothered you, this may irritate as well.

Otherwise, the black Perfect Bound Whitelines is a handsome grid notebook with many pluses and only one minus. The color scheme is attractive and unusual as well--I like the deep matte black with bright pumpkin orange banding and white print (the pictures don't really capture how bright the color is, nor how fine the black color is on the very sturdy cover).