Two people I know have mentioned this site in the past 24 hours so I just knew I had to feature it.
The site is called Bound for Anything and they allow you to customise a book for just about any purpose. You can choose from several sizes and one of the smaller ones will fit a Field Notes size Midori-style cover.
Just a small meander through the site:
Customization is fun but it’s a delicate balance of providing rich options and keeping the interface simple. These instructions will have you building your journal like a pro in no time.
We’ve broken the builder page down into three sections – The Heads-Up Status Display, Adding Sections, and Customizing Your Journal.
The Top – Your Heads-Up Status Display
The Progress Bar
The Progress Bar along the top keeps track of how many pages you have filled in your journal. You can also track your progress by looking at the page count below to see how many pages you’ve filled as well as how many that particular journal requires. Once you completely fill your journal the “Next Step: Review” button will activate. Click it to save your journal and advance to the shopping cart where you can review the contents of all the journals in your order.
Message Console
Occasionally we’ll show messages that will help you along in the process of making your journal. These will all appear below the Progress Bar so keep an eye out for ’em.
The Left – Adding Sections to your Journal
Sections
Each type of section in our growing library is represented by a block on the left side of the builder. While hovering over each section type, you can either click to add that section to your journal, or click the more info icon to view its details in the message console.
For most sections, by default, we’ll add 20 pages of that section to your journal. However if you have fewer than 20 pages remaining to be filled in your journal, we’ll just fill it up the rest of the way. Of course, you can always change the page counts at any time.
The Right – Customizing Your Journal
Journal Name
If you want, you can give your journal a name. Right now, this step is optional and is only used to keep multiple orders in your cart clear. However, we have some plans for the future like being able to re-order previous layouts that would benefit from having names. In any case, right now, it’s just an easy way to identify your journal – we won’t print the name anywhere in your journal (although that could be an interesting future feature as well…)
Cover Color
Choose a color for the cover of your journal. Most journals have several options for colors, and we’ll continue to expand our basic color options as we move forward as well as branch out into some fancier options.
Configure Options
Each section has its own options that you can tweak to tailor it to your needs. Take your time to peruse the options in each section and choose the configuration that fits you best.
Change the Page Count
There are a few different ways you can change the page count of an individual section. You can just click the up and down arrows to increment by one page at a time, or you can click on the number and type in a number for that section. Also, once you’ve clicked on the text field, you can use the up and down arrows on your computer if that’s your thing. Keep in mind though that there are certain sections that won’t let you directly change the page counts. Maps have a fixed number of pages depending on the city you choose. Any section that uses a date range (Daily Logs, Weekly & Monthly Calendars) calculates the number of pages based on the date input and the page count is not directly editable.
Fill Remainder
Clicking the Fill Remainder button for a particular section fills the rest of your remaining pages with that section. It works on any section that can have the page count manually adjusted (ie. not maps, calendars, etc.) and works from anywhere within your overall journal layout.
Rearrange Sections
You can easily rearrange the sections you’ve added to your journal by clicking and dragging on the handle on the left side of each section. Just grab it and move it wherever you want to put that section.
Remove Sections
Click the red X to remove any section you’ve added.
Preview Sections
Click ‘View Preview’ to see how each section will look in your journal. In most cases, the preview will update as you change the options for that section. NOTE: Daily Logs, Weekly Calendars, Monthly Calendars, and Map sections will show a representative sample; they won’t show the exact date or city you’ve chosen. But don’t worry, your journal will have exactly what you choose.
The +1
Some section types such as maps and calendars have to start on a specific side of a spread to display properly (you wouldn’t want the first half of your week on the right page and the second half of the week on the next page behind it…). Luckily, you don’t have to worry about this because our builder is smart enough to recognize if you’re trying to add it to the wrong page. If you add a section that, for example, always needs to start on an odd page, but would normally fall on an even page, we’ll go ahead and automatically add a blank page in front of that section to correct it. If you change the page totals before this section so that it would fall on the correct page, we’ll just remove that extra page. If this phantom page is added, you’ll see a +1 indicator next to the page count.
Our Only Weakness – Page count is over limit by one, then under by one
Although we tried to make our builder smart enough to account for making sure things start on the right page, it still has one weakness. It occurs when the auto-added correction page described above pushes the total page count over the limit. When you remove a page from a section prior to the auto-corrected one, the auto-added page is also removed because it’s no longer needed. The net effect is that you can get caught in a cycle of adding and removing 2 pages even though you’re only trying to change the count by 1. We’ve identified the cases where this can occur, and to help you out, we add a blank page at the end of your journal when this occurs. So if you notice that a one-page blank section gets added to your journal, don’t worry.
Ahem … I might just have ordered one of these! What a brilliant idea.
They are lovely aren’t they? Which pages did you choose?
I dithered over colour, then went for the blue. I was fairly boring with pages – 30 of both the micro-blogging and the checklists, 20 each of the plain, lined and squared notes pages, and then ten each of the contacts and recipes ones. And I just know that when it comes, I won’t want to use it, just to admire it!
Sounds fantastic! Please let me know when it comes and let me know what you think
Will do! Thanks for the tip-off about the site …
Oh this seems like a very good idea! Definitely helpful for those of us that like different papers in a notebook!