Collection: About Blanks

About Blanks Notebooks

About Blanks makes notebooks out of old books. Each one begins as a hardback that has gone out of print, and rather than being pulped it is taken apart, the original pages removed, and the cover refilled with blank paper. What comes back is a notebook still carrying its own title and spine, with decades of handling worn into the boards. The work is done by hand in the Netherlands, and the notebooks in this range run from around thirty dollars to the mid thirties.

The paper inside is FSC-certified, sourced responsibly rather than from virgin stock. Sizes vary from cover to cover, because books do, so a notebook made from a slim novel sits differently in the hand than one made from a thick reference volume. The pages are blank rather than lined, which is what lets a single product work as three things: a sketchbook for drawing, a notebook for keeping track of things, and a journal for writing at length.

There is also a part most people do not expect. About Blanks products are made in a social employment facility, where people with a disability or poor job prospects carry out the work. Sustainability here goes beyond reusing materials, and it is something worth knowing when you buy one.

Every cover is a single book. Each listing here is therefore one notebook, and the one in the photograph is the one that arrives: traveesuras, Tarragona, La Casita de chocolat, Peaks and Lamas, Un invierno. Some covers are bright and graphic, some are plain cloth in a single colour, and some carry a title that means something to whoever had it as a child. If you are buying for someone who reads, the cover is usually the reason to pick one over another.

That also makes them easy to give. A notebook is a safe present, and this is a version of it that does not look like anything else on a desk. Pair one with a pen from our writing instruments range, or with a sketchbook if the person you have in mind works in colour. There are smaller things in the stationery collection too, if the notebook is going alongside something else.

We keep the range in stock, and new covers arrive as About Blanks finds them. If there is a particular title or a particular look you have in mind that you are not able to find on the website, reach out to us and we will be glad to help.