Paperstyle on the Handwritten

There's something deeply human about the handwritten touch. That's why, for the launch of Nomad Edp, we partnered with Paperstyle, giving away notebooks to our inspiring community.

Founded in Sweden in 1997, Paperstyle was built on the idea of offering high-quality paper products with a timeless Scandinavian aesthetic.

Part of your storytelling describes how the Nordic landscape inspires the designs at Paperstyle. What does the creative process look like?

We spend a lot of time in nature, and that is when we feel most at home, surrounded by the beauty and greenery of the Swedish landscape. When we develop our products, we look for materials, colours and textures that capture the feeling we want to create. The inspiration for Transparent Black, for example, comes from the rocky coastline of Bohuslän on Sweden’s west coast and the beautiful Bohus granite found there.

A notebook is bought blank, full of potential. How do you design for something you will never see the result of?

Our ambition is to create notebooks for different personalities and tastes, so that everyone can find one that feels like their own. And when you find the right one, we hope you feel a little sense of joy every time you pick it up.

In your notebooks, you make a convincing case for writing by hand in a world where the art seems to be in decline. Do you think writing by hand affects what is written?

There is something special about writing by hand. It can help us slow down, reduce stress and remember things better. For many people, it also has a calming effect.

There is something creative and spontaneous about putting pen to paper. We write, sketch and doodle in ways that don’t always happen on a screen, allowing more of our personality to come through.

Paper, lines, blank paper and the colour of ink are all choices we make with physical writing. What ink would you recommend our readers use?

When choosing a pen, I think you should use the one that feels right for you. A ballpoint pen uses oil-based ink, which is thicker and has a more viscous feel. Some people really enjoy that particular writing experience.

A gel pen or rollerball uses water-based ink, which flows more freely and gives a smoother, lighter feel on the page.

A pencil is just as good if that is what you prefer.

And then there are those who love the old-fashioned pleasure of writing with a fountain pen, which uses water-based ink and gives handwriting a very distinctive character.

There are, of course, many more choices than these. We all have different preferences, and that is part of the fun.

All these types of pens work well with Paperstyle notebooks. The paper we use is Munken paper, produced at a paper mill on the west coast of Sweden, known for its high environmental standards.

Fifty of your notebooks are going out with Nomad, to encourage the creative nomad who roams free. Each notebook carries a single question: what does freedom mean to you? What does this question mean to Paperstyle?

For us, the freedom that comes with Paperstyle is being able to create and design products in our own way, while staying true to what we believe in and what our customers appreciate.

It means having the freedom to follow our ideas, take our time to get things right and create products that we genuinely believe in.

And, just as importantly, it means being able to do this while keeping sustainability at the heart of how we develop and produce our products.

For Paperstyle, freedom is about giving your thoughts space to wander. It is the freedom to write without rules,
to sketch, doodle, dream and simply see where the blank page takes you.