After presenting at World Information Architecture Day 2015 in Bucharest, I managed to get my hands on the new Moleskine Smart Notebook powered by Adobe's Creative Cloud (thanks to Anda and her surprise kindness). I've been a Moleskine fan ever since I saw Marius wielding one at a conference before I even tried to imagine seeing myself at Grapefruit. Well, I'm here and ready to present the latest gimmick from the notebook manufacturer.
The Notebook
It's Moleskine, so we're talking about premium. I love how the red elastic goes with dark cover; moreover the cover has subtle fingerprint patterns (that's the actual theme) and with the use of negative space you can depict the Creative Cloud logo in the middle.
The paper is very pleasant to touch and each page has square markings to proper identify your sketch once you decide to scan it. There are no stickers :( , but you have the signature inside pocket.
Working with the app
The process is straight forward. You open the app, connect to your Adobe account and then start taking pictures of your drawings. For better precision you use the square markings to guide your perspective. Too bad the app is only available for iOS (good thing my iPod Touch 5g is still kicking it).
Once you've taken the right picture you have the option to convert it to a SVG file. It does a pretty well job, but I wish you had more creative freedom like configuring the tracing preferences. Anyway it's a great feature (I'm just super-user pretentious here).
Finally you upload it to your Creative Cloud account (I'm using the Free plan for now) where you can organize and archive them as you wish. There's not much to do in these apps (desktop & mobile), but I do see some potential here that I think Adobe will take advantage in time. It reminds a bit of Dropbox.
Looking forward
I'm excited to see even more diversity in Moleskine's partnerships. From Hobbit to Evernote and now, Adobe, you never know what might be next. And that's a good thing... not knowing. The Smart Notebook isn't a mind-blowing product, but it's all-in-all a welcomed addition to the family. PS: How about a Google Drive/Docs/Sheets Moleskine?
Final Rating ★★★☆☆
From now on all my reviews will feature a five-star rating system.
☆☆☆☆☆ - Better off buying a Shake Weight.
★☆☆☆☆ - Again, buying stuff I don't need.
★★☆☆☆ - Good... to give it as a gift.
★★★☆☆ - OKish. You won't regret it.
★★★★☆ - It's worth every penny!
★★★★★ - Awesomedary!
Subscribe to stay updated
I added a subscribe feature for you to get the latest news from the blog right on your inbox. It's based on Mailchimp's RSS campaigns, so on each Wednesday you'll receive an email with what's new on the blog (if new posts exist).
If you are interested, head over at pxdotpt.com/subscribe/ and register now.