Clairefontaine Crok Book Plain Notebook

The Clairefontaine Crok Book is a small, composition-sized notebook that is as plain as plain can be — and I mean that it in the best possible way. It has white cardstock covers with the Crok Book logo embossed on the cover and contains 48 pages of 90 gsm of smooth, bright-white paper. It is staple bound along the spine and is officially sized at 6.75″ x 8.75″.

It seemed appropriate to keep the writing tools used in a sample in black (or at least look black or silver on the outside) with this clean white book.

The paper is thick and willing to accept any writing tool with ease. Yes, a Sharpie permanent marker would show through on the reverse of the stock but pretty much anything else you throw at this notebook would be accepted happily. I had no issues with drying time and even my Lamy Studio with the stub 1.1mm nib dried quickly and did not feather or smear. I could even use both sides of the paper without any distracting show through.

I think these notebooks are great for anyone who likes to keep projects in their own notebooks and likes the freedom of unlined paper. It would make a great travel diary with its diminutive page count and at about $4 per book, its more than affordable. Its targeted to anyone who might want to sketch or employ mulitple media with the thick paper and generous sizes. There are two other sizes available of the Crok Book, a landscape format 6.75″ x 4.25″ and 8″ x 12″ and a gigantic 12″ x 17″, and other colors available for the covers if white is too austere for you.

I purchased my copy at Pieritz in Oak Park, IL but if you can’t make the trek to their shop, Notemaker and Writer’s Bloc both carry this notebook.

(PS: The coffee mug shown above is from the Kansas City coffeehouse, The Filling Station.)