Earlier this week, Mark+Fold founder Amy was interviewed live on Monocle Radio about her thoughts on back to school stationery, how the industry is changing and what her favourites were in her school days.
Listen here (the stationery segment is at 18.15 minutes):
You can also read the full transcript:
Host: So, across the desk here — we'll get to those in a moment — but first, just talk from your perspective. How has stationery evolved? In schools and the office, how have you adapted to that?
Amy: I think stationery's changed hugely in my lifetime. There's a lot of stationery brands that started the same time as us, about 10 years ago, and they're people my age — so we're kind of millennials who grew up in the 80s, where there only was stationery. Then when I was a teenager, email came along and the industry changed massively, and I think the industry just started making cheaper stuff. I came along 10 years later and went, well hang on, what if we just make better stuff? Because yes, I can email somebody, but if I'm going to write in my notebook, I want that to be a tactile, valuable, quality experience. And interestingly, there are other brands who came along the same time as me — there's this kind of new movement of: if you're going to have some paper, make it really good paper, and make it an experience that you really, really enjoy.
Host: Which frankly is the theme of Monocle magazine as well, a sort of return to print. Amy, tell us where you drew inspiration 10 years ago, but also now — where do you draw it from? I understand you were recently on a trip to Japan.
Amy: I was on a trip to Japan, yes. It was kind of a treat after 10 years of running the business — I got permission from my partner and kids to go by myself so I could completely indulge in my paper obsession. I went stationery shopping, I went to a very remote island called Shikoku, and I worked with a seventh-generation traditional paper maker, did hands-on paper making with them. So I explored as much of Japan as I could, and just explored stationery and paper there.
Host: Did you find a difference — what was the difference between Japanese stationery and their approach compared to here?
Amy: Paper is so much part of culture and life and architecture — I stayed in some beautiful traditional houses with paper screens, and the diffused light that comes in in the morning is incredible. You see paper every day and it's very respected. The stationery shopping was amazing because there were so many stationery shops in Tokyo, and they were all full every hour of the day with people of all different ages. I'd see teenage boys huddling around the pens for half an hour choosing, and I thought, that's brilliant, there's this passion and enthusiasm for it. There's a lot more calligraphy and actual letter writing — little notelets and envelopes and things like that — a lot more than you see in the UK. I think in the UK we've kind of stopped doing that, and I got the sense that Japanese people must still be practicing the art of the handwritten note.
Host: Fernando, I'll bring you in on that, as somebody who still practices the art of the handwritten note — you're quite simply a fan of stationery?
Fernando: I am here as a fan, and I have to say I am salivating, because I see some products in front of Amy which I'm sure she'll mention in a bit. I write every day — because we all have stressful jobs, I receive thousands of emails a day, and all my notes I do on paper. I don't have notes on my iPhone or my laptop, all my personal notes, my work notes, I still use that a lot. Not just paper and pencil, I love a good ruler — I have one here. I think it gives me peace of mind when I use my ruler, you know. And Amy was talking about Japan as well — they have amazing staplers. Every time I go to Japan I become a little bit poorer, I have to add, but it's exciting.
Host: My god, if the listeners could be here in the studio to see the products — I'm sure we'll talk about those in just a moment. But first, Fernanda, you mentioned the ruler as one of your favourite objects — we've actually been asking some of our team at Monocle here at Midori House for their favourite childhood stationery objects. Let's have a listen.
Staffer 1: When I was growing up I used to love writing in notebooks with pens, I loved the way the ink flowed. One year before school my mum bought me a new fountain pen, and I filled about half of my small notebook just writing notes, pretending I was a waiter taking down fake orders. It was one of the most satisfying things I ever did.
Staffer 2: I had a blue flexible ruler which you could bend and mould, put in your pencil case, bend it down to size — but as a result it would end up with a massive kink in the middle, rendering it completely useless. I was really weirdly attached to that one.
Staffer 3: My favourite childhood pencil case was a mechanical pop-up pencil case. It was the height of sophistication, everyone wanted one, everyone thought you were the coolest if you had one. It had various buttons — push one, bam, the sharpener came out — it had drawers that would slide out your pencils effortlessly, and a little calculator. In the days before we had mobile phones in our pockets, honestly, they were the bomb.
Staffer 4: My favourite piece of childhood stationery was a Lamy stainless steel fountain pen — I might be pronouncing that incorrectly, but that's what London schoolkids called that brand of pen. My school was a Catholic boys' school, we had to wear a strict uniform, and our fountain pens were one of the few ways we could distinguish ourselves from one another, or seek to enhance our style. My sleek Lamy silver stainless steel fountain pen did the job as far as I was concerned.
Host: Our Monocle staffers there with lots of ideas. Amy, you were listening to that — pens, rulers as well. I guess the pop-up pencil case isn't something we necessarily need anymore, but all the rest is surely right in your space.
Amy: I smiled and nodded when I heard Lamy, because my favourite pen in the world, and the one single pen that we stock, is a Lamy — it has a nice story to it. It's called the Lamy 2000, also known as the cigar pen, because it's the shape of a cigar. It came out in the 60s, a beautiful mid-century design. My mum had it when I was a kid, her architectural tutor had it before her, and then I've had one for 20 years, and we stock it at Mark+Fold.
Host: That is amazing, it shows how stationery goes through the generations — especially the fountain pen, which has just remained alive and well. Tell us a bit about what you have in front of you here.
Amy: I probably brought more than there is to talk about, so I thought maybe I could just put it out here and you can point at things. Shall we start with the planner? I'm a big fan of these. This one we call the Planner Pad — it's like a little landscape pad with tear-off sheets. I designed this 10 years ago now, and for all our designs we actually put out to our community, send them test sheets, and people wonderfully send us long, detailed notes.
Host: I quite like those boxes, but could you make that line weight point one of a pixel rather... everyone's an expert, exactly.
Amy: Exactly, so that's where this one started. These are printed in Scotland — I'll pass it over to you. It's got three zones — this was basically me taking a blank page and scribbling on it. There's a little block at the top to write some kind of title, which is very much from school days, that habit that's drilled into you of writing the title. Then there's a blank bit, a gridded bit, which I quite like for sketching or numbers. And then there's a tick list, and you get this real rush of ticking off the little boxes as you work through your daily tasks.
Host: There is absolutely something about ticking off boxes on a piece of paper, as opposed to using a tablet where you just delete — it's just not the same.
Fernando: No, I tried using Trello and it just doesn't have the same — let's be honest, our life is a big list, we need those tick boxes. Our life is absolutely a big list.
Host: What else can you show us?
Amy: We've got a pencil case — I have to mention this, I think it's interesting. Talking to customers, our customers all over the world are united by one idea, which is that they're obsessed with stationery. When we ask them, do you like it, do you love it, are you obsessed — they all go, I'm obsessed. When people are into it, they're really into it. Pencil cases often come up, particularly around this back-to-school thing. A lot of people say, my mum used to take me shopping for stationery. One customer had a lovely line for me, which was: once I had my pencil case and my pens, I was ready, and then I knew everything was going to go well — it gave her this confidence of going back to school feeling like, I'm ready. So the pencil case — I've been thinking about this for 20 years, gathering ideas. We had it made, we designed it this year, launched it in June. It has this beautiful Swiss zip, a very specific shape that took lots of revisions, and they're actually made in North London, at a factory that makes clothes for Margaret Howell. So this really is the pencil case that I have wanted to create for a long time — we've just launched it recently. I'll pass it over, have a look.
Host: I like the colour, it's kind of olive — how would you describe it?
Amy: We're calling that tan — it's a tan in daylight, it's a kind of brown, like a post-summer holiday tan, you know.
Host: Returning — speaking of back to school, Amy, I understand you also have a pop-up shop opening for back-to-school stuff, is that correct?
Amy: We do, so it launches on the 4th of September, till the 16th, in Soho on Great Windmill Street. Which is nice, because we print most of our stuff on a traditional Heidelberg letterpress, so it has a nice ring to it.
Host: How do you think about back to school, because as you've been talking about here, stationery's not just for kids, it's also for adults — but how does it differ, how do you think about selling this to parents buying for their children versus for themselves?
Amy: I think our stuff is really for grown-ups with taste, but my daughter's starting secondary school this year, so I've been shopping with her, and obviously I've tried to push some Mark+Fold stuff on her, and she said, oh god mum, I'm not — I've got it here, she said, I'm not turning up in year seven with a German-engineered brass pencil case, that would be so embarrassing, just let me blend in and buy something from Amazon, you know. So we've had this debate going on, and we've been stationery shopping, and I've forced her to look in independent shops that source things well, that make things well, and that kind of thing. But obviously it's a chance for self-expression too, she wants it to be her thing, and she's 12, so the most embarrassing thing in the world is your mum's stuff. So it's been an interesting process.
Host: Absolutely, that expression does change over the years. Fernanda, final word from you — how do you use stationery to express yourself?
Fernando: You know how I express myself — my note cards, because I have my initials there, FP, and it's divided by my life. I have "things to watch," "things to listen to," "things to buy," "things to do," my finances are there as well. My life is organised with my note cards, that's a tip.
Host: Do you like note cards, Amy?
Amy: I love note cards, gosh, they're so good — grouping things like that so you can delineate your life into these little boxes, it's helpful. There's even one called Brazil — very random, anything related to Brazil, film to watch from Brazil, or maybe "call my mum," something like that.
Host: Use your note cards, people. Fernanda Pacheco, our senior correspondent, and Amy Cooper-Wright, founder and creative director of the London stationers Mark+Fold. The back-to-school pop-up shop opens in London Soho on the 4th of September. You can also pick up a copy of Monocle's September issue — it's on newsstands now, an education special. That's all the time we have for this edition of The Briefing.
