10 years ago , we launched Mark+Fold with just three very considered products. Now on the eve of our 10th birthday we take a look back at the products we launched with and the important details we have kept the same all these years.
The launch range, 2015
Described by Wallpaper* magazine at the time as a 'small but perfectly formed range,' our launch collection consisted of:
- The Notebook Mark One, which has evolved into our Classic Layflat Notebook, with all the important details just as they were on day one.
- Exercise Books, which we still make today (though no longer by hand), and which are the format we use for many of our Collaborations.
- Exclamation Cards, beautifully printed by James and the team in Aberdeen, just like our new Gold Tree Christmas Card.
The Notebook Mark One
It all started with creating the classic notebook for everyday. As a lifelong notebook lover, Amy had been taking mental notes for over 20 years about the things she would like to see in her dream notebook, and the many bugbears she had about inferior notebooks on the market.
"The worst thing for me would be to buy a notebook because I liked the cover, only to get it home and find that the quality just wasn't there. And then the best notebooks were the ones that looked simple, but once you started using them you felt like you'd been given a gift."
The important details
So when we started designing our first notebook, there were three things we had to get right:
- The paper had to be really beautiful to write on, it had to have good opacity to avoid the ink bleeding through, and it should work well for fountain pen.
- The binding had to lay flat, ideally with thread-sewing so that the pages woudl hold together well, but without the dreaded 'hotmelt' glues used for magazine bindings that make the spine terribly stiff.
- We had to keep things simple — too many notebooks are over-adorned and have too much personality. We wanted the notebook's owner to have a blank canvas onto which they could project their personality.
Then and now - not much has changed
The Notebook Mark One has evolved, over the past 10 years, into the Classic Layflat Notebook we sell today. These key details are just the same, though now we have added lined and dot grid pages, as well as a range of colours.
"Left to my own devices, we'd have only ever made black notebooks with plain pages! But customers have persuaded me over time that we need to offer a bit more choice! I find it so interesting how strongly different people feel about which page layout they prefer — plain, lined or dotted — it's very Marmite!"
For this first batch, we individually hand-numbered every copy by hand. Sadly it is no longer practical to do this for every notebook we make, but we do like to honour this tradition with our special editions.
Shop Notebooks
Exercise Books
In addition to the 'beefier' Notebook Mark One, we also wanted to offer a slimmer notebook format. These more lightweight books are great for smaller projects, for popping into your bag, and you can have several on the go to colour-code your projects (and which stationery lover does not love a bit of colour-coding!)
Our first Exercise Books back in 2015 were individually hand-sewn by Amy and the team at our first studio in Shacklewell Lane, Dalston. They had navy covers and contrasting coloured end pages (which were extremely time-consuming and fiddly to make!).
Then and now
Over time, as our range grew, and our team got busier, we started to work with a family-run bindery in Suffolk to create these on a Singer-sewing machine.
These have become a staple of the Mark+Fold range, a nimble format that has allowed us to play with colour, use up leftover materials in the studio on smaller batches, and develop a series of Collaborations.
Many of our Collaborations are riffs on the Exercise Book format, including our recent projects with Marmor Paperie, Community Clothing and Margo Selby.
Exclamation Cards
The idea of our card collection was inspired by Amy's mum's card drawer — this was the place to go when you needed a birthday card, you'd rifle through the drawer, which was always stuffed to the brim, and select the most suitable card for the occasion.
We wanted to make the cards as universal and useful as possible, so we created a series of 'Exclamations' - designed to cover all manner of situations and showcasing the gorgeous exclamation marks from some of our favourite typefaces.
Then and now
Our latest Festive Tree Card design was printed un Aberdeen by James and the team, who made our very first cards for us back in 2015. The design is inspired by the long shadows cast on the ground on a winter's afternoon, when the sun is low in the sky. The trees' shadows are blind debossed into the card, which is a 350gsm sustainably made paper from Cumbria in England.
