I sent a pdf of a Levenger sheet to the below listed website and asked if they could produce a downloadable pdf that could be printed on plain paper. This is a neat website that has a lot of different papers styles that can be downloaded and printed:

Http://incompetech.com/beta/plainGraphPaper/

Mike

mbrooke, here's a plain .pdf loosely based on Circa ruled paper:

William

Wow! Thanks! I've added this to my del.icio.us list.

Building on William's work here, I decided to make a front and back. I also altered things a bit to contain more of a header. It's a bit tight on the page, but I'll live with it for a while to see how I like things. The nice thing about working on a version yourself is that you can personalize the paper. I have in the lower left box towards the very bottom added a note: From The Desk Of: Allen... I worked on this in illusrator, so for those who have it, you may be able to do some editing on this. Those who don't, I believe it should work in any pdf reader.

So, the first page is the front, the second page is the back. This version has no personalization of course. I also darkened up the lines a bit, as on my inkjet I could hardly see the other ones. Not to knock William's work here- what he did was awesome!! I merely tweaked it for myself and thought I'd share.

A small warning- the font may be different on various computers... I think I told it to embed the fonts, but we'll see. Please let me known if you have any issues with my pdf!

Thanks for your hard work, William!!!

Hope this helps!
-Allen

ps- A small aside: Do you guys print these things out on inkjets or laserprinters? Do you ever run out of ink doing this? Right now I'm printing onto HP 24# paper. Going fairly decently.

EDIT: A variation of what I recently posted. I decided to drop a few things as well as increase the amount of space on the back of the sheet for notes. If you have any thoughts about this, please feel free to post them here, or we can start a new thread. Many thanks to William's hard work here!

A11en,

Glad you liked it --- didn't take long to draw it up in Macromedia FreeHand.

I rather intentionally kept mine extrememly simplified so as to avoid any possible legal wrangling on the part of Levenger --- the presence of a drop shadow and absence of a line on a box aren't much, but I can hear a lawyer arguing that they make up an essential aspect of the ``trade dress'' for Levenger's Circa products and are not to be used by others.

A long while ago, I printed up coloured guide sheets for my daughter's handwriting practice using a Citizen Printiva 600C which used up ribbons at an astonishing rate. An inkjet would probably be a lot more affordable, but the only two we have at home are boxed up --- really should haul out the DeskJet 550C, I'm sure it only needs a pair of cartridges. The NeXT Color Printer seems less certain, but I'm holding it in reserve against the day that my NeXT Laserprinter finally needs new rollers.

William
(who would much rather bill lawyers $200/hr. for consulting than pay them)

Nice job, a11en! To answer your question, I use an injet (hp business inkjet 1100 -- prints two-sided, which is very convenient for this kind of job). Printing in draft mode saves on ink and doesn't make much difference in the way the final document looks.

Probably a wise precaution. I've always thought the Levenger design itself is an obvious adaptation of the Cornell note-taking system. IANAL, but the term "prior art" does come to mind.

Now I'm wondering if I should alter it. I will say this- the font is definitely *not* in any way the same as the Levenger product, that's for sure. As well, there are more lines, and the spacing is tighter, as I felt the Levenger product wasted a bit of space. [I always hated using up all the sheets so quickly.] As well, the drop-shadow on the Levenger product has a softer shade, which I feel detracts from the sharpness of the drop-shadow, and therefore, I felt it should be a stronger shadow.

But, I completely understand. If you guys think it should be changed, and might cause problems, please let me know. It'd be nice to know if this is a "useful" guide, or if it actually can be copyrighted.- Apparently lettering guides cannot be copyrighted?

I have a few ideas of how this can be changed to be less like Circa- for starters- the blank space on the back is another huge waste of space... I left it like this merely because I was lazy.

Lemmie know if you think I should alter it/take down this version!

-Allen

I'm no legal expert, but I have a hard time imagining how you could run into trouble by offering a free pdf of a system of lines and boxes that can be printed on one's own paper. Levenger mainly wants to sell their physical product. Sure, if you were a competing stationery vendor, I could see the potential for a lawsuit, but even then, if you altered the design a little, I would imagine it would be difficult to make a case for infringement. There are only so many ways to arrange thin lines on a page. This is hardly rocket science.

Don

Hey Don,

Thanks very much for your comments (as well as everyone elses!)... I think a minor alteration would be a very good thing- those lines on the back are bothering me, and I can remove a single line very easily to alter things which are un-necessary.

I'm going to assume at this time that Rollabind owns the look and feel of the paper (and licensed a variant to Levenger), so I think some minor alterations are useful.

For alterations- is there anything you hated about the layout of the product that we could alter? Are the lines too small, too large? [Spacing of the rule.] Do you wish the top boxes to be different? Page number on the bottom right, etc.?

We may be able to make this altered-Cornell system a bit better. What do you think would be useful to modify? I like the general idea of the left-pane of notes vis-a-vis Cornell... I always hated the lower pane for summaries... I also like how space is more efficiently used here- esp. once I modify the backface for this.

Ok, also- do you think we should spin this thread off to something appropriate? i.e., "modified Cornell letter pages for personalized stationary"?

I don't want to detract from the Levenger Quality issues here- I worry I may be doing it again.

-Allen

Well, that's odd. The link now resolves to http://www.w3.org/Protocols/. I had to copy and paste it to get to the correct page.

I'm going to be saving a bunch of PDFs later today. Thanks for the link!

Hey Margana! There's an error in the link- there are two http's in the link. That's why it's forwarding to the protocols page. I experienced the same thing.

I believe on either Levenger's website or catalogue, they mention that the traditional Circa paper is suited for the Cornell method of note-taking.

I have no idea that the "Cornell method of note-taking" is but it sure sounds fancy

Hey Sonnet (trying to avoid work here- always too effective on this count... ugh)- Here's an info page on the Cornell method:

Wikipedia: Cornell Notes (stub)

Cornell Note-page Generator

Note-taking General (includes Cornell)

Hope this helps!
-Allen

I think that is would be very difficult for levenger to assert any legal rights to the configuration of the paper. Generally, for trade dress to be legally protectable, the trade dress must be inherently distinctive or have acquired secondary meaning. Secondary meaning referes to the trade dress having become distinctive, to the public, through use. It's doubtful that the the configuration of the paper would be considered inherently distinctive. Whether or not the paper is distinctive under secondary meaning is a factual question. The question being, based upon the configuration of the paper, would the public recognize this paper as being from Levenger. On the other hand, functional aspects of the trade dress are not protectable. Only designs, shapes or tother aspects of the product that were created strictly to promote the product are protectable. In this case, it appears that the configuartion of the paper is made up of purely functional elements, which would most likely not be protectable.

That being said, even if the configuration is not protectable, it doesn't prevent someone from filing an infringement lawsuit.

Mike

Ok, guys, in the post above, I altered the pdf. I hope that this variant may still fill anyone's needs for an alternative Cornell-style page. I increased the lines on the back of the page. ach- I didn't try to print it out... lemmie try it now... yup, all seems to fit for me.

Lemmie know if you think it's still too close. It's a bit more like William's first work with an option for a backside ruled to the top of the page.

Cheers!
-Allen

Hi everyone!

After being contacted by Sidney, I agreed that we should start a new topic for a Cornell-variant note-paper. I'm attaching one of my variants below to get the thread started. If the admins feel like moving the messages over here which discuss the Cornell-style, that would be wonderful. The other thread should stay focused on Levenger Paper-Quality issues. My big thanks to William for putting together and posting his version of the Cornell-variant!! Mine builds upon his hard work. Page 1 is the front page with headers and Page2 is the back-side for more note-taking space.

For those of you who can edit PDF's- one advantage of printing your own paper is that you can personalize the paper. When I print mine, I add "From the desk of: A...." to the bottom.

Again, thank you, Sidney, for helping to keep our topics on-topic, and for your kindness in getting in touch! My hat is off to everyone who works on FPN, as it's an amazing place. So glad to have found it!

My best!!
-Allen

Actually, to avoid the need for people to have a pdf-editor, we should just add a form field. I can do that tomorrow at work.

Did it ages ago for a CD-ROM of business forms at my previous job.

William

Oooo... I don't think I know how to do that yet!!

I'll dig a bit when I get time about adding form-fields in the programs I have!

Thanks again for your work, William! Hopefully Sidney will get all the Cornell-related messages from the previous thread over here, so that people can grab your copy of it as well- it's great- which is what motivated me to dork with it. [I can hear my GF laughing here- I can never leave well-enough alone. ]

Cheers!!
-Allen

Well, until the posts are moved, could you include a link to the previous discussion, so that we can at least go there and see what's up?

Hey yoyology!

The posts are at the bottom (or near bottom) of the Levenger Quality thread. I reposted my alteration of William's pdf at the top of this thread. [He has a great one posted in the levenger thread as well.]

So, a few threads down, you'll find the levenger quality issue thread- then just go to the last 5 or so messages.

Hope this helps!!
-Allen

woops- it looks like the pdf was dropped somehow. I'm going to assume it was a system issue- and repost it. If there's an issue with the pdf's, hopefully the admins will get in touch! Thanks!!

So, you're talking about this post?

Just an aside regarding this paper style: Rhodia makes something very similar in their notebook #19320. The only substantial difference is that the main body of the notes area is graph paper. The heading area and the left margin area are the same idea.

Yup!! Sorry- I should have done that! Didn't realize it was so easy. :doh:

David-

Interesting! It's definitely similar, in that there's an area without squares on the left which could take headings/summaries... It looks a bit more like a record book to me, but thanks for the pointer!!


-Allen

[We all know how good Rhodia paper is!]

Posts moved and merged.

Sidney! Thank you so much for your help with this! I feel much better with all this in a separate thread! Now the issues with Levenger Paper-Quality and the interest surrounding Cornell-note paper are separate.

Please send my thanks for all the help from all the moderators and the admins!!

My best to everyone who is helping to make FPN as great a community as it is!

Thanks!!
-Allen

Hi Guys!

Well, my full-sized Rollabind/Circa system hasn't come yet, so I'm stuck with my smaller Circa Junior.

I've been playing with it on and off to see if I can up the paper quality a bit. I've found that if I punch the rolla-holes properly, I can just get a half-sheet of 8.5x11 into the Junior. Which is great- because I can now use my HP #32 laser paper in the system.

I thought perhaps I wanted a ruled version, so I threw together this somewhat crude cornel-alternate for a half-sheet of paper. I end up cutting the sheets in half on a roller-cutter as needed, then I can use a printer-setup for a half-sheet to print this one side at a time. Kinda crazy, not sure if I'm going to keep doing this or not... but I thought you might want the pdf so you can do so as well.

Hope it works for you!
-Allen