Dotgrid A5 Workbook - First Impressions

September 4, 2013

Dear all,

as this is my first review - and this book only arrived a couple of hours ago - please accept my apologies if it is not as in depth as the reviews you are usually accustomed to.

Dotgrid is a young company specialising in paper and books for illustrators and designers. I ordered the A5 Dot Grid Book specifically for my work design sessions for wireframe sketches of screens, hand scribbled code modelling, etc. I have grown to hate squared paper as it always seems "in the way" but decent dot paper seemed nigh on impossible to find (or possibly I just wasn't looking in the right places).

On unpacking the nicely padded envelope, I discovered the book was protected further in a sealed plastic pouch - nice touch!

To the book itself now. The cover is 350gsm matt laminated in black and seems pretty sturdy. I will be travelling to Germany next week, so we will see how it copes with being constantly chucked into bags during the days there. The cover is marketed as water resistant and wipe dry. I haven't tested that yet either, but I bet I will spill something on it soon.

The paper is 104gsm brilliant white with the matrix printed in Pantone Warm Grey 4 ink. The matrix is clearly visible but nice and discreet and promises to not overpower any sketching.

Currently I only have a Montblanc 149, medium nib with MB Royal Blue ink available, so I can only comment on the paper's performance with that setup.

As it is ring bound, the book lays flat with just enough play for page turning not to get stuck. The paper surface is lovely and smooth but matt and with a subtle tactile feedback that meant there was no feel of "ice-skating" uncontrollably across the page. The ink dried pretty quickly, but a drying time test is still needed (this is a quick lunch time review!).

(OK, this isn't wireframing for work, but I thought I would see how some of my research into naval battles at the turn of the 18th/19th century would look )

As the paper is "only" 104gsm (compared to the 120gsm I on my NU: Elite pads), I was expecting some minor bleed-through or at least some show-through. I could not have been more mistaken. If I hold the page up to the light, sure, I can see what is on the other side, but laying flat against white paper as good as nothing can be seen.

Again, as the surface is not super glassy and shiny, I was expecting a modicum of feathering, but the paper quality surprised me once more. My untrained eye can't make out any feathering at all.

So, to sum things up, I was very nicely surprised at the performance of this little book. Delivery was speedy (not Amazon Prime speedy with dispatch at 3am if needed, but this is a tiny family run UK business and the service was fantastic - order at 7:30pm, processed next working day, dispatched the following working day, delivery the day after that), and quality is excellent.

It is no Midori Travellers Notebook, it is not a book to fall in love with and treasure forever. But it "does what it says on the tin". My German friends would call it "quadratisch, praktisch, gut" (square, practical, good), it gets on with the job in hand and does a terrific job.

The A4 book will be ordered ASAP. The A5 for travelling and meetings, A4 for my desk.

Definitely worth buying if you need a book for writing and sketching. Highly recommended!

Rob

Edited September 4, 2013 by RobertP

September 5, 2013

Thanks for the review. They look really promising.

Do you know of a place in the US selling these? My google-fu is failing me because "dot grid" comes up as a type of notebook much more often than this specific brand - dotgrid.

It does look like their website can ship internationally, but shipping is not going to be fun.

http://dotgrid.co

Thanks

September 5, 2013

As far as I know, the books are only available online. I don't know of any retail outlets, not even here in the UK.

There is a blog entry about international shipping on the website, but it doesn't look cheap at the moment. They obviously don't have the clout of the big companies like Amazon to force prices down.

Maybe you could contact them and get a quote?