In this episode Brad and Myke are joined by Field Notes jack-of-all-trades Bryan Bedell. Bryan talks about the creative process behind their limited COLORS editions, the design choices they make around paper and cover styles, and the challenges of getting everything just right. We also have fun talking about the collectibility aspect of the brand and our favorite and least favorite editions.
Guest Starring:
Bryan Bedell
Links and Show Notes:
In this episode Brad and Myke are joined by Field Notes jack-of-all-trades Bryan Bedell. Bryan talks about the creative process behind their limited COLORS editions, the design choices they make around paper and cover styles, and the challenges of getting everything just right. We also have fun talking about the collectibility aspect of the brand and our favorite and least favorite editions.
Links for this episode:
Sponsored by Squarespace (use code TALLYHO8 for 10% off)
Hello and welcome to episode 69 of the Panetic Podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analog tools that we love so dearly. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined today by a man who is surely hand-stitched by a master craftsman. It's Mr. Brad Dowdy. Putting it all together. I like that Mike. I appreciate it. I'm very well. That was me harking him back to your product announcement last week. That's right. We've got the knock pen cases coming out hopefully in about a month or so and things are progressing along nicely. We did our Kickstarter video this weekend so hopefully we can share that with you guys soon and yeah it's going really really well. Very very excited but equally excited for today's episode. Yeah speaking of excited. I'm really excited about today's episode. We have a really special guest on the podcast today. Mr. Brian Bedell from Field Notes. How's it going Brian? Hey guys. We really appreciate you coming on. I know we we've talked several times over email and you know trying to find the right time to get it and you know I know we talked in the past and you're like oh you know this edition's getting ready to wrap up and it's like our you know super super busy time so let's do it when it's a little bit downtime so hopefully we hopefully we've got you at a good time in between cycles here. Yeah we're you know we're gearing up for fall and that's all in production now so we're sort of just like waiting for the storm. Awesome awesome well we're gonna we're gonna get into all all things Field Notes today and and hear about you know what you do at Field Notes and we've got a bunch of readers questions but I did want to follow up on one item real quick which is also Field Notes related that we've talked about a lot over the over the past year of podcast and that's you know the whole collector aspect of Field Notes and right now pretty much the rarest regular colors edition Field Notes has been put out on the eBay auction site and the Butcher Blue 3-pack is out and available for everyone to see I don't know if you've seen it yet Brian yeah I don't know if you keep track of that stuff at all but it's so much in it yeah so so it went out on Sunday and it shot up to like 200 something already I guess it's 260 dollars right now and I put out a post this morning trying to get everyone to guess and see what it was gonna go for because yes you know I have I have no interest in paying that kind of money but what do you what do you think something like that's gonna go for oh geez I don't know it's I mean there's five days left I think in the auction and usually the real game work kind of starts at the end so yeah I don't have any idea it's it's it's amazing it blows our mind here that anyone would spend that much money I know you could print your own not to give anyone any ideas for money we're getting into you could get your own custom notebooks made so we're gonna talk about that whole you know how it became to be a collectors thing but I just find it fascinating that you know this is kind of like the holy grail what three pack yeah I mean those are those are you know like yeah I listened last week Jim said those are the rest I mean as as he said we printed them at the same time in the quantities are the same so you know on paper orange and blue are both pretty pretty much the same but like Jim said the the blue ones just you know we kind of oversold them and ran out of them immediately and so you know we don't even have any here in the office I think maybe Aaron has one or two packs but yeah those are the those are the hard ones to find for sure yeah we spoke about it a little last week as well on this show and I made a prediction that I can't remember but I think it was $500 is what I expected if not do expect that to go for minimum I think I just can if the fact that we're like 24 hours into the bidding and we're like half that price I don't think yeah unexpect it in to really hit that level which I can see that I almost hope it's not because that's just that's just bizarre to me but I'm judging by the past that seems like it could happen yeah yeah I told I told my friend Tana on on Twitter and she's part of the field notes group she's one of the biggest collectors out there she she pinned me down to a number this morning I said 388 50 I just if this thing goes over 400 I would be that's just crazy to me yeah I'm telling you Brad 500 man he's coming for all right well most of the guests is so far in the contest or or yeah definitely close to the closer to the 500 range than than I was but just a lot last point and why I think that amount these are so rare this is probably the last chance anyone will have like for it to get this far along in my opinion I can't imagine that there are gonna be any other butcher boo three packs if it sells if it sells for 500 you'll see more I was gonna say the same point they're gonna they will be a couple of for sure yeah a couple guest appearances that's a good point but if you're a collector can you take that risk like if someone really wants to finish that collection yeah I mean there's people I mean it you know the collector all you know the field nuts group and these people watching us on eBay are a small fraction of our audience you know as great as they are and as much you know as much as they do for us there's a lot of people that just have no idea any of this is happening and once that word gets out I think you'll start seeing a few more a few more showing up on you know as people that have him around you know our friends from way back have them you know they're you know we send a lot out his gifts and stuff you'll start seeing you'll start seeing more I think if we're good stuff it won't sell it for 500 bucks yeah there's plenty of people that be willing to part for part with them for that I bet yeah and that's what happened with this guy that's putting them all up he's had everything since the beginning and he just like yeah he's like I didn't know this was a thing so and you know I'm not I'm not as attached or psychotic as most people so let me go ahead let me go ahead and cash these in so Mike you got you had something else you want to follow up on real quick just very quickly I mean just to continue the ongoing topic ongoing topic number two I've paid for my visionary so the visionary Kickstarter has now ended did it find just about so that I'm bringing it up now it took the final goal the final score is three hundred and twenty four thousand three hundred and ninety three dollars pledged against the fifteen thousand dollar goal for the Vision Air I have paid for mine and will be expecting it before the end of the year so week will be able to revisit that topic much later date I can't wait maybe I'll have to send it to you you know that's what I'm thinking like I would like to try it and then send it to you and then I'll give my opinion and you can give your opinion and then we can then I can decide if I need you to send it back or not I feel like that's only fair with the way that it's gone so we'll probably have to do that okay yeah that sounds like a good idea then you can review it yep so I bet I might I might have some there might be some other people that that got in it on to that might be easier to you for me to get it from but yeah we'll figure something out and I will definitely get my hands on one I bet you don't get a review version I know no probably not so I'm guessing not we we should jump into the the real the real topic for today but I think yes before we do that shalaya shall I pay our bills and then we'll jump in sounds like a plan so this episode is brought to you by the fine folks over at Squarespace the only one platform that makes it really easy to create your own space online your own website your own blog portfolio business site online store anything for a free trial and 10% off go to squarespace.com and use the offer code tally ho eight squarespace are doing great work to keep their platform up to date they're adding new features new designs all the time they're continually making sure that squarespace is a fantastic platform we talk about it all the time so they have beautiful new templates and they keep adjusting those and keep adding new ones they're adding new features like they're integrated stripe in the UK which is strip is the payment processor and squarespace use stripe for their online store 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awesome away we go invest a daddy all right so Brian when Mike and I we were talking I guess a couple weeks ago we knew we're gonna have you on I guess we had you scheduled and I started talking to Mike I think it was probably after last week's podcast I said you know what's Brian what is Brian's job title at Koodle or at field notes see the project managers see the art director we were bouncing things back and forth and I was like you know what is many times I've talked to Brian I don't know the exact job title or or maybe you're just the the jack of all trades what's what's the official on the work job title for you I don't actually have one I don't think we I mean we there's at field notes here you know Koodle partners which is the parent company which is mostly what we do is field notes now there's only seven people here in the Chicago office plus Aaron and Portland so so I do a little bit of everything but I come from a design background I guess you know art director was you know we used to be an advertising agency and I was an art director at the ad agency and you know most of what I do is related to the you know art direction and photography I do all the product shots you know I help Steve with the videos and you know and then do a lot of the design on the books and you know or if Aaron and Jim do the kind of basic design I'm usually the guy going through and cleaning them up in and you know getting everything ready for print nailing everything down and you know go into the press checks and stuff like that so so you know mostly art related but then I also you know I take I take orders on the phone I help pack boxes sometimes I take out the trash we all do a little bit of everything here that's awesome that sounds like a good that doesn't sounds like a great setup and I still didn't know that you were only looking at you know seven employees that's just fascinating the way the way yellow grown since yes whole things this whole thing started to be able to keep it you know manageable that's just a kind of a testament how you guys do business that's pretty impressive lean and mean yeah that's the way that's the way to do it so we're not too far off from the next fall edition do you all have a release date for that I mean I know that's probably you know getting ramped up here and in about ready to go yeah we're looking at you know real soon I don't know do you guys come out well you guys come up pretty quickly after you record right yeah it'll be out tonight yeah okay yeah so we're hoping within a couple weeks everything's looking pretty good there's a couple there's a couple snags that haven't happened but we're worried about those so we don't want to promise anything but I'd say we're hoping like about two weeks from looking probably mid-mid late September cool yeah like mid yeah early to mid September hopefully but we're almost into September yes maybe like the second well I don't want to I'm obviously not gonna ask you about anything about the edition because I like to keep that secret just like Mike was saying you know I don't want to know beforehand it's become a thing and that's like I want to be surprised like everyone else yeah I was joking with oh dang what's his name Todd who runs the field nuts group and he told him next time someone asked I'm just gonna tell them and ruin it for everyone and see it I would be so upset I think yeah yeah I I'd where I kind of want to know I don't want to know at the same time yeah so we don't want to ruin anything we don't want to know and and I want to keep it that way but I do want to know kind of and I think I got a few questions about this from the listeners how does the process of deciding what's coming up next or I guess the roadmap for you know down the line how does how does the idea come about and how do you say this is the one we're going with for you know for this quarter you know we are gonna do I mean do we all sit around a table and just start throwing out ideas y'all have has this one been sitting around for a year that y'all been waiting to do this one in autumn tell me a bit a little bit about how the colors edition process works all right yeah the generally we don't have a lot of meetings or anything it was funny cuz Aaron was actually passing through town last week and we all sat down in the conference room and he actually actually hooked up his computer to the projector and that was I think the very first time we've ever done that so you know we have the next the next few additions are a little more planned out than usual but who knows if we'll stick with that in general I mean we've got you know Aaron and Jim talk on the phone and then I talked with both of them on email and we've got usually have kind of three or four ideas going and I mean yeah it's it's kind of different every time sometimes we have a real good idea what we want going into it you know and we get a good start on it and we get three quarters of the way finished with it and change our mind and start on another one expedition for instance was meant to be the fall edition last year and we had them just about I think they were on press we were having a little bit of you know every time we do this we do something different so there's always you know some glitch so but it wasn't terrible and we could have made fall with those and then we suddenly decided let's save these for winter and do another one so like traveling salesman was one where where it just happened really fast you know we kind of decided you know with the very minimum time that you know let's let's do something new we'd been eyeing just sort of that color paper thinking that would be nice I don't know yeah I think we just kind of started doing some research in order some old ledgers on eBay to look at and get some ideas and I put that one together really really quickly and then there was nothing too bizarre about the printing of that one so we were able to print it pretty efficiently you know whereas other ones like the one we're doing now is one we've been kicking around for a couple of years and we're finally doing it there's a couple you know that even longer like almost since we've been doing colors we've had a few ideas and we have a couple of those actually in the queue now for you know actual dates set for those but it's a little different every time sometimes it's just Aaron sends something over and says how's this look and we're like yeah let's go with it other times maybe Jim or I kind of have an idea and we all play with it and see what comes out of it but it's you know between usually it's kind of between the three of us is where the idea comes from and you know yeah either you know usually Aaron kind of throws together kind of the basic idea and then I kind of go in and work out some of the details and get the exact color colors nailed down and the you know pick up papers and do some ink tests and things like that and do sort of more the production end of it that's fascinating about the the traveling sales when that it came together you know yeah yeah that's popular yeah that was a favorite a lot of people yeah and it's I mean there's you know there's other ones you know it's like anything there's you know certain things you think are just you know you're so behind the idea and maybe they don't come out as crazy thought they would and other things you kind of throw it together and they're great but it goes the other way too there's something brushed out there so yeah it's you know and it's it's that's really the most fun thing about all of this is is getting to try so many different you know printing techniques working with different printers trying different paper companies and paper types you know and all this kind of printing effects and things we can do so so it's you know that's kind of a lot of the fun but also a lot of the challenge because you know every time we try to kind of push our limits a little and try something new and it's it's hard to top ourselves every time that's that's exactly what I was about to say the way y'all have stepped up your game if you will like when you do something like the night sky edition where you know if you're just looking at it you know from from the front you see okay that you know the black everyone loves the black of course and you know it looks great then all of a sudden if you're not familiar with field notes and you flip it over and you see the type of printing you've done on the back and then you've done you know three different three different back covers you know with the you know with the stamping on there I mean that's like I mean that's really impressive to me considering you know what we're what you were starting with with just you know just say like a basic color cover like a butcher orange or butcher blue and now we're doing all this I mean that transformation has been really impressive over the years yeah that's a good one I mean as far as the process you know I think that was one where we kind of been talking about the idea for a while I think it was kind of originally his idea just to do stars of some sort and then that was one where you know I like we all knew we all knew Raven's wing was super popular and you know black was good to go with and then that was one where I sort of maybe had more to do with the design than usual so I was really came up well because I after you know after Jim's kind of original idea I kind of nailed down the design on that one and I was really excited about it so I was glad to hear everyone liked it so much well then I should tell you Brian that them that's my favorite edition of all time thanks a lot I just I am in love with that with the with the like the hologram foil on the back I just think that is it's one of those things that it when it when it arrived I was like oh because you can't really see it in the photos very well like it doesn't show yeah but it's when you get it and it's and it reminds me of like when I was a kid playing Pokemon trading cards right that hologram you know that's what that's one of the things that I love about it and I love that they're all different and I'm happy that I've got a few a few packs here because I started my subscription I think in addition before so I'm pleased because now I have a couple a couple of packs of my favorite those are still I think a lot of retailers probably still have those I don't think those are getting too rare I mean you know we we we you know a lot of retailers bought a lot of those so there should still be some out there they shouldn't be too hard to find I might be on myself yeah the funny the haul I should I I keep thinking like should I say things or not but I'll say those the the night sky the the holograms were originally and this is another thing we've been talking about forever we're supposed to be glow-in-the-dark and we worked really hard trying to figure that out we did worked with several different screen printers and used different kinds of inks and tried a lot of different things and we just could not get any sort of you know glow-in-the-dark that we were happy with so so the the holographic foil was kind of you know we got closer and closer to the date and had to make some kind of decision and we tried that out and thought that looked great so yeah it looks fantastic it really does so speaking of favorite additions what's been your favorite or what's your favorite or what was your favorite to work on you know just putting together the whole project you know you you put a lot into this isn't just printing notebooks I mean you guys put in serious amounts of time and you know a lot of the products have accompanying videos which I know take a lot of production then you have you know extra add-ons like stickers or pens you know that there's thought and design going into so what's been your favorite like as a whole project to work on and put out and share with everyone you know this the night sky was definitely one that going out to Great Basin to shoot that video was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life like I just you know staying up all night I mean if anyone ever has a chance to go out somewhere like that where it's just no light you know no light pollution no moon and you can just look up and you know two nights in a row we sat out and looked up in the stars and never got boring you would just sit there and just keep seeing new things and see like you know you notice things like stars have different colors and you know it's just you know you start getting loopy around forward in the morning or whatever but it was just it was a such a good experience out being out in the middle of nowhere with no phone service for two days like just sitting in the desert and staring in the sky so that as far as you know as far as videos that with that and fire spotter was fun Steve and I drove up to Wisconsin and camped out and then there was that old fire tower we shot and Steve was actually afraid to climb to the top so I got to do yeah but again like I just said it was you know we were you know we kind of were watching trying to make sure we'd be there when the trees look good and we just nailed it we got two perfect days there and the trees were beautiful and again I could have sat on that fire tower just stared out you know you could see for miles just all the colors and I could have just sat there for hours and hours so those are two of my favorite videos as far as books yeah nice guy I like a lot really old Raven's Wing was probably my favorite before that just because I really like that duplex paper and you know I'm a photographer too so I like the black paper just kind of you know look nice in my camera bag traveling salesman I liked a lot yeah I mean that one came out well especially I like that like you know the ledger paper was really neat and that I like doing different things like that you know I know some subscribers are like oh that's not really useful to me but I figure you know we like mixing things up and if there's one out of you know if you're a subscriber and there's one out of four you don't love hopefully one of the other ones to make up enough for it or we always say if you don't like it you know send it back and we'll send you two crafts to replace it no one's taking us up on that yet so no one no one's disliked in addition too much I guess wow that's pretty cool but yeah I'm trying to think I mean you know all that I mean I like working with you know working with letter press and the foil stamping and stuff you know we get to kind of work with some different printers when we do some interesting things like that so so that's fun so when you're when you're walking around the office which one of you which what are you carrying around with you do use just the basic craft memo walking around or using something else yeah I usually yeah you know I kind of just go through you know whatever's sitting there I'll just grab you know we it's uh you know there's a bunch of the latest additions usually sitting around opened up so I'll grab one of those I don't I usually do carry one with me honestly I'm not I use the steno more than anything like on my desk I use I go through those like every you know once every couple weeks I'll have to start a new one so you know product wise that's the one I really you know use the most but but yeah I've always got you know and the other thing is the space pen which like once I think I'd been talking about doing that for a while and then when we did that when we did the night sky kind of made sense to do it then but I had been carrying a space pen for a while and I just love having one of those in my pocket all the time like it's just you know the small bullet pen it's just so convenient and you know if you got that in your field notes in your pocket you're ready to go you're still you still rocking the space space pen Mike yep it's it's what's clipped to the front of my field notes that I keep in my pocket every day that's awesome all right so I want to talk about a little bit of the the nerdery aspect and that kind of leads into some of the readers readers questions that we have we get a I get a lot of questions and writing the blog and reviewing different pens you know how does how do certain pens work you know different types of paper and you know field notes obviously being one of those and now since the focus of my blog hasn't changed but I've been getting a lot into a lot more into fountain pens and they have of course different ink properties and you know different types of paper work better with different ink so a lot of the questions I get are you know which fountain pens and which inks work the best with the field notes and which field notes addition is best for fountain pens and things like that so do you I know you for a while there the paper was pretty much the same it was the standard just the standard 50 pound stock white paper and then y'all started to play with the paperweight paper densities a little bit more here recently do you have any considerations to how people are using them or to yeah type of paper you're gonna use or you just really trying to fit it into what your I guess what your idea of this the memo book should be for this release I think a we usually stick you know we have a good number of fountain pen fans that use you know use the standard crafts and we want to take that into account but on the other hand like we don't you know like yeah we have a lot of different you know there's sort of sub sort of markets you know there's kind of the outdoorsy people and there's the you know coffee shop people and we try not to focus too much on any one group you know and make our decisions just based on them just because we know if there's one addition that's not perfect for them you know they'll find other ones that that work and we you know might you know find some new people that like the new edition you know so yeah we take you know we take all the different groups and all our different kinds of customers into account but generally we stick we stick with that finch opaque for the interior paper just because everyone seems pretty happy with that and if we step away from that we don't want to get too different we use the green what was it Mohawk I think for the for the salesman and then the America the beautiful which you know I loved that one too I know a lot of people there were a lot of the fans on field meds said it wasn't their favorite but that was another one I was real involved with and I really liked how that one came up but yeah we used a different paper in that one which was also it was a finch but just a slightly different line a little heavier but you know I think in general we're gonna stick with that finch and then you know just on certain additions where we really need something different well try something else yeah I can admit that I was one of the America is beautiful not one of my favorite additions yeah I can admit that to you but I'm actually that's the one I'm using now and I actually enjoy writing on the paper a lot yeah fountain pens with it it's it's really really exceptional paper I like it yeah yeah I don't yeah I don't you know we don't test you know obviously with like expedition we did and you know we try out a few pens on a new paper just to see how it works but we don't have like a big collection to try stuff out on you know I have like one fountain pen and I'll try it out but you know I just I'm just using like regular waterman ink and mm-hmm well if you ever need someone that's yeah I know it's a test yeah well we all I see yeah I mean people have sent us you know like a whole book full of different inks and things so we have that to look at - you know the I'm sorry level no I was just gonna say the level of geekiness that I get into I can't imagine like some of the stuff you get in the mail saying okay here's what I think here's what I here's all my ink test here's what you need to do and I can't imagine some of that it's probably pretty intense yeah we got we get a lot of ideas for additions and it's funny because almost all the more things we've talked about which is yeah so a lot of times I won't even write back because I don't want someone thinking that like we got the idea for something from them because it I remember we did the asking anything there were some you know people throughout some ideas there on field nuts and there you know there were definitely some things we thought of and talked about so yeah you know it's like I think it's which is good you know it's a good sign I think we're kind of in sync with what people want and expect from us so that's good so one of my my questions that I've had and one and it kind of goes around one of my favorite books that you've ever produced in the day game edition y'all did a dot paper did a dot print paper and the the white the white cover with the with the red with the red print that's my that's one of my single favorite memo books that y'all've done and I got I have this question and everyone has had this question I bet I got this five or six times when this when is there gonna be a dot grid stock field notes edition yeah we keep talking that's not yeah something we talk about I don't know it's the problem with that is when we do that then what do we do with the mix three pack we can't do it makes fall pack yeah we do bring it does come up a lot yeah I don't know we might break down and do it we kind of do with with the craft additions we generally do one big printing and try to time it so we kind of do one big printing a year you know so we kind of a year's worth of stock after that so it wouldn't be until you know it looks like we've you know our current stock of craft is going to go for you know at least a few more months so probably you know when that next big printing comes up we'll think about it again but okay I don't want to put it in the slot oh no yeah it's something we've talked about and we've done a lot of like a lot of those customs are a lot of the limits editions have had a dot grid to this so there's a lot of duck grids out there yeah and like you say you know a lot of these questions this is something you know you've probably had on the ledger for years just like you know we got one of these days we're gonna one of these days we're gonna do this yeah I just know the the dot grid seems to be getting more and more popular and I've just been really been enjoying those then you did the you know with the night sky you actually changed that up even more with the with the pattern used there so that it was it's cool to see you guys doing that in and just kind of mixing things up a little bit I think it keeps it interesting for everybody well the expedition has that great too and that's always a there's that that's true very true yeah yeah there's yeah we got we got stuff in the works and that could happen pretty soon cool cool now one of the additions that I've enjoyed that weren't colors I think they weren't color subscription editions but they're not stock additions but they came through you guys is y'all done like the neon summer additions a couple of times you did the ice pops one and then you did just I was the neat neon summer camp was it summer yeah summer camp a nice pop rate yeah so how do you all decide to just kind of mix that in because I guess those were well those were both for J crew for crew cuts which is their kids store okay I knew they they pretty much yeah they pretty much specked what they wanted you know those were kind of a custom job and then we ended up generally we wouldn't sell those to the shop but I think what happened for whatever reason I think maybe we printed more than they needed and did I lose you guys again no we're here oh I'm sorry I think you know I think maybe we over printed it and you know asked them if it was alright if we sold some and we yeah we never sold a whole lot of those out of our shop that was just sort of something we had a couple boxes left and we had it in the shop for a while got to that's right I remember now those were yeah those for crew cut additions yeah okay the ice pops did goes like straight to J crew I do remember that and then I saw that I guess I got confused when the summer camp with went through y'all went through the shop so yeah gotcha all right so let me go through some of the readers questions we've got we got a bunch here it says oh I want to know when Brian will create his own limited field notes edition like Draplin did call it the bedell series or something we want a Brian edition so so does Aaron leave y'all any of the DDC editions around and do you have any Brian special editions floating around the shop I really like that orange on orange one Aaron did we you know we printed that out of here he does he does a few customs himself where he used to you know like go go a few or he gets you know some stuff printed up or stamps it himself so he's got a few like when we were just at that outdoor retailer show and there were a few you know we saw a few around there that I never even seen before because he had made him up or you know or especially you know going way back to the first couple years he would print stuff on his own up there but um but yeah I don't know Aaron Aaron's Aaron's a bigger character than I am I don't know if I'm I don't know if I'm ready for my spin off yet I don't know if I'm ready for it what is it what was wrote a number of dollars I don't know I have I was we used to do that the layer tennis on kudal.com which was sort of a Photoshop designer battle where we'd send files back and forth between two designers and that's actually how we met Aaron I think but I would shoot we would shoot a video every week to flip the coin to see who went first and I was always the referee in the videos so I've I've actually been recognized on the street is the ref a couple of times which is all about which is about all the celebrity I need that that was a good series I enjoyed I enjoyed watching those those are cool so that was from Sparky from the the Field Notes group and we got a lot of questions from them yeah I think I saw that on Field Notes I think he's the only person who wants that maybe maybe I'll just make one and send it to him there you go there you go so next we had Eric from Twitter he asked how do you determine how many field notes packs to print per new release is that a guest you have a formula how are because y'all obviously as business has grown you've steadily ramped up and right you know how do you how do you manage that number to where it's it's the right number for you guys have you figured have you figured that out is it a is it a mad scientist a formula you just kind of wing in it yeah that's that's another thing I mean that's probably the biggest we kind of bicker about in the office before it comes out is figuring the quantity I mean yeah obviously we've gotten bigger and bigger we know you know we know how many subscribers we have each time and we know we have you know usually we can kind of get an idea you know what the retail sales are going to be you know to shops that sell it and you know sometimes if we have a really good feeling we think it's just going to be a real popular dish and we'll up it a little bit or you know but you know we like to keep it where we're not going to have you know stock for too long you know we like to sell out one before the next one comes out just to kind of keep things easier on our end as far as stocking and inventory and everything you know and you know obviously we like to make it you know if it you know that it's limited so we want to have you know a little bit of a little bit of a element of you got to move and get one before they're gone yeah that's exactly right so yeah it's you know it's usually just a you know pretty well educated guess just experience yeah yeah you know based on subscribers and retail sales and stuff like that yeah net you talked earlier like when you were talking about printing the night sky edition that you you know you worked with a bunch of printers and you couldn't get the you like the glow in the dark aspect right so you know you switched to holographic stamp do you do do you do I guess a lot of testing like if you have an idea and you take it to printer and get it done right are you going through different tests you know you carrying it or you using it to try to figure out is this gonna work or do you know pretty me immediately I guess I'm I guess I'm asking is there any kind of process to like you know what if you printed out the holographic stamp and then two weeks later you know they're worn off or whatever do you do the kind of testing on on that sometimes what we generally do is do an ink test on the paper where they can it's called a draw down where they just take the various inks and sometimes you know we're not really sure exactly what colors can work best so we'll get a couple you know where they just kind of smear ink across the page really you know like you know which simulates the actual printing process so you can see the you know the color of the ink and there's transparency the paper comes through is you really know exactly what color you get when you go and press so we you know for most colors yeah especially if it's you know a metallic or on a dark paper or something we'll do that for sure just to make sure that's gonna work okay as far as paper I usually you know that you know usually you know the paper is gonna be okay there's a few like this current one that's coming out next I've had one of my you know I've had just the cover paper folded in half of my back pocket for like a month now just to see how it's letting a hold up and it's been doing okay you know but you see a different you know different printing techniques and finishes and varnishes where there's been there's been several times where we're like oh I'm not sure you know I sure hope this works and just you know flying by the seat of our pants hoping it works out okay and usually it does with the you know with the colors we know it's a limited edition and even if you know worse comes to worse and something doesn't work out great you know then it's at least just for that edition and you know I think you know like as you've seen we've kind of things that work better and we felt more comfortable with going into bigger production like red blooded you know we knew you know once we were comfortable with that process and comfortable with the printer we knew we could kind of mass produce those a little more you know we've gone into doing things like that but yeah I mean you know we kind of consider to some degree that the colors additions are kind of our testing ground to try stuff out you know and then some of the more successful stuff we can use for for the regular additions later yeah I love that y'all did the ended up doing the red blooded edition the letter for some reason just for me personally the letter press additions have always been my favorites I don't know why I guess that aesthetic just appeals to me personally but yeah like big fan grass grass stain grass stain green is is my number one favorite of all time I love love that addition to do too bad there's not not more those around I'd love to I could use that one in for the rest of my life and and I happy I would be good but I love the the letter press also I was glad so now I use the the red blooded as you know my my stock addition you know as if I'm just using you know the basic it looks instead of the craft so I like that a lot this was an interesting question and it must not have came up at the time it happened but Mikey from Twitter he said did Brian have any issues with packet of sunshine with shipping shipping seeds across borders yeah we I'm trying to remember if we actually thought of that beforehand I think it was kind of a matter of we got all the seeds and we're starting to pack things and we were ready to go and then it sort of occurred to us oh crap we can't ship seats across borders and so we kind of sat down and talked about it and if I remember correctly the decision decision was like no one's ever gonna notice these in a million years let's just throw them in there because I think we I mean we did right I don't know if you guys know for sure that's been kind of a while now but I'm pretty sure we just went ahead and shipped them yeah I didn't hear anything at the time and I never yeah I said that until he just mentioned that I was like oh that's a great question because yeah it was something that we didn't think of early enough but then it sort of occurred to us before anything happened and then I think we just kind of went ahead and shipped them and nothing happened no one said anything so yes we might as we might have started some pandemic or something it might be it might be more of an issue now with you know 45,000 in additions instead of whatever that one was yeah that was a pretty small 7 or 10,000 yeah it probably wouldn't isn't wouldn't as noticeable but yeah that's crazy um and looking Tana was only that was only 4,000 three facts yeah so that was a thing yes you got away with it so now Tana who Tana Mitchell from the Facebook group you you've probably talked to her several times as well she's everyone calls her the she's pretty much the field notes ninja she has pretty much everything um she she collects like no one's been she had a great question and you probably saw it on there she says Brad will you inquire if Brian and Jim hate purple as much as Aaron does um I don't hate purple I what was we were just talking about teal and I hate teal if it was up to me we'd never do teal but who knows who we we beat Aaron down till we got purple so so maybe they'll beat me down till they get teal but um yeah I don't yeah I mean the purple ones were cool I don't have any problem with that we've had I'm like even Aaron's wife Aaron mentioned the other day his wife was saying you know why can't you do some of that are just downright girly and and I'm all for that but uh I don't know it's gonna take some convincing Jim I think and Aaron to to do to do the all pink well we did the pink uh we did the pink ones for I should probably not talk about uh private ones we did but we did do some private pink ones and well the purple ones were private too those weren't you know those were yeah no friends yeah the purple one that those those were actually pretty visible if you don't have to yeah they got around I'll talk about them real good yeah the exo exo fest from last year where the purple one so these aren't these aren't stock editions or colors editions but you know I guess people have seen enough of them in the the pink capsule editions from this year that yeah you know all the collectors are got out over the the pink and you know I like how I do like those I like those because they have below the press cover tube um I mean with all this with all this um the custom editions you know I know this is just something that kind of clear things up like we we get a lot of calls that people ask in for them and I know like a lot of people are calling like you know they're finding out who is at the conference calling them we can't I mean we're doing those as a job for someone else you know and obviously it's our product and you know we only work with people that you know we want to see our name on the book with and everything but uh but you know we just we keep a few of those for ourselves here you know just for the archives but you know that's like you know that's kind of a contract with that other company and we can't you know we can't sell those or give those away those are it's up to them to do with them what they want to do yeah good I'm glad you said that actually uh so we in case anyone had any designs on calling field notes office asking for the all these um weird one-off offshoots that they're seeing these are not the uh production line stuff and field notes does not have these these are going through special special contracts with these vendors for promotional items and things like that so yeah we don't think any of that stuff to sell it's not it's all you know I don't think any of the contract jobs we've really done have been for sale they've all been either you know to give away at a company just for people to use at work or um you know for attendees at a conference or you know we've had some schools do them or um you know charities or things like that so yeah we don't generally produce things aside from like the j crew additions you know things like that we don't generally do things for sale sure what's um I sent from the collect collector aspect and this may not be a question for everyone but just are you involved with doing the these projects for these customers oh yeah yeah yeah so you're you're involved in in all of that too so what for just for the collectors only do you have an addition that you've done that's been for one of these companies that you thought was was really neat and that you enjoyed like I I don't own it but I always thought the Levi's edition was great with the red white and blue and those covers I just thought that was a really pretty really good looking addition do you have any any favorites just kind of kind of from those um kind of from those offshoot um for different different companies like I you know like I said I can't even talk about a lot of those because we you know we just for some I don't want to punish the people who put them out by having thousands of people call them that's true the uh Levi's are definitely you know Levi's where I think they you know they gave those away in stores for a while and those were definitely you know that red white and blue with the silver type that really looked nice um I think we've redone a couple of that I think that we did that oh no that wasn't exactly tradesmen but you know we've picked up sort of those same look of those for a couple other ones we've done since um trying to think of other customers I mean we've done a lot of the customs we do are just sort of what we do is we print blank we print covers and inside papers and don't assemble them and then we can go back and turn a logo on the back of the blank covers so for the smaller runs of customs you know like our customer just started a thousand pieces and we you know we do a lot of those just for you know business or whatever um and you know we just print that black logo on the back and then have them bound so you know most of those are just craft with the black on the back and then we will do kind of maybe once a year we'll do a big run of another colored paper so I think we've done like blue and some blue ones and some I know that the web stock ones that were on the field nuts group the other day I can mention those because those were there those were on you know like a light green paper and we you know we did a lot of other customs on that same paper for a while but um generally the the ones we do for you know the customer or ones we do are on that on that paper but we've if we do a bigger one I'm trying to think like ones that I could even talk about that that are interesting I mean Levi's you know and then the the the jay crew ones the the um the um which mccollum uh mongolian version was definitely one of my favorites that was super fun so we you know we had to work with the translator and have them go through and it was all like printing terminology to get translated so we had to work closely with them to kind of explain what we meant you know when you say something like you know you know a lot of the printing terms were confusing to them so that was really fun like working out that and finding you know that that mongolian fonts just slightly different than you know russians are like so we'd actually buy mongolian future and you know and types of all that so that was definitely one of my one of my favorites yeah now that that one is awesome that's that's when I wanted for my collection like I don't get too much in the off shoots like if they're easy for me to come by you know whatever I'll get them but that one I really wanted the renegade pencils one yeah um i just because I just thought that was a really cool cool design y'all did a great job on that one I love love that edition i have one single one that will just sit there and uh look pretty yeah that was one i favorites that wasn't you know it wasn't well we did actually sell those on the site but it was a charity kind of thing and not really one of our products so that was definitely up there yeah favorite that's that's really cool well i got one more question i'm gonna put you on the spot and then we'll we'll get you out of here but i'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit here what is your least favorite colors edition colors edition wait i got them up here let me scroll through and take a look because i've got one mike i don't know if you have one but um you know another one of my favorites dry transfer was one of my favorites for sure too that was a lot of fun to put together and you know just looking at them oh it's like it's like your kids how do you decide which one you have i know um you know what i'm not i'm not a baseball fan at all so day game i like i mean i like the way they looked and and kevin's book is incredible i mean i'm from pittsburgh and i was you know pet a pirate's meringue growing up and clemente is awesome so i can't say anything that book is incredible and it was really fun to work on that but on their own the notebooks you know don't don't wow me too much um i actually came around actually i agree with you on that one that wasn't a huge fan of it at first and then for some reason that that wire red just like yeah i mean i like foil stamping so i don't know and then like you know expeditions awesome but i don't use those day-to-day you know um i mean that one was fun to do too yeah i don't know i guess that or look another one's like packet of sunshine outside of the packaging and everything just on their own the notebooks aren't that amazing but you know that was early on and you know that envelope was a cool you know that was all together it was a cool package but so my my least favorite one um and it's relative like you're saying brian it's that it's you know they're all they're all awesome they're all great but my least favorite one was my least favorite was uh the balsam fur i don't know that i think the color didn't grab me um you know y'all were sending the balsam who's idea was to send the the balsam fur branches in the in the envelope that was a pretty crazy pretty crazy thing so yeah those yeah those um from the i've just never just never used that addition as much as like i've used all the other ones i guess from the perspective of like the christmassy angle they're not thinking but at least this i saw those kind of if you you know if you take it away from the packaging again i see this is looking kind of like army jeep you know you got your army color with like kind of the glass white and that was the first foil stamp we did so i like this yeah yeah did you did you have one mic that you that you're not a huge fan of um yeah i think that that i will receive hate mail i have a specific reason where i really like the look and feel of traveling salesman um the way that the paper is printed doesn't really work for me yeah just because it's like the ledger so like um you've then got like the two sort of margins on either side and i don't really do anything that i need to use those fours and if i'm writing within the margins i don't really get a lot of space you know that's that's me but i mean because it's like you know i think about expedition edition where i can't where i wouldn't really use those every day because you know you kind of need to use the right sort of pen for it even though i do use a space pen so maybe i should actually try it out but i actually really love those because of the character that they have right this indestructible paper i just think that's really cool so like i really like the way that the traveling salesman look but in the same way as Brad they would be the ones that i would be least likely to use because because of the way the paper is laid out but i like the way that they look and i like the the thinking that goes behind them for me i think someone mentioned this on the ask me anything and for me with traveling salesman i look at those and the inside paper was so much thicker and the you know all the paper was real thick and and because of the thickness of the book even though the logo is centered on the paper because of the curvature of the book it's like kind of a knocked off center so i look at those and that drives me nuts oh yeah i did see that i did see that so and i've noticed yeah i think you know somewhere worse than others but i think um you know that's just that's kind of that's really i think the only you know kind of production glitch we've had that kind of went through you know and it's not like you know it's not terrible or anything actually if you look back at some of the early ones that we had because it's you know it's weird you can center things perfectly and then once it's printed depending on the thickness of the paper so we've had to be real careful about you know just adjusting the logo and hoping it's you know for the curvature of the paper when we know we're using thicker paper or something or um you know the belly bands like on america the beautiful you know those america beautiful ones were so thick we had to actually i can't remember if we reprinted the belly bands or if we maybe just had to redo them before they went on press or something but they were just um you know not lining up right because of the thickness of the paper so there's usually some some glitch they're waiting for us well the that's one thing i've noticed is those the if there has been glitches or anything they never make it out into the wild y'all's um production process is uh from even from the beginning y'all y'all have got it down to a science pretty well it's uh awesome product y'all got y'all are putting out um and i know so many people are excited about it and look forward to all the stuff that's coming in the future so yeah it's great i mean it's that's like i've said though one of the best things about working here is just having that you know do making something having something you can you know put all your work into and then just seeing that box of them come and holding a degree hand is just so rewarding there's so many people that you know just push numbers around or you know do jobs that you know are important but just for me you know it's always what i've liked about being a designer is is having like a product i can i can see and hold and remember well that's awesome i think well i think we will leave it at that that's a great sentiment to to end this on um brian we really really appreciate you coming on and we're gonna have to do this again sometime you know um yeah that's very sure there's always uh something going on in in the field notes world and uh we're glad you're able to to join us and talk about it a little bit we really appreciate it happy to be here guys thanks yeah thanks right well thanks brian and and mike do you have anything else no i think that's about it all right do you want to uh tell everyone where you can get the show notes of course they can go to five by five dot tv slash pan addict slash sixty nine for the show notes for this week's episode you can see what Brad does on the internet by going to pan addict dot com um i and he's also online he's at dowdyism d-o-w-d-y i-s-m on twitter i am i mike i-m-y-k-e and thanks again to brian and thank you all for listening and until next time bye bye
