
FEATURES
DATE Jan 24 , 2023
penco Coil Notebook
PROUDLY PRINTED IN JAPAN
Somewhere in Tokyo, Japan – hundreds of notebooks are made in a day.
They have finest quality that is kept by skilled craftsmen; penco’s iconic and long-selling Coil Notebook is ones of them.
The notebook is remarkable with authentic artwork on its colored thick cardboard cover.
The pages ruled in soft blue are binded with twin wire so it is easy to keep flat when you write.
These main characteristics were inspired by American classic college notebook, but how is it actually made?
– Cover Printing

The cover is letterpress printed. Just like a stamp, put ink on the metal block and press it onto paper so artwork is transcripted.
Zinc block for the cover
Set the block on the right printing position
Extend ink on a roller
Feed cardboard from printing machine
Apply ink to the block with the roller
Add pressure on the block and the paper for transcription

Lovely point of letterpress printing is that it can give a kind of individuality to the texture by unevenness of paper and ink.
– Page Printing

The pages are printed by the last ruling machine for watercolor printing in our country.
Its ‘block’ for printing is a roll composed by stainless rings that are set cylindrically.
The size of the roll and ink affect the thickness and color of the lines respectively.
Feed paper one by one in the fixed size called ‘Shiroku-ban’ in Japanese. (788mm×1091mm)
Fine strings make a face to support the large sheet
Pass the sheet in S-shape to print on the both sides
Ruling with rings 4cm approximately in diameter
Sheets ejected and piled up
Print quality inspection

Fountain-pen Friendly
Our Coil Notebook has water-based printed lines, however, those of common notebooks are offset-printed with oil-based ink that repels water-based ink such as those for fountain pens.
In order to make fountain-pen friendly notebook that is comfortable and smooth to write on, a ruling machine that can use water-based ink is necessary.
In addition, water color is also more eco-friendly than oil as the latter contains organic solvent.

Coil Notebook was launched with the original design just after the brand started.
Since then, we keep making it for 20 years redesigning the cover.
In the small pieces of paper, you see a universe of traditional printing methods such as letterpress and the special ruling and the precious skills and knowledge of craftmen in the country.