Moleskine Bullet Notebook Review

Moleskine came out with a “Bullet Notebook” obviously geared for Bullet Journalling (BuJo) relatively recently. The BuJo started out on a squared large Moleksine notebook (surprise, surprise), and only later Ryder Carroll moved to Leuchtturm as his notebook supplier of choice. What surprised me was that Moleskine actually cared enough about BuJo to come out with a new offering, when they aren’t known for rushing out with new notebook formats very often.

The coral pink cover.

The bullet notebook is part of Moleskine’s is part of their Art lineup, which usually has better paper than their usual lineup, as it’s used for sketching or watercolours. The choice is a bit peculiar, but it speaks to where Moleskine appears to think that BuJo fits: not in their business lineup, but within the artists’ and creatives’ one.

It comes in three cover options: black, coral pink, and aquamarine. That is also a peculiar choice for them, as normally products in the Art lineup come in any colour you want so long as it’s black. The bullet notebook comes with 120 gsm ivory coloured paper and is supposedly fountain pen friendly. Note the supposedly in that sentence, we’ll get to that later on. It is noticeably thicker and heavier than their standard large hardcover notebooks, and it comes with two bookmarks in different colours – in the case of the coral pink one is pink and one is grey. Fetching.

Now we come to where this notebook really becomes interesting, the interior. The first page of “Personal Data” is taken directly out of Moleskine’s planners. There’s a bit of fluff at the end that I don’t think comes standard with their planners, but I still recommend not filling this page, ever. Especially not the passport details, driver’s license and any other thing that can be used to ID you should you lose or misplace this notebook.

Personal data. I’ve used this notebook for over two months, and this page remains purposefully pristine.

The next spread is the very cool Moleskine world map, the same one that you can find in many of their planners and other travel related products.

I love maps, and I love this map.

The next set of pages is where the bullet notebook starts to get interesting. It’s an index, with the first entry already printed inside: Pen Test on page 149. This is classic BuJo, and Moleskine delivers. There are five index pages, which should be enough for practically anyone’s needs.

The index

Inside there are 148 pages of ivory coloured 120 gsm dot grid paper. That’s less than there is in a regular Moleskine, but the paper is significantly thicker, and already the notebook is thicker and heavier than their standard notebook. They put the maximum number of sheets they could without making the notebook too bulky. The pages lay flat, and Moleksine’s binding and covers are built for endurance. The pages are numbered, which is also something that Moleskine doesn’t normally do, but fits well with the Bullet Journalling Method.

The paper inside.

There is space in the back for pen tests, so I immediately used it to test a slew of fountain pens. Moleskine claims that the bullet notebook is fountain pen friendly. It is not. There’s spread, there’s bleed-through, show through and sometimes spidering. This isn’t a fountain pen friendly paper on any count.

Pen test page.

The back pocket has something new and interesting going on. Moleskine stuck folded piece of paper on the back pocket and on the outside it looks like regular dot grid paper:

Back pocket and closed fold-out.

But when you fold it out there’s a key page inside. Very elegant and clever.

My key page.

I like that Moleskine are experimenting with new formats. I don’t like that they advertise this paper as fountain pen friendly when it clearly isn’t. The bullet notebook comes with a sheet of stickers that I didn’t bother photographing because it just looks like a sheet of solid pink, but it’s actually made of small stickers in various geometric shapes.

If you are looking to get into BuJo but enjoy working with mixed media or fountain pens, then look elsewhere. In terms of cost the Moleskine Bullet Notebook is about the same price as the official Leuchtturm one, and you get a better deal buying that if only for the official booklet. If you are looking for a more minimalist setup that what the official Bullet Journal offers and you aren’t planning on using fountain pens, than this is a decent offering, especially as it comes with more cheerful cover options. It is un-opinionated enough to be useful even to those who have never heard of BuJo in their lives. Do I see myself buying another one of these in the future? No. I am struggling to finish using the one that I have now (because I’m not a fan of dot grid). But I am glad that Moleskine is willing to give new notebook formats and paper types a try. If this notebook had this exact paper but in plain white or squared white, I would have bought a stack of them.

Inktober Day 10: Sunrise of the Independence Garden

Had an unusual start to the day, with an early morning walk before my usual morning run. I’m embracing the spirit of experimentation with these, so this one was sketched using diluted Sennelier shellac based ink (non fountain pen friendly) in waterbrushes, paired with a fine nibbed TWSBI ECO filled with J. Herbin Emerald of Chivor, and a Diplomat Aero with a fine nib filled with Colorverse Golden Record. The Midori MD Cotton paper does not take nicely to any amount of moisture and there was bleed through (and of course see through) to the other side of the page, but in general it held up much better than I expected.

Independence Garden at Sunrise. Playing about with various kinds of inks.

Here are all the tools used for this quick sketch:

From left to right: waterbrush filled with blue in, waterbrush filled with sepia ink, TWSBI ECO, Diplomat Aero and a waterbrush filled with water.

And here’s the complete page:

Inktober Day 9: Surfers near the Marina

Today’s sketch includes a frame and characters drawn with a Staedtler pigment fineliner 0.1 pen, a sky drawn with a Vertex and kyo no oto Sakuranezumi ink, a sea drawn with a TWSBI ECO filled with J. Herbin Emerald of Chivor, a lighthouse sketch with a Platinum 3776 UEF nib filled with Sailor Epinard, and a beach and breaker sketch done with a Diplomat Aero and Colorverse Golden Record (plus a waterbrush).

Here’s the whole pen lineup used to create this page:

Inktober Day 8: Trash Beach Volleyball

Very, very quick sketch of an exhibit of people playing beach volleyball and lounging on the the beach – all made out of plastic trash recovered from the sea. It’s quite sobering to see it all displayed like that in the Tel Aviv port. We need to be much better stewards of our oceans and planet.
Drawn with a Platinum Plaisir fountain pen on a Midori MD Cotton A4 notebook.

Here is the full page spread together with the infamous Platinum Plaisir:

Inktober Day 7: Succah Exhibit

There’s a wild succah exhibit near the TLV mall in Tel Aviv, and it’s a lot of fun to walk around it and try and guess what everything was originally. This succah is made out of discarded bits of “junk”, you see, and the point is to make a point about recycling and sustainability. In any case it was challenging for a very quick little sketch (I’m working very fast and loose with these), and as I mentioned before, the Platinum Plaisir fountain pen I used here isn’t the most fun pen to use. The Midori MD Cotton paper deserves better.

Inktober Day 6: Dragon Boats

I run practically the same route every day, and yet it never gets boring, especially since the sea, the river and the park are constantly changing. Today it was dragon boats that were out in force on the river. I’ll probably do a watercolour sketch of the scene later on. In any case, this page will be sketched with a Platinum Plaisir filled with the cartridge it came with. It was supposed to highlight the fact that you can sketch with even the cheapest of fountain pens, but I have to say that I don’t recommend the Plaisir. The nib doesn’t flip well, the ink cartridge it comes with is proprietary and the ink inside is in a depressingly dull blue, and there are better pens to be had for a little more or a lot less.

Inktober Day 5: Independence Garden

It’s time for a wash, and this time it’s just water over Colorverse Golden Record ink. The sketch was done with a Diplomat Aero fine nibbed pen, which you can see at the bottom of this post, and on A4 Midori MD Cotton paper, which is not built for washes. It buckles almost immediately.

One of my favourite places in Tel Aviv, Independence Garden (Gan HaAztmaut).

Here’s the complete page:

I like the comics like effect of it.

And here’s the pen that I used to sketch it all, the wonderful and highly recommended Diplomat Aero (in this case in orange, but it comes in a myriad of colours). The Colorverse Golden Record ink was part of a set, and I don’t recommend it.

Inktober Day 4: Kayaks on a Stormy Sea

I’m going for a page of sketches with this pen and ink combo, so here’s another small one, of two kayakers braving the stormy sea. Diplomat Aero fine nibbed fountain pen with Colorverse Golden Record on an A5 Midori MD Cotton notebook.

Inktober Day 3: Toy Poodle on a Bus

I had a busy day, so it was a very quick sketch this time, of a brown toy poodle sitting on her owner’s lap on the bus. She was quite the attraction, and reminded me of my old dog in the pure joy she took from everything around her.

Drawn on an A5 Midori MD Cotton notebook with a Diplomat Aero fine nibbed pen filled with Colorverse Golden Record. This ink has a tendency to dry out in pens, and it becomes darker in the pen after a day or two.

Inktober Day 2: Fisherman Overlooking the Marina

Today’s sketch was also done with a fine nibbed Karas Kustoms Velys Ignem Vertex and Kyo No Oto Sakuranezumi ink on a Midori MD Cotton A4 notebook. It’s a very quick sketch, done in less than 10 minutes, and I later on made the mistake of applying a wash on the sand, and pretty much ruined that part of the sketch.

View of the sea from next to the Tel Aviv Marina

Here are the two sketches together on a complete page (before I destroyed the bottom one).