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Comment by cladopa | Hacker News Reader

I find "one color" notes extremely boring. My mind can't stand it for long. everything looks the same and my mind switches off fast. I use at least 10 different colours (randomly)changing colours per each paragraph or drawing, adding a unique and natural texture to every page so I can recognise them at a glance later.

I use 10 Staedtler 432 color pens. This way I can use the two sides of the sheet. If I use markers like the stabilo point 88 instead of only doing one side I would buy more dense sheets of paper like 100 grams per square meter or even 120 instead of using 80g/sqr meter.

Automatic feeder scanners like the Fujitsu Snapscan are one of the best investments I ever did. No need for one bit at all and you can even scan books cutting the pages. You can scan at least at 600p full color and at 1200 in black and white.

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Thanks for the comment! I like black for myself but I bet your notes look beautiful.

I agree with buying heavier paper. I recently bought some 100gsm paper for my notetaking at work, whereas I was previously stealing whatever they had in their printers. It makes a big difference in the enjoyment of writing, and now that I'm printing my own graph pattern on top of it I feel very liberated to use good paper stock. The graph paper I bought throughout school was never my favorite stuff.

I prefer to change color per note generally. My daily driver is an A5 notebook, which I divide to two columns for dense note taking. I carry a couple of fountain pens, and change colors per note. Allows me to visually divide notes at great speed.

My notebooks are generally are 70gsm, but high quality paper which can withstand wet fountain pens. For serious notes I have cellulose reactive or pigment inks which can't be removed from page without destroying it.

I have a similar setup, including the A5 notebook and fountain pens. I alternated colors for a while, but lately I've taken to using a stub nib with flamboyant ink to make a header for each note (meeting / subject plus date), and a big piston-filler with an extra fine nib and a more sober ink for the actual contents. I'm far too lazy to keep a table of contents, so this makes it easy to leaf through and find what I'm looking for. Plus I rarely have to stop and fill pens.

Sounds neat. I don't keep a ToC either, but I write titles to my notes, too, so I can leaf through the notebook to find what I'm looking for. I also flag the notes of high importance.

I keep too many pens inked to switch to your style, because I have many pens and many inks I like. :D

Oh, agreed, it's hard to neglect a good combination! I definitely rotate pens and inks over time, with the general rule that broader nibs and brighter inks are for headings, and finer nibs with more muted inks are for the bulk of the text. I had a problem with ink drying up when I had too many pens going at once, and I cut back :)

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