Design Sojourn

Check out this new Moleskine sketchbook! Oops, no, it’s a Moleskine cover for your Kindle. And if the reports are true, there is a Moleskine cover for your iPad in the works. The Moleskine Kindle cover is designed with their usual familiar details such as rounded corners, black elastic band and smooth black leather cover. This time though, the insides are lined with suede.

Unfortunately, users are up in arms as the current notepad orientation and kindle placement seems to only work for left-handers. (Could you not design it to flip 180 degrees?)

What I really find interesting is that Moleskine is evolving their product range beyond sketch/note books to larger sized A4 pads and even leather bound folders. The interesting question with this Kindle cover is whether people associate the Moleskine brand with the design of its product/cover and or associate the brand with the product’s function i.e. sketchbooks?

Whether this Kindle cover makes sense or not, it is always interesting to see how brands with strong design languages leverage it on product extensions. They even have a cool design justification that does make sense.

The very idea of this new cover came from the Moleskine “notebook hackers”, who create their own custom-made accessories weaving together paper pages and digital tools. Throughout the web, hundreds of communities and discussions can be found where such Moleskine “hackers” publish their inventions. Dedicated blogs, Flickr pages, and even YouTube videos highlight the power and vitality of the Moleskine digital-analog connection.

Think about that when you create your next design language?

Via: Core77, Moleskine, Moleskine Asia and @harrywakefield.

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