It is not long ago that I found a really exciting product that I had never seen before. I finally got my hands on it and would like to share the story here with you. The magic I am going to present to you is called slickynotes® – and it’s a really cool and helpful product for assisting the process of ideation, brain storming, or mind mapping and the such.
As we know, there is a bunch of great software out there that fits exactly that purpose – endless digital canvas, drag/drop, reconnect, add notes, links, files and all that. While this is obviously great, sometimes it is just good to have that mind map or brainstorming just in front of your eyes. Touch and feel. Seeing the bigger picture at a glance. That is at least in my opinion. Now, while I’d love to have a huge flipchart (with sidearms 🙂 ) or whiteboard here in my home office to do just that, I certainly lack the space for that.
If that all sounds a little like you, slickynotes® might be of interest to you, too. I gave them a shot. The slickynotes® (as they are spelled correctly) are sold by Neuland, a German company that basically has everything around markers, fineliners, skechting, sketch-noting, sketchbooks, workshop and presentation materials, and so on. The idea of slickynotes® is fairly simple and they basically work like magic sticky notes or so.
Sketch. Stick. Re-stick and slide them around.
slickynotes® basically turn any plain surface (such as your walls at home !!!) into an immediate dynamic creative space.
These notes essentially are electrostatic adhesive pads. They are made from recyclable polypropylene and are available in 5 colors (white, green, orange, yellow, purple). I got the slickynotes® L (large) which are 200 x 100 mm in size. It is a pad of 95 sheets, which costs around 8 €. They are also available in medium-size (100 x 74 mm) and as a big pack in a number of assorted colors incl. a marker. As I said, I got them in large and yellow. So this is what they look like.
The slickynotes® are two-sided: the colored front side is permanent – you can use an outliner or a pencil on it. The white rear side is wipeable – it is probably best to use a whiteboardmarker on that side. You can potentially even cut them into any shape imaginable (e.g. arrows or so) to customize your work. I tried them with a fineOne by Neuland® Outliner with a round nib (water-based permanent ink, refillable) on the yellow side and a WhiteboardMarker Neuland No.One® with a wedge nib (alcohol-based ink, refillable, dry-erasable) on the white side.
And because it is just really magic how these sticky-things in the wink of an eye turn your wall at home into a endless creative space (and because it is just hard to really show that in a photo), I decided to shoot you a quick video of how they work. I also tried to demonstrate the sliding around and the wiping off the white side. It was a bit hard to do while shooting the video with the other hand, but I hope you do excuse the clumsiness. Anyway, I think the video does for a demonstration.
Now you might say that one might well use large Sticky Notes instead or even just some piece of paper and sellotape, which should do the job as well. But the slickynotes® are are just so much more convenient to use – when you have both hands free, that is :-).