Honestly, I am a great fan of bound notebooks, which is just because all my notes are held together quite neatly. But at times, especially when I want to be able to remove a page and store it elsewhere, I also do like using notepads. Now, we all know those cheaper spiral- or whatever-bound thingies for less than 2 € or so. While those might be alright for jotting down the grocery list, they are not really nice for writing poems, word art or similar stuff on them.
And for just that I got my hands on something – I can already say that right here – really nice to check out and write about here. It is the Rhodia ColoR Pad, which is a slightly newer line in Rhodias portfolio. They actually are a colourful version of the Rhodia R premium range (as indicated by the “R” in coloR), which is the upgraded version of the classic orange and black top-stapled pads.
The ColoR-pads feature some super-silky (I don’t honestly know how else to describe it) 90gsm ivory paper and soft touch covers that are at least as smooth as the paper. The covers and paper really feel extremely great – and while I am fully aware of the fact that this might sound really weird, I am just as fine with just touching them as I am with writing on the paper.
Here are the specs at a glance:
- available in 8 colors
- 90g ultra smooth ivory vellum paper (like the one used in the Rhodia Webnotebooks)
- “soft touch” coated cover
- I got it in lined ruling, no margin (which is great for word art, I think)
- 70 sheets per pad
- top bound (stapled, while the staples do not appear on the back)
- perforated detachable unpunched sheets
Upon opening the pad, you will straight-away notice one of the great features of all Rhodia notepads (you may have already noticed it on the photos above), which is the unique cover: it actually is scored to fold back as neat as it can be. Would I not know they’re French, I’d say this must me “German engineering” :-).
The beautifully coloured covers are orange on the inside and carry the Rhodia logo on the upper frontside.
The folding-the-cover-back-technique-thing makes them lay on your desk as flat as a pancake, which is extremely comfortable for writing on them.
That is basically it with the science of this amazing notepad. Apart from the most important part of it, of course: the paper. And I have already sort of pointed it out above. The paper man, the paper. That paper! It is actually made by Clairefontaine (Rhodia’s sister company), and, as the legend has it, is probably one of the worlds best notebook/-pad papers. I am not sure about this, of course, and paper quality (at least to some extend) certainly is also very subjective and contextual. But what I can say for sure is that it is the best notebook paper that I have so far written on. It really just wants to be written on. Nothing else.