In my infamous “Book of Lists” I like to note my current favorite television shows as well as those from my past. Growing up in the 1970′s, that means Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Land of the Lost, Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. These days, it seems as though I like a lot of the edutainment reality shows like American Pickers and Out of the Wild. I’ve also recently caught up to the current season of Mad Men and well, I like it a lot even though many of the social situations portrayed on that show tend to rub me the wrong way.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, (I just watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol last night & loved it. Who would ever think to pair Simon Pegg with Tom Cruise? Brilliant…) is to put pen to paper and make your own list of favorite TV shows from both your past & present.

But for right now, would you mind sharing with us at least one of your childhood favorites, and what made it so special?

In the last few years I’ve been working hard to make better choices about bringing more “things” into our tiny house. I will think long and hard on an item’s practical use, how much space it will take up and the amount of maintenance it may need. I’ve sent dozens of boxes filled w/ stuff to the local thrift shop and gone through my clothes at least twice a year to fill the give-a-way bag.

You can imagine my surprise when my friend called me an e-hoarder. Ok, fine. So I have a hard time deleting things. Images, videos, songs… Hard drives can hold a ton so why should I delete? I know I have an issue with photos – it’s all too easy to shoot 500 digital images and then tuck them away… But it does become a challenge to sort and categorize all those photos and my brain tends to go numb when I sit down to tag and sort  my images in Lightroom.

Do you have a strategy for maintaining your e-clutter?

Now please excuse me as I try to go delete some photos….

We know that some of you use our products every day, and we know that some of you reserve our products for special occasions. Obviously, we’d love everyone to be using as much Rhodia as humanly possible so we were wondering if those of you who use our products on a daily basis might lend us a hand. Sometimes all it takes is giving someone permission to make a mess, to make mistakes, and to use our quality paper for the most mundane tasks imaginable. (Grocery lists, pet goat feeding schedules, hubcap bearing replacement appointments and the like.)

Might you share with us, some of the most seemingly uninteresting ways you use our paper as to alleviate the “fancy paper syndrome” that sometimes is associated with a new pad of our glorious paper?

We’d sure appreciate it.

Imagine if you will for just a moment, a Rhodia Reverse filled with dot grid paper. Leather bound Rhodia Webbies. A 250pg spiral Rhodia notebook. Isometric graph paper. 6-packs of Rhodia pencils…

Knowing how much you love your Rhodia, I know that there is probably a product configuration that you would like to see that doesn’t currently exist. So what is it? Please share! From our recent question on our dotGrid format, I know you’d like to see some spiral bound dot products- me too.

Maybe YOU can inspire a whole new Rhodia product!

The dot grid format is still somewhat new to Rhodia and we are wondering if you might tell us your experiences with it. I typically  prefer a completely blank page, but I find the dot format subtle enough to provide structure to the page without being constricting. We offer the dots in two different formats – gray dots on the off-white paper in the Webbie and violet on white in the staple-bound pads.

Are you looking to try the dot format in the future? Any specific ideas on how you will use it?

See how our Swappers are creating in the Journal Swap

For some of our faithful fountain pen fans, a change of season means swapping out ink colors. Which colors say “Spring” to you? Maybe the delicate blue of J Herbin’s Blue Myosotis or the subtle pink of Rose Tendresse?

Sometimes I get in a funk of using black and blue with the occasional purple tossed in for variety. It’s not like I don’t have a plethora of inks to choose from, but I think I can get somewhat lazy with flushing and cleaning my pens. I think now might be a good time for a thorough spring pen cleaning and an even better time to try filling them with a variety of bright spring influenced colors.

We love hearing your feedback as it allows us to tweak our products and expand our offerings to you. It is because of your comments and feedback that we have specifically improved upon the quality and expanded the variety of options on the Webnotebook. Your enthusiasm for our dot grid format has allowed us to offer the dotPad in additional sizes and we’ve even added an additional cover option in Rhodia’s signature orange.

I am fortunate for the opportunity to learn about and try new products from Exaclair before the general public and I always tell Karen my thoughts on each item. Not every item is suitable for the needs of every person but if there is a feature that could be in some way improved upon which might make an item more useful to you, we want to hear about that.

I myself would like to see more spiral bound offerings in the 5×8″ size, with perhaps a blank or dot option.

What features or options would you like to see updated/ added to the Rhodia line, or to any of Exaclair’s other brands?

It can be so easy to delegate many of our daily tasks and responsibilities to one of our electronic devices, but I believe there are some things that are just always going to be better on paper- like a handwritten note on your birthday or your great grandmother’s meatball recipe on a well-worn index card.

In what ways will you always use paper? Prefer using paper?

The new dotPads are coming! Previously only available with a black cover, they will now be available in orange. Considering that orange is pretty much Rhodia’s signature color, I find it interesting that the first dotPads were only available in black. I was a big fan of the black cover on the first dotPads because I felt it really made a statement of “something totally new” for the brand.

As the orange dotPads make their way to your favorite retailers, will you be buying them or buying more of the black?

PS: We will be giving away a bunch of these at the end of April. Stay Tuned!

I probably spend more time on Facebook than any other social site, but I’m also on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Linked in, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc. The sites where I probably share the most content are Facebook and Twitter- especially since I found the Flipboard app for iPhones & iPads – an app that makes discovering and sharing new and interesting content extremely simple. Since we are going to be doing a bit of a blog redesign, we are hoping you will help us learn how to make our blog as interactive as possible.

Which are your favorite social sites for sharing content? For discovering content? Do you use an aggregate type of app like Flipboard to discover new content? Any comments would be extremely helpful.

At 2×3 inches, the No. 10 Bloc Rhodia pad is the perfect go-anywhere tablet. It will fit into the tiniest wristlet purse, front pocket, bike bag, lunch box… you name it. You can use it for making animated flip books, handing out your phone number and website address in lieu of a business card, and for the tiniest love notes to be hidden and discovered.

They make great party favors for adults as well as children and would fit nicely into a gift basket amongst the apples and oranges.

Do you use our No. 10′s? How do you use them? Carry them?

The No. 10:

•  2 x 3 inches (5.2 x 7.5 cm)
•  Micro-perforated
•  160 pages (80 sheets)
•  Top Staplebound
•  80 g Extra White Paper
•  Graph or Lined Paper
•  Black or Orange Cover

In next month or so, Karen and I will be looking to update the overall look and feel of the Rhodia Drive Blog. Our first priority is to make it easier for you to share content with your friends on the most popular social networks. Next, we want to lay out the blog in such a way that makes you want to stuck around and discover additional content.

But I suppose I should first ask, how are you reading Rhodia Drive? Do you visit the blog directly via computer? iPad? Smartphone? Are you subscribed via e-mail? Or do you read this and other blogs via a feed reader?

We’d also love to hear if you think there are any features or functions that we could add to the blog to improve your Rhodia experience.

While you ponder, feel free to listen to a little vintage Bowie.

A couple of people have written to us asking when Rhodiarama Rhodia will be available in the US.

Rhodiarama Rhodia is a new product for 2012 – it basically 15 colored versions of a pocket Webbie.  Colors include:  black, chocolate, taupe, beige, anise, turquoise, sapphire, iris, purple, lilac, raspberry, poppy, tangerine, orange and yellow.  The paper is 90g, and the size is 3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ or A6.

You can see them on the French Rhodia website here.

Here’s the biggest reason we are not carrying them now:  they aren’t made yet.  What you see on the French site is a prototype.

We expect the manufacturing to be done this spring, and hope to have some samples on hand at the National Stationery Show (May) and for Book Expo (June).

If there is sufficient interest by our retailers we may bring in some? all? of the colors to have on sale by June or July.

They are expensive—and will retail somewhere between $18.50-$20 each.  Are you willing to pay that amount for a pocket journal?

If so, what colors do you like?

Thank you!  Your votes make a difference!

Several years ago when I first started writing with a fountain pen, I quickly discovered that many brands of paper did not play well with the water based fountain pen inks that I had grown to love. This lead to my somewhat obsessive testing & publicly reviewing various paper, pen & ink products on my personal blog biffybeans.com. While some brands like our Rhodia & Clairefontaine products are known to be fountain pen ink friendly, (no bleedthrough, seethrough or feathering) this recent post on the Writer’s Bloc blog says it best:

“Each fountain pen nib, each brand of ink, each color of ink and the paper in each notebook or journal will interact differently when used with each other. The equation pen + paper + ink = good/bad results changes each time you change a component of the equation.”

I’ve also found that humidity can sometimes be a factor in how quickly the ink dries (or fails to dry) on the page.

Have you found a specific combination of paper/pen/ink that you are happy with?

I’ve always been more of a fan of writing on off-white paper than white. I think the off-white is easier on the eyes for long writing sessions, but I do like the intensity of  a white page for brainstorming, mind-maps, and event planning. Fans of fountain pens love to use the plethora of available ink colors and while I know that white paper will really show them in their glory, I don’t mind the nice warm hue that the off-white paper adds to my favorite ink colors.

Which color paper do you prefer and why?

We recently received this request from a fan and are wondering what you think – would you have a use for a Webbie Lite?

“I love my dot Webbie and would love it even more if a slightly different version were available. I am thinking about one with a thinner cover (like the premium pads) and slightly fewer pages (~72 vs. the current 96) but still with the elastic closure and expandable pocket and still with the gorgeous ivory 90g paper.”

From Mike in AZ

Are you a fan of our Rhodia Drive Facebook page? Yesterday it was revealed to our Facebook fans that something new will be blooming in the Spring with our new orange covered dotPads. Are you excited? We had many, many requests for these.

What other kinds of Rhodia products are you hoping to see in the new catalog?

We recently received an e-mail from a Rhodia fan looking for some kind of folio/pad holder that would hold an A4 top wirebound pad and allow him to flip the pages without removing the pad from the holder. I don’t use the top wirebound pads and don’t know what to suggest to him other than maybe having Gfeller make something custom for him.

Can you help point our friend in the right direction?

I write, create art, teach, plan events, work on marketing, and sell my art. I keep a journal, about 3-4 individual project books, write in Scrivener and Google Docs, on index cards and tablets. I title, tag, keyword, place edited photos in sets and collections. I highlight quotes on my e-reader, underline and place flags in my books. I use a software calendar app synced to my phone & laptop. Admittedly, I’d love to hire someone to perform many of these functions but for now, it’s all me and it isn’t really pretty at times.

One of the things I plan to manifest this year is a better way to stay organized. I tend to procrastinate with some things and go bullet train fast with others. I’m sure there is a better balance – but then my right brain kicks in and says, “NO! You must write now!” and there I am at 3am blurry eyes drooping and drool leaking out the corner of my mouth pushing forward because it’s an “Inspired” moment.

Tell me, how do you manage to stay on top of everything and manage a healthy creative balance?

What were your favorite Rhodia products in 2011?
Did you try something new and simply fall in love?
What products are you looking forward to trying in 2012?