Field Notes: Starbucks Capitol Hill

Starbucks “Capitol Hill” Edition is the 3rd collaboration between Starbucks Reserve and Field Notes Brand, following the Roastery Edition from 2014 and the “Coffee Origins” Edition from April 2015. It’s named after Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, where Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room is located, and the rainbow colors of the set can easily be attributed to the neighborhood’s counterculture and LGBT communities. 

Capitol Hill, just like the previous Roastery editions, was made to be an exclusive, in-store item at the Starbucks Roastery. It came out in late 2015, either late November or early December. I was in Seattle in late November and had just missed it! Judging from the fact that the Roastery still had the first two editions in stock then, I felt it’d be safe to wait for another chance to visit in the future, instead of relying on the secondary market. And my patience paid off. During my recent trip to Seattle in July, I was finally able to get my hands on Capitol Hill. Fortunately, they still had a bunch left, albeit in a drawer (they’d just forgotten to restock the shelves). The first two editions were surprisingly still available as well.

I’m glad to say, I like Capitol Hill more than I thought I would. There are many details in it to appreciate as a Field Notes fan, so I will list most of them here, with my thoughts mixed in.

Disclaimer: The neon colors were nearly impossible to photograph. I tried to represent all five colors as faithfully as I can but know that the magenta book and the salmon book were especially difficult and that they can look different from what my pictures may suggest. The salmon one is definitely more fluorescent and lighter in real life.
 

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Things to note

Capitol Edition is a 5-pack, with 3.5" x 5.5" memo books in 5 different colors. I have no way of verifying all the branded Field Notes ever made but I have never seen a 5-pack before. The 5 colors are, as best as I can describe: salmon, magenta, yellow, light green, and navy blue. You might describe them differently but this is how I see them. All are very saturated colors, with salmon and green being neon. They hurt my eyes. It’s interesting that they went with 5 colors, instead of 6, which is the typical number of colors in a pride flag, and we’ve seen a few 6-packs of Field Notes before, e.g. National Crop (Spring 2012) and Workshop Companion (Summer 2015). Maybe 6 would’ve pushed it over their desired price point?

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Covers are embossed with a polka-dot pattern, meaning the dots are raised up. Again, I’ve never seen this in Field Notes before. I haven’t written anything on the inside covers yet but when I do, I’ll have to watch out for these dots! Why polka dot though, I am not sure. Perhaps another reference to the Capitol Hill neighborhood? The embossing is done around all the text on the front and back cover, by the way.

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White staples. An excellent choice for these fun, bright colors and the white text. The previous Starbucks edition, Coffee Origins, is also bound by three white staples.

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The body paper is the white Finch Paper Opaque Smooth 60#T, which is the thicker version Field Notes is starting to use more these days. I really like this variation because it makes the memo book more substantial, and I can even use fountain pens in it. 

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Reticle grid comparison (l to r): Capitol Hill, Unexposed, and Night Sky. The gray in Night Sky is slightly lighter than the other two.

Reticle grid on the body paper of Capitol Hill is printed with Pantone “Cool Gray 2” Saphira ink. Other Field Notes editions that feature reticle grid are Night Sky (Summer 2013) and Unexposed (Fall 2014), which happens to also be printed with the same “Cool Gray 2” ink.

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Texture comparison of Capitol Hill (top) and Coffee Origins (bottom).

Covers are made with Sappi McCoy Silk in 100#C. We’ve seen the same paper in the covers of Coffee Origins and Unexposed. If it weren’t for the embossed dots all over, Capitol Hill would feel identical to Coffee Origins texture-wise. Both have the same slightly rubbery, semi-glossy finish. Based on my experience, these covers are quite durable, and I like how pliable they feel. I should note, on the topic of texture, the inside covers of the salmon and the green books have almost powder-y feel to them. They’re definitely not as glossy as their front covers are, or as the insides of the other three colors in the set are. I am not sure if that difference is a function of the paper or the inks (the salmon and green ones are the most neon of the set), or if it’s unique to the set that I opened.

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Starbucks Reserve Coffee Origins (top row) vs. Capitol Hill (bottom row). In real life, the salmon book on the lower right appears lighter and more neon. The magenta book is slightly bluer.

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Capitol Hill (top row) vs. Unexposed (bottom row).

Even though Unexposed has the soft-touch coating on top of the same cover stock, Capitol Hill feels very close to Unexposed in spirit because they both feature fluorescent colors and the same gray reticle grid. Except, the text on the inside covers of Capitol Hill are a bit easier on the eyes than the ones in Unexposed. *shudders*

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“Pink” comparison (l to r): Unexposed, Capitol Hill, and XOXO'13.

The magenta is very, very similar to the color of XOXO 2013 edition. The colors used, as printed on their back covers, are Pantone 246 for Capitol Hill and Pantone 2395 for XOXO'13. The XOXO cover is matte though. I’m actually glad that they’re so similar because I like the color and wouldn’t mind more of these medium “pink” Field Notes. Another color that I love from the set is the vibrant navy blue. Hard to describe it but it looks like there’s a hint of purple in it, too. A unique color in Field Notes so far in my opinion. My least favorite is the salmon one, the one unfortunately packaged on the very front.

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This book unfortunately had a badly cut corner.

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The embossed dots are starting to rub off a bit.

Wrapping it up

Capitol Hill draws several similarities to Unexposed and Coffee Origins but its embossed polka-dot covers, white staples, and thicker body paper make it a rather unique edition. I like the inspiration behind it, too. I may not love fluorescent colors but not all are that harsh on the eyes; it has some standout colors after all. I’ve been using the magenta book for a few weeks now, and the embossed dots and edges are starting to wear down nicely, with the white of the base paper showing through. Overall, it’s a great, fun edition worth a visit to the Roastery if you’re a fan of Field Notes and are in the area. Especially if you like bold colors and wouldn’t mind running into a camera everywhere you turn. It gets crazy packed with tourists there.

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All three Starbucks Reserve editions (l to r): Roastery Edition, Coffee Origins, and Capitol Hill.

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The back view of the three editions. Not everything can be printed in Futura Bold! And what's with the alignment on the birch cover?

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Rainbow! Coffee Origins + Capitol Hill.

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White staples, too! Coffee Origins + Capitol Hill.

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White staples (from top): Capsule AW2015, Snowblind, Starbucks Reserve Coffee Origins, and Capitol Hill. 

Some Specs

• Starbucks “Capitol Hill” Edition, November, 2015
• Item number: FNSBR-03
• Price: $19.95 per one pack of 5 memo books
• Edition size: unknown
• Cover paper: Sappi McCoy Silk 100#C, printed with Pantone 805 (neon salmon), 246 (magenta), 109 (yellow), 802 (neon green), 2735 (navy blue) soy-based Saphira inks 
• Cover embossing: by Nu Wave Die Cutting & Finishing, Chicago, Ill.
• Body paper: Finch Paper Opaque Smooth 60#T in “Bright White”
• Reticle grid inside: Pantone “Cool Gray 2” soy-based Saphira ink
• Belly band: white paper with black ink
• Packaging: shrink-wrapped
• Staples color: white

My Favorite “Practical Applications”

• #14. Brunches Brunched
• #16. Pour-Over Tricks
• #22. Metaphorical Fires Extinguished
• #28. Cleanest Dives

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Quick orange color comparison (l to r): Expedition, Unexposed, Capitol Hill, Neon Ice Pop, DDC Pop-Up, Butcher Orange. I gave up trying to color correct these. Just know that the middle four books are supposed to be “neon”, with Neon Ice Pop being the least neon. The DDC Pop-Up edition is supposed to be lighter and REALLY fluorescent.

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Quick yellow comparison (l to r): Unexposed, Packet of Sunshine, National Crop “Corn”, County Fair, Capitol Hill, Drink Local Lagers “Pilsner”, Drink Local Lagers “Pale Lager”, and Sweet Tooth.

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Quick green comparison (l to r): Summer Camp, Unexposed, Capitol Hill, Our503.com, and Shenandoah “Sweet Birch”.

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Quick blue comparison: American Tradesman, Unexposed, XOXO Festival 2012, Capitol Hill, Cold Horizon, Coal x DDC, County Fair, Coffee Origins, and Unexposed.

Were you able to get your hands on this Capitol Hill edition? Which color is your favorite?

Field Notes Colors: Snowblind

Snowblind is a winter edition of Field Notes Colors, released in November 2015. Before its release, subscribers to Colors were teased with a blinding photo of the sun, and it turned out to be a relevant hint (even though Field Notes always says the teaser image is NOT a hint). Snowblind’s key selling point is that it changes colors in direct sunlight, due to the special “photochromic” ink printed on its white cover. Color-wise, I wasn’t surprised that this edition was all white, similar to how Northerly (another winter edition, from 2011) also had the snow theme. But I didn’t expect a color-changing edition! I should’ve seen it coming, since Field Notes have mentioned in the past how they tried to work with special inks like glow-in-the-dark inks.

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Surprised or not, I very much looked forward to playing with Snowblind when it was first announced. Too bad my local weather wasn’t very sunny when I finally received my subscription, and I had to wait some time before I got a chance to expose my Snowblinds to direct sunlight. And boy was it fun! Watching the white covers turn blue was pretty exciting, and I even managed to make some patterns on them by masking.

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I used a clear, decorative gift bag with a snowflake pattern..

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Voilà!

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I used the kit from Dry Transfer to lay out “2016” on a sheet of clear film..

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Unfortunately, the novelty of Snowblind wore off pretty quickly for me. Maybe it was the gloomy and rainy “winter” weather here, or maybe it’s because I was spending more time with Snowblind using it, rather than playing with it. I use Field Notes indoors 99.99% of the time, which makes Snowblind simply a white-on-white notebook.

A white notebook that, I might add, starts looking dingy fast. This is in comparison with other white Field Notes, like Northerly or Day Game's “Hardball White”, which both hold up well. Of course, those two editions do show some wear and tear after a while, but Snowblind doesn’t seem to age as gracefully. Perhaps, without other colors and textures to distract me, the wear on Snowblind ends up looking more amplified. I’ve tried to “lift” some dirt off Snowblind with a kneaded eraser, which usually works on other matte covers, but that actually made things worse. I guess it has something to do with the special ink printed on the cover and the odd, slightly satin texture it creates.

I noticed that the blue ink used on the back cover doesn’t match the blue used on the inside cover. And did the belly band have to be yellow? I guess it did, to make the color-changing feature of Snowblind more obvious, in retail settings maybe, but the yellow in this edition doesn’t really do anything for me.

Okay, now I’m just nit-picking. That’s what happens when I feel “meh” about an edition (see my ranking of Field Notes to see how Snowblind fares). It's hard to pinpoint what makes Snowblind one of my least favorites, but I think it's the overall texture of it, how the cover is matte but lacks the fibrous feel (too smooth?). On top of that, it gets dirty quickly, when the beauty of its look (indoors) is dependent on it being pristine all over (even its staples are white).

But as a notebook, of course, it works just fine, and it fits my daily needs well. I like that Field Notes used a slightly thicker stock for the body pages again, and I enjoyed using the faint gray graph grid inside. Coupled with the light blue text on the white inside cover, Snowblind reminded me of a chilly winter landscape, even though my local weather didn’t match up. It also reminded me why I keep subscribing to Colors, and that is because I like seeing Field Notes books re-imagined in various ways, and I appreciate that they’re continuing to do trying different things every quarter. No doubt I’ll take a Snowblind out once in awhile and see its color change but as an every day memo book, it wouldn’t be my first choice. I have too many other Field Notes that I’m more drawn to. Blame it on all the special non-Colors editions lately for stealing the thunder, like the DDC Dead Prints?

Firsts

As mentioned above, the most significant “first” in Snowblind is the fact that it’s printed with a special “photochromic” ink that changes color when exposed to a specific range of ultraviolet light. The ink is actually screen-printed (which is another “first” in Colors), and since it reacts to UV light, it looks colorless indoors (or white in Snowblind’s case with the white cover stock), unless you use a special lamp (see here for more usage tips). Under a strong UV source, it turns blue in about 15 seconds. I definitely noticed that the direct sunlight produced a more saturated blue than when I tried to change the color with the sunlight filtered through the window. Either way, I was slightly disappointed that the blue reverts back to colorless very quickly, and it made photographing quite a challenge for me. Not that taking pictures of a white notebook is easy to begin with! :)

Apparently, this UV-sensitive pigment ink is very expensive, and Field Notes had to take “a bit of a hit in the ol’ profit-margin to get ’em into the world”. I wonder if that explains the smaller edition size of Snowblind, at just 25,000 3-packs (Shenandoah, the previous Colors edition, was 40,000 packs).

The other special ink on Snowblind is the “interference” ink, also custom-mixed and screen-printed by H&H Graphics – a printer I haven’t heard before through Field Notes (they also work with glow-in-the-dark inks! *nudge nudge*). This ink is used on the Field Notes logotype on the front cover. It’s a really pretty, pearlescent ink that almost disappears into the white cover at certain angles and sparkles with a hint of light blue at others. This is the part on Snowblind that doesn’t turn colors. I suppose FN could have left the logotype un-printed; that would have still produced the desired effect of the title standing out while the rest of the cover turns blue. But I’m glad they added some interest to an all-white cover with a hint of this sparkly ink. It goes well with the “snow blind” theme. I wonder how it would have looked if the whole cover was printed with this “interference” ink... :)

The last exciting “first” I’d like to mention is the appearance of glossy white staples in Colors. To avid Field Notes fans, Snowblind might not be the first, since the Starbucks Roastery “Coffee Origins” Edition and the Capsule A/W 2015 edition both featured white staples, but those were outside of the Colors series. For such a white edition like Snowblind, white staples is a no-brainer, and I’d love to see them again in Colors in the future.

By the way, Snowblind’s cover is made with Sappi McCoy 100#C Silk and it’s not a “first” in Colors. We’ve seen the same in Unexposed (Fall 2014). As for the body paper, Snowblind is not the first Colors edition to get the slightly thicker paper (Finch Paper Opaque Smooth in 60#T). Shenandoah is. I wondered if the 60#T would become a new standard.. Maybe it’s safe to assume that the next Colors edition would get the same body paper? We’ll just have to wait and see.

White staples of Snowblind, compared to the silver-colored staples of the Original kraft Field Notes.

Other notes

Another thing I wondered at the time of Shenandoah’s release: whether the mini kraft “HELLO” note in the shape of a Field Notes would be packaged with future Colors editions. And it looks like that will be the case, as Snowblind was packaged with the same promotional note. I’ve also seen it tucked in other FN products, like the 56-Week Planner, the Steno, 15-Month Work Station Calendar, etc.

And this didn’t really affect my ranking, but I noticed that most of the books in my 3-packs of Snowblind have frayed edges at the corners where the cover is folded. I’ve seen this happen in other Field Notes but it seems especially bad in Snowblind. Maybe the assembly machine needs a stern talking-to. Who knows?

Last note: I’m glad all the books in Snowblind are the same, which means I don’t have to buy as many 3-packs this time. The last Colors edition before Snowblind that had 3 identical books was Shelterwood (Spring 2014). That’s a gap of almost two years. Wow!

Quick color comparison (left to right): J.Crew, Northerly, National Crop “Cotton”, Day Game “Hardball White”, TEDx Portland, Capsule AW 2014, Capsule AW 2015, and Snowblind. For more detailed (but slightly outdated now) “white” comparison, go here.

Snowblind (right) vs. the other white winter edition, Northerly (left).

Some yellow belly bands with Packet of Sunshine thrown in (upper right): Snowblind (front), Coal x DDC (left), and Loot Crate “Classified” edition (upper left).

Quick graph grid comparison (from left): Northerly, Cold Horizon, Just Below Zero, Snowblind, and Original kraft.

Some fun (for me) details

• Snowblind is the 2015 Winter edition of COLORS, the 29th in the series.
• Item Number: FNC-29
• Edition size: 25,000 packs, November 2015. FN offered 1,000 new subscriptions starting with this edition.
• Covers: Sappi McCoy 100#C “Silk White” silk-screened with two custom inks: pearlescent “Interference Blue” ink and “Photochromic Blue” ink, by H&H Graphics in Vernon Hills, IL. Ink information of the blue text on the back cover is unknown, as is the lighter blue ink used on the inside cover.
• Body paper: Finch Paper Opaque Smooth 60#T in “Bright White”
• Graph grid inside: “Hoar Frost” light gray, soy-based Saphira ink
• Belly band: yellow with black text
• Subscription-only extras: none
• Extras: “Hello” note with No. FN-25 “Sincere Pronouncement,” packaged in between the memo books
• Staples color: white
• Film: Field Notes Winter 2015 on Vimeo
   

My Favorite “Practical Applications”

• #15. Yeti Sightings
• #20. Polar Bear Plunges Plunged
• #28. Moose Avoidance Plans
   

Fellow Field Notes fans’ takes on Snowblind

• Notes on Snowblind Field Notes | Pens and Junk
• Field Notes COLORS: Snowblind — M B S-P-B

What are your thoughts on Snowblind? :)