It’s easy to discount the humble notebook in the age of digital note taking, but all things considered it measures up amongst the most important inventions of all time—a sentiment that Field Notes founder Aaron Draplin agrees with wholeheartedly. The original Field Notes prototypes were inspired by farmers’ memo books that were crucial to agricultural life at the turn of the century, which Draplin collected from garage sales, antique stores, and other troves of Americana across the country over the years. He started Field Notes to honor those notebooks—tools that everyday folks used to organize their lives—and provide such a tool for us to use in this day and age where we could all use an excuse to not take our phones out.
