Now that I have grown up, I am back to "write" campus notes. Adult campus series notebook
- ChungT.
- Feb 19
- 3 min read
"When did I start to distance myself from calligraphy? As time goes by, I am now an adult and start to look back at writing."Campus Notes College Student Campus Series. In an era where smart devices are everywhere, handwritten notes may not be so important.
The best-selling school notebook from Japan's No. 1 stationery brand, Kokuyo. Two out of every three students at the University of Tokyo use this national notebook. According to Japanese statistics, the Campus Notes series has sold more than 2.6 billion units in the 39 years since its launch. If they were stacked on top of each other, their height would be equivalent to more than 26 million Mount Fujis.
In 1905, Zentaro Kuroda founded the Kuroda Shōshi Shoten in Osaka, Japan, to produce Japanese account books. In 1914, the company name was officially changed to KOKUYO Co., Ltd., and began to produce accounting documents, invoices, copies and letter paper. In 1959, KOKUYO commercialized "wireless binding", which was completely different from the mainstream "thread binding" at the time. After repeated improvements, the first campus notebook for students in Japan, Campus Notebook, was launched in 1975.
As the market expanded and customers had more choices, Kokuyo made a bold change in 1991, adopting brighter colors than ever before and placing the Campus logo vertically to form a familiar and timeless logo, and further enhancing the uniqueness of Campus Note through a special design.
Campus Notebook has always been pursuing notebooks that are easy to use and keep up with the times. While conducting in-depth research on the functions of notebooks, we began to think, "What kind of notebook would make users feel comfortable using it?" The feeling that KOKUYO finally presented was "the simple feeling is good." To give people this feeling when they pick up the notebook, we thought it was important to express a sense of openness and spaciousness, eliminating the ridge in the middle of the left and right pages, and making sure the border between the left and right pages doesn’t move so that when you open the notebook, the left and right pages can be used as one page. Since it's flat, you don't have to hold the page in your hands when taking photos with your smartphone. Additionally, the center bump does not cause shadows or distortions.
Although Campus Note is called a "campus notebook", the needs of the workplace cannot be ignored. As the "student notebooks" continued to evolve and become easier to draw and use, Kokuyo began to launch the "Adult Student Series" in 2015. Unlike students, adults take notes for different purposes and contents. You can't always take notes with a brightly colored notebook in the workplace, so Kokuyo designed three color covers for the "Adult Campus Series" for workplace use: a black plaid cover, a navy blue polka dot cover, and a simple and elegant silver-gray cover. ( Each colorway is available in perfect-bound notebooks, two-ring loose-leaf notebooks, and paginated planners; as well as straight pages, grid pages, and blank pages. )
The simple color scheme and Campus design style not only make it easy to take notes, but also add a sense of intimacy to the desk. The inner pages of the notebook are made of 70g-75g Japanese paper, which is smooth and comfortable to write on and is opaque. Except for the double-ring loose-leaf notebooks, the perfect-bound notebooks and cut-page notepads all use paper cloth laminated to the spine cloth material. Make sure the spine won't tear even after use. The notebook uses 80% white soft paper, which is not easy to cause eye fatigue even if you write for a long time.
Campus Note Serise
Retail Price JPY210 - JPY990（tax exclude.）
Release Date 2015
