The partnership between Moleskine and Adobe on a new Creative Cloud Moleskine notebook promises to be a notable step forward in the convergence of the offline and online worlds.
The notebook and accompanying app enable you to turn hand-drawn sketches directly into fully workable digital files.
How does it work ?
You draw in the notebook, take a photo using the cloud-connected Moleskine app on your iPhone, and a vector version (SVG file) of your sketch is automatically transferred to your Adobe Creative Cloud account, where it can be edited in Photoshop or Illustrator.
Whilst the app can be used on any paper, the dot markings on the pages of the Moleskine notebook provide a frame of reference to help remove distortion (from paper or lens) and optimise the image.
This partnership is the latest step in Moleskine’s digital journey, and perhaps the most significant yet to seek to bridge the gap between paper and screen.
As a quintessentially analogue product, Moleskine’s investment in developing products to link real to virtual is obviously a strategic move to remain relevant in an increasingly digital world. It promises to offer the tactile, satisfying feel of sketching with pen or pencil on paper with the convenience and versatility (in terms of sharing and editing) of digital.
In short, enabling us to have our cake and eat it.
Earlier Moleskine efforts to link analogue to digital are nowhere near as flexible or neat. For example, The Moleskine Livescribe Notebook enables editable digital text, but you have to use the Livescribe ‘Smartpen’ which does not really offer the same feel as writing with a pen or pencil (leaving aside the cost of the pens and decidedly mixed reviews regarding how well they work).
The Evernote Business notebook enables easy incorporation of hand-written notes into Evernote (and has some nifty features so that you can separate parts of the page and add tags) but the text is not editable.
Does the Creative Cloud Moleskine work? – I haven’t had a chance to try it out, but it is available in Europe from December 15.
Westrow Cooper 