Designer Journals™ were born in Black Rock, Connecticut in 2008. I developed the concept after years of observing design professionals and students in their natural habitats, using sketch books and diaries to record their thoughts and ideas. In my extensive travels as a guest lecturer at some of the country's top art and design schools, I noticed that many students were obsessively writing and drawing in all kinds of notebooks—not to take lecture notes—but out of the necessity and passion of keeping a record of ideas, sketches, and doodles. In early 2008, I began distributing complimentary prototypes along with a Sharpie® to test the concept. The journals were a smash hit with design students and creative professionals at all levels. So I decided to produce bigger batches of Designer Journals just for fun and make them available to the world at large.
—Cheers, Karl Heine