Sketchbooks don't have to be pretty (or perfect)

Michael Bierut's article about his 85 notebooks (not sketchbooks as he specifies) over 26 years really has me thinking.  I always keep saying I need to start a sketchbook/notebook of my ideas and projects but it never quite develops.  A lot of times I use those cheap notepads that all the printers give you.  I tear pages out, they float around my desk for a while and sometimes they end up in a folder or often times in the trash.  

I have several nice notebooks, but I honestly have a strange fear or block about starting them.  And if for some reason I do write in them, I get really bad about keeping a strict chronological page order.  I will grab it and flip it to any old page.  It ends up completely disorganized, a mess and I deem it hopeless.

I also seem to be stuck in this idea that my notebook as a designer has to be beautiful on every page.  Every sketch has to be a successful design executed later.  Michael Bierut definitely changed this misconception for me, saying often times his pages are filled with notes from a phone conversation or lists for a project.  I already do this now on free sheets of paper so why not put it in a place that I can look back on 15 or 20 years from now.  Even my personal to do lists could be interesting to look back at someday.  It is almost like an effortless journal of sorts.  Still very young in my career, it would be nice to have something to look back on when I've lost touch with what I was like as a starting out designer or when I just feel like being nostalgic.  At the very least I need to let go of my perfectionist tendencies and plunge into my first notebook.  Hopefully my first of very many.

{Photographs from Michael Bierut's article on Design Observer}