Scribbles that Matter

Disclaimer: Before I start, I’d like to point out that I search for information about the company, test the journal and prepare my review before reading any journal reviews by other users and creators. I base my opinion on my experience of ordering and receiving and using the journal, so if I get a journal with an issue, I don’t exchange it and base my review on my initial experience, because that was my experience as a genuine buyer of a product. Because of shipping costs from Australia, I tend not to return products unless they are unusable anyway!

Journal review: I was very unsure about reviewing the Scribbles that Matter journal as the feedback online is very mixed, but it is a very well-known and dinstinctive journal that is sold all over the world, so it was a must. I decided that I had to make the decision for myself.

So. I love the presentation of this journal. It has a great cover with doodles that match the slip-on box and they have lots of bright colours to choose from, usually with a contrasting elastic. While bright colours aren’t for everyone, it’s a point of difference for Scribbles that Matter as there aren’t many other brands doing bright colours. It’s a good size for carrying around, but only has 15o dot grid pages, and another six pages marked for index and pen test.

The leatherette cover feels fairly durable, in contrast to a brand like Maisie Lane that had a soft leatherette that marks easily. That said, it’s soft enough that the elastic has created an indent on the cover, and some users have complained about the durability of the corners. I bought an earlier version of STM to review but was too late, so saved my review for this new version. The earlier STM had a much better quality of binding than the one I reviewed, which has several places where the binding is exposed between the pages, and the glueing of the signatures is very poor. I’m not sure whether this is a consistent problem with the brand – I would be interested to know whether mine was a one-off. Regardless, even a one-off is bad.

Another point of difference for Scribbles that Matter is the provision of tiny little marks that help you easily pick the middle of each side and middle of each page, making it quicker to work out your page layouts. The pen test results were excellent, with only minor ghosting from an alcohol-based marker, and not other ghosting or bleeding, or page warping from watercolour paints.

My in-depth review video looks at the construction of the journal, the quality of the paper, interesting information about the company including their sustainability policy, and includes a pen test of a full range of pens and watercolour paints. See my pen test page for an explanation of each test.