Moleskine Pac-Man!

Moleskine celebrates Pac-Man's 30th anniversary with a special Pac-Man notebook and this cute little promotional video (which conveniently also plugs the hidden pocket's secret wares).

It's stuff like this that keeps a notebook company (of all things!) relevant to the heartbeats of twenty- and thirty-somethings, particularly the self-referential geeks who grew up with that first suite of joystick games (noble precursors of Xbox and Wii!), feed on retro throwbacks like dogs on catsteak, and pride themselves on maintaining vestiges of a simpler time. (At least in show. If the notebook is among our favourite manifestations of this tendency, it's due in part to Moleskine's simple product, clever spinoff decisions, gentle encouragement of budding fan communities, and consistent message.)*

What is it about Pac-Man that makes other companies - Google, Moleskine - want to take a piece of it and call it their own?

I'm not complaining, I love this stuff. It's just funny, that's all.

Via.

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*Actually, I have no idea whether thirty-somethings swallow Moleskines the way twenty-somethings do. I can really only speak with confidence for my generation - not just because I'm part of it, but also because for my uni thesis I conducted a complex and lengthy study on brand loyalty among Echo Boomers of all income classes. Basically I discovered girls are more brand-promiscuous than boys, everything we think makes us profoundly unique is what defines us as a group (including our supposedly eclectic interest in both underground hip-hop and our parents' 8-tracks), and everyone buys Nike.

It's the Mobile Case Hemingway Would Have Used.

By gad, my darlings, it's Moleskine iPhone and iPad covers!

Humor me ››

Moleskiners, Bloggers Share Common Destiny - er, Bond

The ubiquitous Moleskine notebook: allegedly the trusted third arm of Hemingway, Van Gogh and Matisse, among others.

If the above apotheoses were alive today, would they be bloggers? It's hard to say. I'm sure Van Gogh and Matisse could contribute a great deal to the future of graphic design, and perhaps inadvertently they already have.

Hemingway wouldn't be afraid of trying something new, and perhaps even elitist contemporaries like Gertrude Stein (who never quite made it on the popularity of her work) and James Joyce may find the globally conjurable writing platform useful to their purposes as scrivners of all seasons, times and worlds.

One thing's for sure: there's a grand overlap between blogosphere members and Moleskine users (of today, that is). So if you happen to see somebody carrying a mole-clad notebook around, chances are s/he's a blogger too.

To better emphasize that relationship we find the (now Kikkerland-owned) Moleskinerie which in turn yields Moleskine City, a global panorama of bloggers hot-footing it from country to country with cameras, comfy shoes and the telltale black journals. (If you're curious about the Kikkerland liaison, read the interview with Armand of Moleskinerie by Citizen Marketer authors McConnell and Huba.)

As a fellow blogger and Moleskine-toter, I was intrigued by the shared space between those who disseminate the word on the lit-killing technology of today and those who hold the classical cahier dear. Why the parallel? Could it be possible - dear God - that the sloppy self-entitled ego-maniacal pseudo-journalist bloggers of today are the trend-setting classicists of tomorrow?

Could it be possible our neurotic scribbling online and off demonstrate a love of the word (and the world) that only other Moleskine lovers throughout history can identify with?

Could it be possible that we carry a conscious responsibility to our readers to disseminate the truth about ourselves and our societies as it unfolds?

Could it be possible that we may be called upon hundreds of years into the future to act as the witty-ass 6+ megapixel lens for the world as it is today?

Could it be possible that there's a higher calling for bloggers everywhere?

...Including me? And maybe you?

Nah. Bloggers are just the no-good lazy-ass hyper-typing fucktards you went to high school with. We'll keep our day jobs as baristas, office cogs and interns because clearly there's a higher calling in those arenas.