Writing by hand will never feel natural on a tablet. Pre-packaged styluses will always be too light or too thin. The slippery smoothness of a screen will never compare with the tire-on-asphalt tactile satisfaction of a fountain pen on quality stationary, nor will filing your manuscripts, sketches or stray notes away in a nebulous collection of data feel like more of an accomplishment than flipping through the pages of your past in a complete volume. But god, notebooks can be a waste of space. That’s where Mod comes in.
Mod’s offerings are twofold: a product line and a service. Their handsome notebooks rival Moleskines, and come with either plain, ruled or dot-grid paper; once you’ve scribbled to your heart’s content, you can mail a notebook to Mod HQ (with a prepaid shipping envelope included in every purchase), where your pages are scanned and digitized for you within five business days. Mod can share your digitized notes with your Evernote, Dropbox or OneNote accounts, in addition to the Mod app, which is dedicated specifically for these notes and is compatible across all smartphones, tablets and computer operating systems. You can choose between having the physical notebook recycled or returned to you.
Mod is refreshing in their tacit acknowledgement that tech shouldn’t replace every facet of life and work, but rather supplement it. The service lets you reintroduce simpler practices into your life without forcing yourself to be an out-and-out luddite. For a scribbler, organizer or note-taking addict, that’s worth $29 any day.
