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Software for stationery lovers

How software might learn from paper clips, & other thoughts 🐷📎

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[10]vrk
Dec 26, 2024
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pov: hanging out on your favorite website [16]journalhelper.com 😎

Merry Christmas, everyone!! 🎄

It’s December 26th, I’m at home and cozy, and over the last few days I’ve had a
blast finishing up my 2024 journal and finalizing my [17]Techo Kaigi for 2025.
Those would have been perfect topics for this last newsletter of the year,
BUT!!! I decided I had another story to tell!

If you follow Pouch Studio on Instagram, you [18]might have seen that I
launched a software tool a few weeks ago! It’s called Hobonichi Journal Helper,
and it’s a free tool that I made that lets you preview, crop, and resize photos
for your Hobonichi journal.

Check it out here:

✨[19] https://www.journalhelper.com/hobonichi ✨

It’s a very small tool, and intentionally so 🌱

Today I want to share with you what I think it means to build software for
paper lovers, or more specifically — software for stationery lovers. It’s the
thinking that led to the creation of this tool, and the inspiration fueling me
as I build software in 2025.

I hope you enjoy! Have a wonderful rest of your holidays, and see you in
January!! 🎊

♡ vrk

PS: If you’re sad I’m not talking about my 2024 journal + Techo Kaigi today,
don’t worry!! I’ll be posting those updates on the Instagram, and this
miiiiight even become the topic of January’s newsletter…. I don’t plan my
newsletters that far in advance though 😆 We’ll see what January brings! ☃️

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⚡️ Oddly specific software

It was Saturday, November 30th, I was riding the subway on the way to meet some
friends for brunch, when suddenly — out of nowhere — I knew what I needed
build! And more importantly, I knew why.

Hobonichi Journal Helper is not a new idea I’ve had, and it’s not even that ~
interesting~ of an idea.

It’s a tool that helps you make, SPECIFICALLY AND EXCLUSIVELY, journal layouts
that look like this:

[21]
A6 Original monthly calendar
This masterpiece is from [22]Hobonichi Stationery Club Issue #23

I love journal layouts like this, and — prior to Hobonichi Journal Helper —
there wasn’t a special tool to help you make layouts of this style. You’d have
to find a way to resize and crop each photo you want to use, then print them
out and hope for the best when you sat down to arrange the tiny photos in your
journal.

What if there was a software tool that let you select photos you wanted to use,
crop them to size, preview it in your Hobonichi, and print all when done? It
would make this experience 100 times nicer!!

It’s an obvious idea, but I had been reluctant to build software for such a
niche use case.

This problem was SO small, SO oddly specific. It’s not just limited to journals
or even Hobonichi journals, but the monthly pages of Hobonichi journals. By
design, its most passionate users would probably use it AT MOST, once a month.

Why would I bother to build software for this? Almost reflexively I would
dismiss it: Yeah it’s too niche, I’ll come back to this later.

But in that fateful moment on the subway, I had sudden 3-way realization:

 1. 🚙 For stationery lovers, there’s no problem too small!

 2. 🐷 There’s life from 1000 paper clips

 3. 🎮 A good demo is a polished glimpse

… and from that moment, I knew how I wanted to build software for stationery
lovers.

Allow me to elaborate!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🚙 No problem too small

Working in tech, I was taught to avoid working on problems that were too small.
There are plenty of neat ideas, but at the end of the day, you gotta think
about, “How many users will this affect?” If it’s not a big enough problem,
there aren’t enough potential users, and if there aren’t a lot of potential
users, then it’s not a problem worth solving.

Very logical, yes? So logical that it’s easy to be fooled into thinking this is
the “correct” approach.

But then for some reason, sitting on the subway, it finally dawned on me:

“Too small of a problem”?? This concept does not exist in the land of
stationery!!

To show you what I mean, here’s a roundup from JetPens on “oddly specific
stationery:”

The first example is the Sakura Mixline Underline Highlighter, which lets you
highlight and underline at the same time:

[24]
[https]
BUT OF COURSE

If you’re unfamiliar with products like this, you might think they’re silly
novelties you buy for the idea rather than the function.

Like… do you really need to highlight and underline? Even if this was your
preference, couldn’t you just buy a separate highlighter and a separate pen?!
Is it that much effort to switch between pens? It’s so much more useful, more
practical, more logical to have them separate. Right??

But I gotta say, as a stationery lover, my gut reaction to this pen is….
Cool!!! I never thought about underlining my highlights… should I try it?

[25]
[https]
The color combos they’ve chosen are truly inspired too

And I find that interesting — this is a very opinionated tool, and an
opinionated tool provides built-in inspiration for how to use it.

What are you gonna do with a pencil? I dunno.

What are you gonna do with a Mixline Underline Highlighter? Oh my mind is
racing with ideas!! I could highlight some sentences, create headers, I could
make cute forms with this…

There’s a second aspect to these ultra-specific tools, too.

Later in the video is a tool I do own, the Midori Eraser Dust Mini Cleaner II:

[https][https]
a practical purchase!

It’s a small plastic car that you can use to sweep up eraser dust or other
small debris on your desk.

I can attest first hand: I use my Mini Cleaner regularly! I draw a lot, and
erase a lot, and when I just swept up the eraser dust with my hands, pieces
would fall to the floor, get smushed into my floor by the wheels of my desk
chair, which was annoying to clean up… Therefore the Mini Cleaner, a device
that helps me keep my floors cleaner by keeping my desk cleaner? Felt like a
practical purchase to me!

I think it’s the allure of products like this — it’s not a gimmick; it’s a
thoughtfully made tool for a particular person, a particular problem in mind.

Whether I’m its target customer or not, I can appreciate who it’s for and why
it was made, even if it’s not for me. I’m probably not buying a Mixline
highlighter, but I respect the product, and its mere existence has inspired me.

But when I AM the target customer — like in the case of the Mini Cleaner — it
truly feels like a miracle! That someone saw my problem, and invented a way to
solve it just so. I feel a small, invisible, but warm connection to both its
creator and all its users. It’s a tool so specific that simply by using it,
we’ve got something in common.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🐷📎 A stationery collection

The question was posed to me: Would a stationery lover buy one 3-color
multi-pen, or 3 individual pens, one of each color?

And the answer, of course, is C) All of the above!! I’ll take the multi-pen and
one of each color, please 😆

Which is to say, I think stationery is a “yes, and” culture — for better and
worse!

Stationery lovers tend to curate a large collection of analog tools and
stationery. Similarly, stationery brands tend to produce a large catalog of
products, too.

The Midori Mini Cleaner is not Midori Japan’s only product — far from it! The
brand has hundreds of products:

[27]
[https]
And Midori itself it just one of several brands under company Designphil

Software companies take the opposite approach. They often build one massive
product, to the point that the product and company name is one and the same —
for instance, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb. Even when if there is a suite of products,
like from Microsoft or Google or Adobe, each product is still huge enough to be
is own standalone business.

But why? It’s certainly one approach to building software, but it can’t be the
only way.

What would it look like for a software company to instead to try a model like
stationery? To produce potentially hundreds of tiny software apps, each
carefully and thoughtfully made — as special-purpose and opinionated as, for
instance, these paper clips by Midori:

[28]
[https]

There is a lot of aggression baked into tech culture, which especially comes to
light when discussing products of the same category. In my career as a software
engineer, I worked on both Google Chrome and Arc Browser. When I worked on
Chrome in 2010, the question was, “Will Chrome be the IE-killer?” When I worked
on Arc over ten years later, the question was still, “Will Arc be the Chrome-
killer?” Even when we aren’t talking about software murdering each other, still
the word — and goal — is “domination.” Who is the dominant browser? This
competition for dominance is recapped on the Wikipedia page entitled, [29]
Browser wars.

In the stationery world, there’s a rich ecosystem of products — hundreds, maybe
thousands of variations of something like a paper clip: a product with the same
narrow focus, same goal, trying to solve the exact same problem — and yet these
products seem to coexist peacefully.

Somehow I don’t think this pig is trying to declare war on the paper clip:

[30]
[https]
Our pig comes in peace

Is our little 🐷 even a “competitor” to the 📎? I’m not sure if I’d describe it
that way! Competitor or not, I feel like they’d be friends, hanging out,
appreciating each other’s unique qualities.

I’m interested in creating non-warring software, where variety is celebrated,
and “a different approach to the same idea” is seen as a like-minded friend
rather than an enemy to destroy. This goes hand in hand with a yes, and culture
— when there’s room for you, there’s little need to fight for survival.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎮 A polished glimpse

I love playing video games and I watch a lot of cozy gamers on YouTube. My
favorite channel is [32]@JoshsGamingGarden.

Josh plays lots of indie farming games, and he notes that many first-time game
developers make this same mistake: They want this game to be their DREAM game,
and so they try to include in it EVERYTHING they ever wanted. Then they release
their game as a demo or in Early Access as a wide-but-shallow experience where
most of the game is there, but it’s all like 25-50% complete.

Whenever this happens, [33]Josh says, “I feel like a demo should be a very
polished, but small portion of your game.” When you have a game that is
incomplete in all areas, it’s not a good experience, and it’s hard to get a
feel for what the full game is going to be like. In comparison, a
narrow-but-deep sliver of a game is a much more compelling introduction!

A game that gets this right is [34]Super Farming Boy. The demo is only a few
hours long, but EVERYTHING presented — the the visuals, the dialogue, the
gameplay — is highly polished, and you leave with a strong feel for what this
game will grow up to be.

[35]
[https]
You can watch the gameplay from Josh’s stream earlier this year!

Truthfully, I empathize so much with those indie game developers. Hobonichi
Journal Helper is not the complete version of the software I want to create,
not at all!! Ughghgh I want to launch so much more than this! It’s frustrating
to launch something that feels like 0.01% of what I set out to do.

But I agree with Josh! It’s worth limiting myself in scope, both to make its
completion more feasible and to most effectively communicate the type of thing
I’m trying to build.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🚃 Following my zoomies

So — back to November 30th, back to the subway!

I sat on the train and I had these 3 simultaneous thoughts. I realized that
this simple unclever idea for a tool, i.e. Hobonichi Journal Helper, embodied
the spirit of these 3 insights:

  • 🚙 It’s a super specific tool designed to solve a super specific problem

  • 🖋️ It’s a tool that’s intended to be one of many, rather than THE ONE tool
    that does everything

  • 🎮 It’s a narrow and focused demo for what I am trying to do as a whole

It felt like a 4-D epiphany!! And consequently, I got this powerful urge to
DROP EVERYTHING AND BUILD JOURNAL HELPER…

…WHICH GAVE ME A MINI CRISIS! Journal Helper was NOT my plan for December!! I
was planning to focus on Pouch Issue 2 in December, and Pouch aside, I had been
developing a totally different piece of software-for-journalers lolll, whose
development I was going to pick back up in January.

Do I stick to my original plan, or do I follow this surge of inspiration?

At my past tech companies, I know exactly what I would have done: The original
plan, of course!! This was a fun idea that should be backlogged. It’s not
urgent enough to change my priorities. I should let the emotion pass and govern
myself by logic.

But earlier in November, I had a memorable conversation with an artist friend I
admire. In it, she mentioned how she gets the “productivity zoomies,” where she
feels a burst of sudden inspiration, and that energy would propel her to be
absurdly productive in a short period of time, like “designing an entire
sticker line at 2am” sorta thing. It was a style that really worked for her. As
she talked, it occurred to me how deeply I recognized the feeling she
described, yet how rarely I let myself work off that feeling.

I decided: This time, I’m gonna follow my zoomies! I dropped everything, and I
created Hobonichi Journal Helper in 10 days[37]1, from the spark of the idea on
November 30th to posting the Instagram announcement on December 10th. Only then
did my soul find peace. Zooming was the right move!

I won’t always be building-by-zoomies — my artist friend doesn’t do that,
either — but it’s something I want to incorporate more in my practice. Impulse
shouldn’t always win, but neither should restraint.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📝 Software for paper lovers

As some of you know, I embarked on this sabbatical in July 2023, originally
with the sole intention of building software for paper lovers. As most of you
know, that’s not how I ended up spending my time! Instead, I’ve been leveling
up my design skills, taking drawing classes, I started a zine store, and I
launched my pride and joy, Pouch Magazine. None of this was planned! These
projects emerged after having uninterrupted time to follow my passions 💖

But — y’know what’s weird, maybe? — I’ve never thought of this as not on the
path to building software.

Back in August 2023, I mentioned [39]needing to level up my non-software skills
in order to level up my software-building skills. This was true, and I felt the
difference as I built Hobonichi Journal Helper: I’m a lot faster and tbh a lot
better at creating the tools I want to create!

But also: As a person who respects analog mediums equally to digital ones, why
would I limit myself to creating software? Why not make some stickers? Why not
draw a thing, if I want to? Why not make a magazine?

In the same way that I will reach for my Kokuyo Pasta Markers one day, and my
Pentel MatteHop Pens another… I want to reach for “coding” as I would any other
tool in my toolbox. As any other pen in my pouch!

With Pouch Studio, I hope to publish magazines *and* software. I’ve focused on
Pouch magazine in 2024, but I’m excited to expand the software side in 2025 and
beyond. I want to build independent, community-minded software that emerges
from a reverence for pen and paper ❤️‍🔥 Software worthy of the stationery
community that I love so dearly!

Thanks so much for reading today’s newsletter! And thank you to everyone who
has supported me and Pouch Studio this year. I’m so moved and grateful to each
and every one of you 🙏 Writing and creating for this wonderful community has
been the greatest privilege of my career.

Rest well this holidays, and I’ll see you next year! 🎄☕️

[40]1

In case unclear: I didn’t use AI tools for this. No Pouch Studio products have
been nor will be created with AI, software or otherwise. There’s more to say on
this, but it’s a big topic (and a rather draining one), so I’m containing this
to a footnote today! Will write more on this in the future when I have the time
and energy.

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[48]
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[49]Cheryl Lindo Jones
[50]6d
Liked by vrk

I admire your journey to build products for people intentionally and in
opposition to the logical, but not necessarily correct approaches of Big (and
not so big) Tech focusing on problems for the masses and dominating in their
product spaces. I think solving problems for niche areas and markets can build
really loyal customers who are loyal because they feel seen and heard.

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[53]1 reply by vrk
[54]
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[55]Emily
[56]3d
Liked by vrk

This is adorable and I can absolutely see this being a beloved tool by the HUGE
stationery community! Your thoughts about the “productivity zoomies” also
really spoke to me as well, and perhaps I’ll lean into my own in the future ✨

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References:

[1] https://vrklovespaper.substack.com/
[2] https://vrklovespaper.substack.com/
[8] https://substack.com/home/post/p-153265026?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
[9] https://substack.com/profile/976344-vrk
[10] https://substack.com/@vrkmakes
[12] https://substack.com/home/post/p-153265026?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
[13] https://vrklovespaper.substack.com/p/software-for-stationery-lovers/comments
[14] javascript:void(0)
[15] https://www.journalhelper.com/
[16] https://www.journalhelper.com/
[17] https://www.google.com/search?q=techo+kaigi
[18] https://www.instagram.com/p/DDaEnmSRx_Q
[19] https://www.journalhelper.com/hobonichi
[21] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a664556-71a2-4271-be7e-4e00767fbb20_1600x1600.jpeg
[22] https://www.1101.com/store/techo/en/magazine/contents/stationeryclub/m1w9rgq7k.html
[24] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0f9009f-aa89-4542-89ab-a7875045f0d0_1276x872.png
[25] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8aa810a-7d86-4966-a8aa-fa1a87dcccf9_1396x904.png
[27] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F82e6816d-a937-40e8-b76d-82e36ec3d885_2498x1352.png
[28] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fab5625ca-bf42-48c9-bbe3-6175edea2d5a_1462x1624.png
[29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars
[30] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8e355d26-4a21-499c-b77a-bdcd608c1c57_280x312.png
[32] https://www.youtube.com/@JoshGamingGarden
[33] https://youtu.be/QK0Lg7QLnr8?t=1393
[34] https://www.superfarmingboy.com/
[35] https://youtu.be/wbo3Su6Y3mo?t=7116
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[42] https://substack.com/home/post/p-153265026?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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[53] https://vrklovespaper.substack.com/p/software-for-stationery-lovers/comment/83172494
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[60] https://vrklovespaper.substack.com/p/software-for-stationery-lovers/comments
[77] https://substack.com/privacy
[78] https://substack.com/tos
[79] https://substack.com/ccpa#personal-data-collected
[80] https://substack.com/signup?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=footer
[81] https://substack.com/app/app-store-redirect?utm_campaign=app-marketing&utm_content=web-footer-button
[82] https://substack.com/
[84] https://enable-javascript.com/