Most everyone I admire from history has kept some sort of journal or notebook - Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and many more. I do the same, although with mixed success.

I've always had complaints with the journals that are available off-the-shelf. I don't want an elastic closure like the Moleskine notebooks. I don't want detachable pages like the Leuchtturn notebooks. I definitely want something that I can continue to buy for the rest of my life.

Since nothing meets my desires and because I see a journal as a personal statement, I'm going to make my own. After all, how hard can it be to make a journal? Hard. The answer is "pretty hard", as I'm learning. Myriad decisions go into the materials that are selected and the techniques used to bind the book. Every choice has a trade-off and sometimes requirements can work against one another.

To create a journal that fulfills the following criteria:

• Uses archival quality materials.
• Uses blank paper that is sufficiently thick for fineliners, pens, and fountain pens to not bleed through.
• Can be easily labeled with my name and the date of the journal.
• Is made of materials reasonably guaranteed to be available for my lifetime.

In addition to creating the journal, I want to document the process so that I can create more journals whenever they are required.

I will, initially, create a run of 10 journals.