José Naranja's notebooks.
Those of us who don't know how to draw try to immortalize our trips by clicking and writing a few lines about them. But those who do know can make others Let's travel just by seeing your illustrations.
The travelogues and facsimiles have become a real travel inspiration on instagram . We enjoy seeing those tables full of knick-knacks that only they (the illustrators) know how to use, and how in such a tiny size of a page they can summarize the curiosities of a visit to Seville or the Taj Mahal.
Perhaps you will only understand what we are talking about if you see it with your own eyes. You can follow @me_and_my_happydesk or @a.aradilla or @paperprettyink . And of course, you can follow the Spanish José Naranja , who with more than 206 followers on Instagram , makes us dream of his notebooks.
Who hides behind the artist? “It seems that José Naranja is a notebook without intending it. I have always handwritten notes here and there as something personal and with no intention of sharing them with anyone else. Some time later I started posting them on social networks, mainly on Instagram, in 2013.”
Nevertheless, he has been creating travel notebooks for 14 years , which after a while he started selling and you can buy them on his blog. He counts a total of about 15 finished notebooks in pocket book format.
"In this time they have seen quite a few trips, from my trip around the world in 2007-2008 to the frequent trips through Asia in recent years," he tells Traveler.es.
Fruit of that work was born The Orange Manuscript , a 120-page facsimile of ideas, dreams and experiences that took 10 years to complete. It is made entirely by hand in the notebooks original Moleskine , pocket size, plus the pages are hand bound and printed on high quality vergé paper.
Its success was such that in the end it ended up commercializing and this year it finished The Nautilus Manuscript.
"I am very happy to publish my second book: The Nautilus Manuscript . It is a facsimile containing copies of 208 pages of my notebooks during the years 2015-2019 . Those who acquire it will be able to have in their hands the same sensations as the original notebooks: same paper, size, touch, etc. That is the ultimate goal. The binding is completely manual and in leather. It has been a slow process but the result excites me every time I see it. You can buy it through my blog, by contacting me by email", he explains to Traveler.es.
It took 10 years to finish it.
“Yes, it is true that in the past I started making notebooks specifically dedicated to travel. Later, the trips began to multiply until they occupied a large part of the time . Now I don't separate the notebooks by trips, but they all follow a chronological order, continuous as the thread of life itself. My pages welcome everything: ideas, dreams, experiences, temporary annotations, useless and useless data, etc.”
What will we find inside their notebooks? “I usually have a tendency to document, but on trips it is impossible to record everything due to lack of time. This is frustrating, but I've been making great progress, still not fully resolved. I try to select a lot and dedicate all my effort to it because "binding" (as he calls it) is a priority activity for me.
An example? "Recently in Mandalay , Myanmar, things didn't go too well and I also got caught in a season of extreme heat. I practically couldn't do anything. The solution was to write something short , which didn't take long, and I decided to talk about Myanmar's space program, which is zero. I shipped it very quickly."
With a pen, with a brush, with markers, pens... José is able to make a work of art just by putting a finger on a piece of paper. But this art of "binding" cannot be done by anyone because there is a rule...
I think the notebooks must be personal , own style. You cannot try to emulate what you are not. In addition, even if he tried, he will always irremediably leave his personal touch. It's what craftsmanship has. They also have to be authentic in the sense that there must be a sincerity of the author, without deceiving, using tickets or original elements of the trip . Of course they must be pocket notebooks, ready to take notes at all times and in any setting. And, most importantly, is that a travel notebook must be written… during the trip! It is when the ideas and experiences are still fresh and have a lot of force. Later these are diluted and contaminated, ”he explains to Traveler.es.