Daycraft Decoder Sketchbook

Fourth in this series of reviews of Daycraft products, this is the Decoder Sketchbook. This one, the Semaphore, is one of a range of four A5-size wire-bound sketchbooks, the others being Braille, Morse Code and Sign Language. This comes with a handsome board cover in dark chocolate brown which has UV-spot printed semaphore symbols on the front in glossy paint, and an elastic band closure. Being wire-bound it will lie flat for drawing and it has 100 pages of 120gsm art paper.

I have not been able to test the paper, because as you can see in the picture below, it is made in the same dark brown as the covers, so it is clearly meant for people who sketch white-on-dark with coloured pencils or chalk, which I do not do. The paper has a matte finish, with enough tooth in it for pencil drawing. I can imagine someone rendering lunar craters or maria, or perhaps a cathedral spire, using this sketchbook. Despite my inability to use it, I can still see that this is another high-quality book. I had problems photographing it properly, as these photos do not do it justice. In reality, this is a darker brown than illustrated - think Bournville or Hershey's chocolate for an approximation of the colour.

There is a key to the different symbols on the back cover, and a blurb on the inside, on the first sheet, describing what semaphore is and how it could be used: according to this, it is still acceptable internationally to use semaphore for telecommunication.

This is a fine, if unorthodox, sketchbook.

Thanks to Daycraft for the review sample.


Data:

Dimensions: 148mm x 210mm
Pages: 100
Cover: Wire-O bound paper
Content: Plain brown paper
Other: UV spot semaphore cover