Early this summer, we reached the milestone of launching SOL_23, a very special BKxRoterfaden collaboration artifact that comes in A5 and B6 size. This project started in the spring of 2023 when Frido and I made an overnight trip to Roterfaden headquarters in Saabrücken, Germany.
Whenever I hang out with our BK partners in person, I usually spend most of our time together discussing “life.” What are our shared values, and how do those values reflect in the way we live at home and breath as a business? I love hearing those insights from our partners because they make our relationships and connections much more human. It’s inspiring. When I peek into the depth of their lifestyle decision, I understand a little bit more about why and how they represent the business - or perhaps how the business represents them. And to me, that makes the artifacts we share at BK to possess more depth than just another “stuff” people can purchase.
When we were in Germany, I got to hang out with Beate, her family, and the Roterfaden team for a day, catching up about how things were going. Conversation rolled into the evening at dinner and wine (some of which ended up being on my sweater and Roterfaden cover!!??), talking about music, education, and everything in between. It wasn’t until the following morning after coffee when Beate, Frido, and I sat down to reflect on how lovely it was to have spent the last 24 hours together, the topic of design came up.
We were starting to brainstorm on how we can design something that feels both Roterfaden and Baum-kuchen. Questions we were asking were open-ended. Is there a way Roterfaden can function as a single leather so we can add embossing, patches, and other accessories as a part of BK’s Truly Yours service? How can we incorporate their awesome clip system into the leather cover in a new way? Can we make the cover slimmer? Can we introduce new materials?
Just when Frido and Beate started drawing and discussing more nitty-gritty, it was time for us to head back to a station to take a train back home to Hamburg. But we agreed that we should keep talking to make this new project happen. We were excited that it felt a little different from the usual Roterfaden.
After we returned to California, we continued our back and forth chat about this project. Beate suggested that our code name for the design should be “SOL” since it reminded her of California sunshine we love so much.
The final design of SOL_23 is a single leather cover that has a integrated internal canvas pocket, which also function as a sleeve for three pairs of Roterfaden clips. We started sharing SOL_23 in early summer and we have already had some fun adding embossing on the leather cover. We paused Truly Yours service shortly after we launched the cover so we didn’t get to experiment with more customization but we have some exciting updates to share when we reboot the service :)
I decided to invest in the A5 size SOL_23 in natural leather cover for my BK related notebooks. I have MD monthly calendar to keep track of the BK tasks and notes I want to keep. The 2nd set of clips is holding my Trust the Process notebook for any loose thoughts/ideas/story drafts. It has been a few months and the leather is already starting to patina, shifting color to a darker skin tone.
I am looking forward to this cover being my forever and last Roterfaden… and what a lovely feeling that is.
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