Most notebooks are boring.
Sure, they are scientifically proven to enhance memory and boost creativity. But compared to moving tabs in productivity apps, notebooks just don’t feel as … fun. Which is probably why so many of us never finish one.
That’s where Creator’s Friend comes into play.
Matchmaking You With Your Dream Notebooks
Creator’s Friend’s website is one of the first signs that this stationery brand is anything but ordinary. The homepage feels like a matchmaking platform between you and your ideal notebook. You get to choose between prompts like “I need a planner that works with my brain,” “I’m looking for a curated gift,” and “I want a notebook for my special interest.”
Scroll further down and you’ll find a mosaic of notebooks built around all kinds of niche interests, from pottery to cooking and film.
Their aesthetic, in the brand’s own words, is “both chaotic and unplanned, while being extremely intentional and structured.” Its hyper-specific, function-oriented design makes you instantly recognise a Friend notebook in a sea of corporate-style planners. And the best part? It actually makes you want to fill every page.
Designed For The ADHD Mind
Take the brand’s best-selling Fastbrain collection, for example. These bite-sized, gamified monthly planners are ideal for those who find regular planners too boring to stick with.
That includes:
- Day-to-a-page layouts: Narrow the focus to one day at a time
- Rotating page formats: Introduce just enough variations to keep the brain engaged
- Gamified elements that entice both adults and children: Colour-coding and habit tracking adds a touch of novelty and visual reward
- A minimalist, bullet-journal-inspired aesthetic: Keeps the chaos to a minimum while still leaving room for creativity
A System For Reconnecting With Oneself
Founded as a small design studio in Far North Queensland in 2021, Creator’s Friend has since grown into a multi-million-dollar global brand by making writing in notebooks cool again.
As playful as the brand portrays itself, Creator’s Friend’s origin story has a much more personal tone.
During the 2020 global crisis, brand founder Alanah Purtell felt a loss of meaning in her work. She was juggling her communications career, a newborn child, all while being alone in a foreign country with a husband on a military deployment.
“There were so many things going on in my life that should have been my priority, and yet all my energy was poured into anxiety over insignificant work nonsense,” she said. “I felt disillusioned, like I couldn’t even remember who I really was underneath all of it any more. So I quit with no plan, just the notion that my life shouldn’t look like that.”
By returning to traditional hobbies, Alanah could finally reconnect with herself. During this period, she began designing little notebooks as her own personal operating systems. She marketed them on Etsy, and the rest is history.
“I’d never felt so in sync with myself before,” she said.
Four years after its launch, the company has shipped more than one million notebooks to people around the world. They have also amassed nearly 90,000 Instagram followers through their sitcom-like, unfiltered marketing campaign.
And maybe that’s the secret to building a brand everyone loves: Not to be everything for everyone, but to be the right thing for someone.
Contact
Website: https://www.creatorsfriend.com.au/
Photos: Creator’s Friend
Words by: Nina Nguyen
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