Plain Lab · notebook

Lab Notes

One hundred and twenty pages for the record of what you did, and eleven lined pages beside them for what didn't fit a record.

Specification

Trim: 148 × 210 mm · 5.827 × 8.268 in
Pages: 140
Leaves: 70
Sheets: 35
Signatures: 7 × 20pp
Spine: 8.01 mm
Paper: white

A lab record outlives the person who wrote it. Someone else, possibly you in eight months, has to be able to read what was done, when, and in what order, without asking the person who did it. The record pages here hold that: a page per entry, ruled plainly enough to take whatever the entry needs, dated by you rather than by the book.

What the record does not hold is the protocol. A safety threshold, a retention rule, a reagent's disposal window: those come from the lab you work in, and they differ from one lab to the next. A printed book cannot be corrected once it has left the shop, so none of that is printed here. The book records what you did, not what you were allowed to do.

Eleven lined pages sit behind the record for the parts that were never going to fit in an entry. That is as far as the book goes.

What is inside

Lab pages: 120pp; A page per entry, ruled plainly, dated by you rather than printed in advance.
Notes: 11pp; Lined pages for what a record entry doesn't hold.
Reference: 9pp; Conversion tables computed from definitions and emergency numbers checked against two sources.

The film

Page by page

A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.

A vertical film, 52 seconds: the cover, the ruling page, then 5 reference pages. Synthesised ambient bed, no dialogue — captions in three languages.

Real pages

Five pages from Lab Notes laid out as cards: a ruled record page, a section divider, a lined notes page, a conversion table, and a reference page. — Five pages rendered from the print file: a record page, a divider, a lined notes page, a conversion table, and the reference section. The record page is the product. A record with no date on it is not something anyone can check against what happened six months later.

Specification card listing Lab Notes contents: 120 record pages, 11 notes pages, 140 pages total, A5 trim, seven signatures of twenty. — One hundred and twenty ruled record pages, dated by you as each entry is made. Eleven lined notes pages follow. Nine pages of reference matter at the back, with conversion tables computed from definitions and emergency numbers checked against two independent sources. One hundred and forty pages total, A5, seven sewn signatures of twenty.

Made at the Hibrkraft bindery, Bogor · about the maker

Books that sit alongside it

Dotted Notebook 6 mmAlso in Plain Lab
Level BookAlso in Plain Lab
Dotted Notebook 5 mmAlso in Plain Lab
Feynman NotesAlso in Plain Lab

Questions

Does it print a safety protocol?

No. Thresholds, retention rules and disposal windows come from the lab you work in and differ from one lab to the next. The book records what you did, not what you were allowed to do.