Diamond Memo by Midori. This modest looking memo was first introduced in 1961. It was during a time when memo pads were commonly used on tables only. After the war, businesses were blooming in Japan with many white-collar jobs created. And Diamond Memo was designed exactly for those jobs. The cover is waterproof, and it is made to fit perfectly in the shirt pocket — short enough to hide but easy to take out. Each page is lined with four clear sections. There are many ways to utilize the four sections. With two pages, it’s a week at a glance. With one page, it’s a monthly overview, hourly daily timeline, or a simple lined notebook to be used many ways. The memo pad has good quality MD paper, and for the first time, used branded paper in a memo pad. “MIDORI” is printed at the bottom to ensure users of the quality but also serves as an advertisement when a page is ripped off from the memo. In 2012, two tiny dots were added on the top and bottom left of the page — which can be used to draw a line and create boxes as a todo list (swipe right to see the zoom in photo). A few years after the memo, the company was officially named Midori. Midori (now Designphil) has become one of the largest stationery brands in Japan, and their products are always practical with good quality, never too fancy to lose touch with reality. And perhaps, Diamond Memo was the defining product for their design philosophy.
