Chicago-based Field Notes, makers of memo books, notebooks and other writing gear, will host the Field Notes Film Festival on Monday, June 23. The festival will feature a selection of short films the company has produced to accompany the launch of nearly all of its quarterly limited editions sets since 2009.
All of the films to be featured were produced and directed by Steve Delahoyde, founder and president of Delahoyde Projects. The shorts have documented cross-country trips and weather balloon journeys to space, recreated moon landings and demonstrated artisanal printing processes, and interviewed artists and experts on a variety of subjects.
Monday, June 23, 2025 7:00pm
Field Notes Film Festival
Music Box Theatre
3733 N. Southport Ave
Tickets can be purchased at Eventbrite. Price includes admission plus a special Festival-only 2-pack of memo books, each hand-letterpressed by the Field Notes crew. There will be some other surprises and special guests as well.
Featuring this film, from the “Clandestine” Edition, and dozens more.
“The total running time for all of our films is well over 10 hours,” said Jim Coudal, cofounder of Field Notes. “That includes ‘The Stars and Their Courses,’ the 6 hour and 20 minute film, shot from dusk to dawn at Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada for the ‘Night Sky’ Edition in summer 2013. At that time, the only way we could get the hi-def file uploaded to YouTube was to walk a hard drive from HQ to Google’s Chicago offices, a couple blocks away from our studio.”
Founded in 2007, Field Notes is a joint venture between Portland, Oregon-based Draplin Design Company and Chicago-based design firm Coudal Partners.
“I called my friend and occasional co-conspirator, Aaron Draplin, after he had sent me a handmade pack of kraft-colored ‘Field Notes,’ and suggested that perhaps we should produce a short run of them and offer them for sale online,” Coudal said. “Within a couple weeks, we were up and running. I certainly didn’t foresee that nearly 20 years later our advertising and design practice would have zero clients, our online advertising network and various other side projects would be shuttered, and the staff and I would be spending all of our time creating, manufacturing, marketing, and distributing a growing line of Field Notes Brand products.”
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