Choosing Keeping curates the world’s best stationery.

Choosing Keeping is a lesson in taste as the identity. Founded in 2012 in East London by Julia Jeuvell — now in Covent Garden — it is a curated fine-stationery shop and its own small line, run on a discerning, connoisseur’s eye.

Its identity is the stationer’s eye. Choosing Keeping gathers best-in-class writing tools, papers and office goods from makers around the world — Japanese, French, Italian, German — and sets them alongside its own-brand notebooks, watercolour sets and card holders (plus collaborations such as one with Kaweco). Its founding idea was to rescue charming stationery “under threat of extinction,” so that people choose things worth keeping. A shop as a point of view. Curation treated as a design act.

(Honest notes: Choosing Keeping was founded in 2012 by Julia Jeuvell — the spelling is reported from press rather than a signed statement, so we hold it lightly — opening on Columbia Road and relocating in 2018 to Tower Street in Covent Garden and Seven Dials (not Soho). It is independent and founder-owned. It both curates goods from other makers (which carry those makers’ own marks, not Choosing Keeping’s) and sells a smaller own-brand line; where its own goods are made is not documented, so we don’t claim an origin. There’s no official brand hex, and we reproduce no logo, design or third-party marks — these tones are an unofficial interpretation. This is design commentary and does not promote any product.)

Choosing Keeping lives in a teal-and-coral palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Choosing Keeping’s identity is refined, colour-rich and British — a teal green, an ink, a coral, a gold, and a cream. The palette pairs a teal with a coral — the register of a connoisseur’s stationery shop. It signals taste and colour rather than novelty. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these tones are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is a teal with a coral signals a curated stationery house. Choosing Keeping’s world is a rich, considered object. For designers, it is a reminder that a discerning eye — choosing and presenting the best of what already exists — can itself be a brand, as much as making. Because a mid teal can fail as small text, keep type dark and let the colour live in the accents, palette and band. The takeaways: curate with a point of view; pair curation with a small own line; honour the makers; and treat any single hex as unofficial.

The register is a refined serif — elegant, colour-rich, considered.

Choosing Keeping’s identity carries a refined, colour-rich, considered spirit — a connoisseur’s object. A classic book serif captures the mood: it is elegant and literate, the register of a discerning shop. Set in a teal-and-coral palette, the refined serif feels elegant and colour-rich — exactly the personality Choosing Keeping carries. It is cultured rather than loud, mirroring curated stationery. (Choosing Keeping’s real designs and wordmark are works we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not ours to use.) Because it is not ours to use, the honest description is “a refined serif spirit,” shown here in a stand-in. The type behaves like the brand: elegant, colour-rich and considered.

Choosing Keeping stands for the stationer’s eye.

Choosing Keeping is a lesson in making taste the identity. A teal-and-coral palette, a refined serif and a curated object make the stationer’s eye the whole brand — refined, colour-rich, British. The eye is the differentiator. The differentiator is choosing well — and pairing that curation with a small, considered own line.

Put to work, the identity is a point of view. A designer building in this spirit would treat selection as a design decision — a tight, opinionated edit; colour and quality as the filter; an object presented as if it mattered — and let a refined type and a rich palette signal discernment rather than noise. The lesson Choosing Keeping teaches is that taste itself can be a product: by rescuing and re-presenting the best stationery in the world, and adding just enough of its own, it turns a sensibility into a brand, and shows that how you choose can be as expressive as what you make.

For designers and brand-builders, Choosing Keeping offers a clear takeaway: curate with conviction. The lessons: curate with a point of view; pair it with a small own line; honour the makers; and be honest about the story. It is also a reminder to stay accurate: it was founded in 2012 by Julia Jeuvell, it moved to Covent Garden in 2018, and it both curates and creates — the palette here is an unofficial interpretation. Choosing Keeping made a discerning eye the brand — proof that taste can be the difference.

Keep Choosing Keeping’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.