Nuuna treats the notebook as a design object.

Nuuna is a lesson in the notebook as a design object. Made in Frankfurt am Main as the in-house label of the notebook manufacturer brandbook, it treats each notebook as a graphic object in its own right — cover and edges designed together.

Its identity is the design notebook. Nuuna is known for a “360-degree” cover design that carries onto the book’s edges, in premium paper, thread-stitched and bound in recycled or vegan materials, finished with screen printing, digital print and metallic embossing. Covers are treated like small artworks, often through designer collaborations. A notebook designed as a whole surface, spine to edge.

(Honest notes: nuuna is “nuuna by brandbook” — the consumer label of Next design+produktion GmbH, which trades as brandbook, based in Frankfurt am Main; so it is not a Berlin brand and not a company called “Brandbook GmbH,” and it is not independent but the label of that manufacturer. Its founders and founding year circulate as reported (commonly “founded around 2012, by Lars Harmsen and Michael Steinhauser”) and we hedge them. It is made in Germany, and it won a Red Dot award in 2014. Its paper (Munken) and eco claims — Cradle to Cradle since around 2020, plus recycled and vegan cover materials — are treated as reported, and we don’t assert FSC or PEFC. There’s no official brand hex, and we reproduce no cover artwork or logo — these tones are an unofficial interpretation. This is design commentary and does not promote any product.)

Nuuna lives in a bold-graphic palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Nuuna’s identity is bold, graphic and German — a magenta, an ink, a cobalt, a lime, and a chalk. The palette pairs a magenta with a cobalt — the register of a graphic notebook cover. It signals design 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 magenta with a cobalt signals a design-notebook label. Nuuna’s world is a bold, graphic object. For designers, it is a reminder that treating a whole surface — cover and edges together — as one design can be an identity, and that a notebook can be a canvas. Because bright hues can fail as small text, keep type dark and let the colour live in the accents, palette and band. The takeaways: design the whole object; use the edges; collaborate on covers; and treat any single hex as unofficial.

The register is a graphic sans — bold, precise, contemporary.

Nuuna’s identity carries a bold, precise, contemporary spirit — a graphic notebook cover. A clean grotesque sans captures the mood: it is modern and confident, the register of a design label. Set in a bold-graphic palette, the graphic sans feels bold and precise — exactly the personality Nuuna carries. It is assertive rather than quiet, mirroring a printed cover. (Nuuna’s real covers, artwork 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 graphic sans spirit,” shown here in a stand-in. The type behaves like the brand: bold, precise and contemporary.

Nuuna stands for the design notebook.

Nuuna is a lesson in designing the whole object. A bold-graphic palette, a graphic sans and a printed cover make the design notebook the whole brand — bold, precise, German. The object is the differentiator. The differentiator is a cover-and-edge design treated as one surface, printed and embossed with care.

Put to work, the identity is total surface. A designer building in this spirit would treat every face of an object as part of one composition — front, edges, binding — and let a single bold graphic idea run across all of them, with type kept clean so the artwork carries the page. The lesson Nuuna teaches is that the object’s least-considered surfaces are an opportunity: by designing the edges as deliberately as the cover, it turns a notebook into a collectible, and shows that thoroughness itself can read as design ambition. The same principle scales well beyond notebooks: in almost any product, the surfaces a competitor ignores — the underside, the inside of the packaging, the edge — are exactly where a brand can quietly prove it cares. Nuuna’s printed edges are a small flourish that signals a large intent, and that signal is usually worth far more than the ink it takes.

For designers and brand-builders, Nuuna offers a clear takeaway: design every surface. The lessons: design the whole object; use the edges; collaborate on covers; and be honest about the story. It is also a reminder to stay accurate: it is “nuuna by brandbook,” made in Frankfurt am Main, and it is the label of the manufacturer Next design+produktion rather than an independent brand — the palette here is an unofficial interpretation. Nuuna made the whole object the brand — proof that a surface can be the difference.

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