Causebook: an award-winning concept brand and its online shop

Emmanuel and Julia had both worked in tech for years. They had seen how the relentless pace of technology, and of modern life, can disconnect people from themselves. Causebook started from that observation: a notebook as a reason to pause.

The notebook market is overcrowded, and most brands compete on paper, price or pattern. A new brand needed a position no one else held, and the pause gave it one.

There was a second problem. Printing and publishing have a reputation for environmental harm: traditional inks can contain heavy metals and harmful chemicals, and paper production is linked to industrial deforestation. A brand about reconnecting with yourself could not ignore its own footprint.

The challenge was to make both ideas visible everywhere someone meets the brand, from the logo to the materials to the online shop.

We built the brand around one positioning idea, then carried it through the identity, the product and the online shop.

• The positioning. Pausing: time away from screens, and from the roles a working day asks us to play. A few minutes of writing or doodling to come back to yourself. It became the test for every choice that followed.
• The identity. We created the visual identity with our graphic designer, Chris Trivizas. The design is his, and every award below names him as designer and Causebook as the brand.
• The product. Two limited-edition collections: Legacy, with singer-sewn binding, and Blossom, in lighter colours with silver stitching. Every notebook was handcrafted in the UK: A5, with 64 pages of ivory 90gsm paper, a 270gsm soft cover and a binding that lies flat.
• The materials. Sustainability was built into the product, not added to the label. The notebooks were singer-sewn or saddle-stitched instead of glued, binding methods that use less energy and fewer toxic substances. Printing used vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, and the paper was FSC-certified, from responsibly managed forests. A belly band carried the commitment in plain words: one book purchased, one tree planted.
• The e-shop. With Chris, we designed and built cause-book.com to tell the story before it asked for a sale. The home page opened on the idea, with the notebooks in their own setting. About and Responsibility sections explained the cause, and a corporate gift section served companies.
• The shopping journey. The shop showed each collection as a clean grid of covers. Every product page carried the full specification, the tree pledge and a choice of lined, dotted or blank paper, so the buyer had what they needed on one page.

The identity has been recognised by three design competitions:

• Best Brand Awards 2025: Best Brand 2025. This international competition, run from Germany, is judged online by brand experts from around the world. They score every logo from 0 to 10 without seeing the designer's name or country. The Causebook logo received the highest score from the jury, which made it the Best Brand 2025.
• EBGE 2025, the Greek Graphic Design & Illustration Awards: Best Logo Design (Visual Identity / Branding). The 24th edition was held on 24 May 2025 on the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi in Athens, organised by +design.
• Hiiibrand Awards 2024, 14th edition: Finalist in the Brand Awards, Media and Culture category.
• Hiiibrand Awards 2023: Bronze Award in the Logo category, Professional level, from a jury that included type designer Erik Spiekermann and Alan Siegel, founder of the branding agency Siegel+Gale.

Causebook shows the creative side of our team. We bring the same care to every system we build, so the tools a company uses carry its brand as clearly as its products do.