What Pouch Is and Is Not

What Pouch IS:

• ✅ Pouch is helpful / “The magazine is a tool”: Pouch magazine itself is an analog tool! It should inspire action, spark creativity and solve problems for stationery fans.
  • The ideas in the mag are accessible and applicable: Folks should read Pouch and think, “That’s so cool, I want to try that!” and not “That’s so cool, I could never do that”
• ✅ Pouch is a snapshot in time / “The magazine is a journal”: Record and reflect the state of the stationery community in the US at this moment in time. Reflect current state of “trends” and “news” in analog systems over the year. Want to look back on this issue as a time capsule in some ways.
• ✅ Pouch connects readers to people. Personal stories. Get to know the person in every article, even in reviews and roundups. Get to follow more interesting creators, artists, brands, etc on social media.
• ✅ Pouch highlights diverse and unique voices: Pouch stands out by highlighting new voices outside of the top 1% of stationery content creators & outside of Japan
• ✅ Pouch is fun, inviting, and effortless to read: Open an issue of Pouch, on any page, and you want to read it. You’re walking into a candy store, not Just Salad. You’re walking into Yoseka Stationery, not Office Max.
• ✅ Pouch is honest and has high-integrity
  • We only praise things we genuinely like
  • We give honest critique where we feel it’s due, while still keeping things fair and leaning positive.
  • We only highlight products we’ve actually used ourselves, and used over time
  • We only give tips/suggestion/ideas that we’ve actually done ourselves (battle-tested)
• ✅ Pouch is meant for adults, but inviting to children & families, too: Pouch has readers ranging from from 10 yrs old to 76+. We should lean toward adults, but avoid things that alienate young readers/families: e.g. no curse words
• ✅  Pouch is human-made with no AI assistance: None of Pouch uses AI in any part of the process — so, no AI-generated writing or images, but also no AI-assisted editing, brainstorming, etc. No AI whatsoever! This is also the standard we hold for submissions and contributions. (Even this website was coded by hand, no AI ☺️)

What Pouch IS NOT:

• ❌ NOT a beauty contest — not a celebration of the most aesthetically pleasing work / highest skilled visual artists
• ❌ NOT a talent show — not a celebration of "OMG how did they do that??? they’re a genius!! I could never do that”
• ❌ NOT a “haul” or “unboxing” — not new stuff we haven’t tried yet; instead, we feature products that we’ve actually used; ideas that we’ve actually done
• ❌ NOT a platform for the top 1% creators / not The Rolling Stone of journals
  • Exceptions: If it’s part of a “snapshot in time” story, or if they submit something unprompted, etc, we can consider!
• ❌ NO sponsored content + NO freebies: No articles are paid for, and we pay for all stationery (similar to rtings)
• ❌ NOT carelessly negative: E.g. Not “HOBONICHI IS TERRIBLE” ← want to be considerate of both Hobonichi fans and employees!
• ❌ NOT overlapping with what Japanese Stationery Mooks (e.g. LETTERS) would publish
  • (to be clear, we LOVE Japanese Stationery Mooks!! But they've got that beat covered, and we want Japanese Stationery Mook fans to find unique stories in Pouch)

How we select what goes in Pouch magazine

When we select which journal and planner layouts will be published in an issue of Pouch, it’s like we’re arranging a lovely bouquet of flowers. And to take the metaphor a step further: it’s a flower bouquet, not a flower competition.

In other words, when reviewing submissions, Pouch is not trying to assess what are “the best” layouts we’ve received; we don’t believe in that premise. A glimpse into a person’s journal is a glimpse into their inner world — how could such a thing be ranked? Every single submission we get is beautiful, moving, and absolutely worthy of inclusion in Pouch.

Ah, but we have a magazine to publish! And a magazine requires curation in order to be coherent for its readers. For most issues of Pouch, we probably can’t publish all submissions, so how will we select what gets published?

Of course, we will be following the submission criteria outlined with every call for submissions, but beyond that: It is a vague and imprecise science to find a set of layouts that we think work well together within the issue. We’ll put submissions next to each other, move them around, and see what emerges. The final selection will be just one arrangement of beautiful flowers, out of all the other equally beautiful permutations possible.