The Blog

Every so often, new tools come along that make life so much easier. My wife and business partner, Liz, recently discovered a free* online note-taking program that works beautifully for creating an electronic style file.

Evernote is so easy and intuitive that even if you’re intimidated by new technology, you won’t have a problem with it. In fact, Liz and I wouldn’t be surprised to find you using it for all sorts of things—from grocery lists and movie reviews to those great ideas that pop into your head when you’re out walking your dog.

As Liz says, “Evernote is like a friendly little elephant who’s easy to work with and never forgets.”

How does it work?

Basically, Evernote stores your thoughts and photos in a private cloud on the web and lets you access them, anytime and anywhere, through your mobile phone or any computer. It’s so flexible that you can grab images and content as you run across them, whether it’s a photo you find on a website, an idea in a book or magazine, or a sofa you spot in a display window.

So … if you’re out shopping and a sleek bathroom sink catches your eye, you could snap a quick photo with your cell phone and email it to your Evernote account, along with a note on where you found it. (Tip: Don’t forget to take a photo of the tag so you’ll also have the price and dimensions.) Evernote will instantly add the photo to your account, along with any comments you’ve included. You’ll then be able to view the information from any of your devices, and share it, too—even with people who don’t have accounts.

Easy way to organize

Because Evernote is organized by notebooks, you can easily create a separate visual notebook for each room: living room, kitchen, bath, and so on. Then within each notebook, you’ll add notes.

These design notes could be:

• Photos of products or rooms you love along with your comments
• A scanned page from a book or magazine (or a photo of that page)
• Complete or partial content from a web page
• Links to web pages that interest you, along with notes about what you like

To help you visualize this, here’s a screenshot a style file on an Evernote account:

Four ways to add content

When you register with Evernote, you’ll be provided with an email address unique to that account. You can then add content to your Evernote notebooks in one of four ways:
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• From websites. The easiest way to save images and content from the web is by installing the free Web Clipper extension. The add-in allows you to right-click what you want to save as you browse the web without having to open a new window for Evernote.
• From your desktop. You can cut and paste content and images directly into Evernote, just as you do in word processing.
• From your mobile phone. You can take a photo and email it to the Evernote email address that was created for you, using the @ symbol in the email subject line to assign it to the proper notebook. For example, a tub photo would have a subject line Tub@bathroom, which would place it in the bathroom notebook in a note titled Tub. You can also add tags to your subject line for later searching, as in: Tub@bathroom #faucet #paint.
• From your email account. You can email a link, photo, or PDF to Evernote by sending it to the email address that was created for you.

The Friendly Elephant

Evernote is so easy to use that you’ll be up and running in no time simply by watching the introductory slide show and playing around. Once you’ve created your style file with this program, you’ll be able to share your notebooks with anyone. If you’re working with me and my staff on a design project, share it with us, as each picture speaks volumes. The photos you collect will help me absorb—on a deep visual level—the styles you’re drawn to and what resonates with you in a home.

Grab, store, and view. It’s as simple as that.

Just like cell phones and high speed Internet, you’ll soon wonder how you ever lived without it.

* Evernote allows you to add up to 60 megabytes of free content every month. For those who have more to save and share, for $5 per month or $45 per year, you can upgrade to a premium account that allows you to add up to one gigabyte per month.