Arts & Entertainment
Take Note! Chicago Stationery Shops Enjoying Revived Interest in Analog Communication, Fueled by Social Media and Celebrities
According to family lore, Aloysius Schmidt founded Atlas Stationers on a hunch: People would always need red pens to correct mistakes.
It seemed like a safe bet in 1939. Fortunately, by the time computers and the “delete” key came along, Atlas, a fixture in Chicago’s Loop, had expanded into general office supplies. Its shelves at one point were stacked floor to ceiling with reams of paper in every length, width and weight; staplers in every shape and size; and binder clips to suit every need.
Now, with the third and fourth generations of Schmidts at the helm, Atlas is back where it started.
Pens.
Today, display cases in the shop’s Loop outpost brim with gleaming steel ballpoints, funky gel pens and classic rollerballs. But it’s fountain pens — yes, fountain pens — that account for 75% of Atlas’ sales of “fine writing instruments.”
In the same way that his father Don, Atlas’ CEO, could deliver a dissertation on copy paper versus card stock, 29-year-old Brendan Schmidt, Atlas’ retail manager, knows his fine nib from his broad nib, his refillable from his disposable.
Fountain pens, with their characteristic metal nibs, are in style again. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
“Fountain pens are kind of a hip thing,” Schmidt said. “It’s so funny, because they’ve been around forever, but history almost repeats itself. I like to compare it to vinyl (records).”
And it’s not just pens, he said: “We have whole aisles of notebooks, inks and accessories. It’s just been a heck of a ride.”
For those who may have predicted that email and text would spell the death of stationery products, think again.
All manner of things associated with analog communication are having a moment: old-school wax seals (and the wax itself), stationery sets and postcards; notebooks, journals and planners; and accessories like pencil cases, stickers and washi tape. There are even accessories for the accessories, including coatings that make it easier to write on washi tape.
Chicago’s stationers, from old-timers to a crop of newcomers, are riding the wave.
As for what’s fueling the revival, and who, well there are about as many answers as there are pen brands. Stationery nerds defy easy pigeonholing.
“I like to say that every generation makes stationery their own, and so there are people from every generation who like it,” said Sarah Schwartz, editor-in-chief of the trade publication Stationery Trends. Schwartz also runs her own blog, The Paper Nerd.
There are Gen Xers who grew up writing letters and toting Filofax planners, and they either stuck with or are returning to the practice. There are millennials and Gen Zers, nostalgic for a pre-internet era they never experienced.
“I’ve been very surprised at just how wide a group of people love this, kind of regardless of background, age, whatever it may be,” said Tyler McCall, who opened Paper & Pencil in Andersonville in 2023 with his husband, Eric Campbell.
Some devotees are rebelling against the encroachment of digital technology into all aspects of modern life; some are indulging in treat culture with a $10 pen here, a $20 notebook there, McCall said. And still others are scratching a creative itch by decorating notebooks with stickers or adding a flourish of washi tape to an envelope.
There are pen collectors; people into junk journaling, art journaling or bullet journaling; and correspondence junkies who belong to pen pal groups and postcard clubs.
Art journaling and junk journaling have replaced scrapbooking as a form of memory-keeping. Stickers and ephemera, such as ticket stubs, are pasted into the books. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
Much of the commerce within the estimated $147 billion U.S. stationery goods market, as estimated by Forbes, takes place online. But urban centers like Chicago have the population, be it residents or visitors, to support brick-and-mortar stationers — businesses that trade almost exclusively in stationery products, versus gift shops with a broader array of merchandise.
Considering the sensory nature of stationery goods — the “click” of a ballpoint, the scratch of a particular nib on a particular brand of journal — it follows that consumers, when given the opportunity, relish the chance to see, touch and test out items before buying.
“We see people with their luggage straight from the airport being Uber-ed to our shop and they’re like, ‘Can I stash my luggage here? I’m here for a conference, I only have one hour, but I had to get here,’” said Schmidt.
On a busy weekend 1,000 people might pass through Paper & Pencil’s tiny 400-square-foot space. Some are locals, maybe popping in for a last-minute greeting card or a pair of scissors, but for the vast majority, the shop is a destination, McCall said, and there are even regulars who routinely make the trip from out of state.
“We’re continually blown away by the passion of people who use this stuff — people who are really excited about it and who are really craving a space to access a lot of these products and also craving community,” said McCall. “They come in and they’re like, ‘I’m so glad there’s a place that I know of that I can go in person.’”
Paradoxically, many of them come seeking analog items they were introduced to via social media.
Something goes viral online, like actress/lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow scribbling notes in a Smythson notebook at her 2023 ski-crash trial, or pop superstar Chappell Roan carrying her journal onstage to accept a Grammy award, and sure enough stationers will begin fielding requests.
“We immediately clocked it,” McCall said of Roan’s Grammy speech. “People came in and they were like, ‘I want Chappell’s notebook.’”
For the record, the journal was a Leuchtturm1917 A5 in a discontinued vanilla color, he said, “but we can get you something close.”
Stationery aficionados can be quite choosy about their choice of pen. Brick-and-mortar shops and vendors at events like Chicago Stationery Fest give consumers a chance to find their perfect match. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
Even more so than celebrities, influencers and complete unknowns on Instagram and TikTok are the largest drivers of interest, especially of new products. And there are also sizable communities on Facebook and platforms like Reddit and Discord.
A savvy retailer like Atlas maintains a presence in all those spaces, from packing orders on a livestream, to setting up a Discord channel for ink lovers, to Schmidt’s TikTok skits as his alter ego “Hollywood,” who encourages irresponsible pen purchasing habits.
“If you don’t change and you don’t understand how you need to adapt, you’re going to get left behind,” Schmidt said. “If we were trying to stay that same old office supply company, time would pass us…. You have to get on social media, you have to update your website, you have to understand the needs and the trends of the consumer base.”
At Paper & Pencil, that meant quickly getting up to speed on the demand for imports.
That’s particularly true of products from Japan (and to a lesser extent Germany), where the use of stationery goods is far more ingrained in the culture than in the U.S. The country’s stationery “bible,” the magazine Bunbōguyasan Taishō, annually publishes the highly anticipated Japanese Stationery Awards, which feature winners and runners-up in categories ranging from best pencil case to best correction tape.
“This stuff, we can’t keep it on the shelves, this Midori brand notebook,” Campbell said, pointing to a popular Japanese brand positioned front and center at Paper & Pencil. “People buy them immediately…. I always say, the Japanese stuff is over-engineered, but in the best way. Like, ‘you didn’t have to do this, but you did, and people love it.’”
Brands’ online cult followings and viral videos are responsible for a certain amount of the revived momentum behind stationery products. But stationers also pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic and deeper-rooted psychological forces at play.
Amber Favorite has been running her own letterpress greeting card company — A. Favorite Design — since 2004 and opened an Albany Park stationery store in 2019.
Her card sales spiked during the pandemic, Favorite said, as people looked for ways to connect with people when they couldn’t meet in person.
Lots of people also took up journaling, which became a way to process the lockdown and social isolation, but they’ve stuck with the habit, she said. And as someone who built her career on “sending warm fuzzies via snail mail,” Favorite has also been encouraged to see sales of stationery sets and postcards holding steady.
“It’s gone from a lot of hobbyists to people who are very committed to writing and sending cards on a schedule,” she said. “It seems to be growing more and more, and the audience is getting younger and younger. A lot of our people that come in are in their 20s and 30s. Cards aren’t just for grandmas anymore.”
Call this the Chappell Roan journal. It began trending online after the pop star carried hers — in a discontinued color — onstage during the 2025 Grammy Awards. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
There’s a bit of a learning curve, though.
Favorite has had young customers teach themselves cursive just so they could understand the handwriting of an older relative. And when she hosts monthly letter-writing meet-ups at the shop, Favorite has noticed that the younger participants invariably gravitate to her vintage typewriters, and just as inevitably find themselves flummoxed by the lack of certain keyboard features.
“One of the guests we had, she was like, ‘Where’s the return key?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s this arm,’” Favorite recalled, mimicking a return-arm’s motion. “She’s like, ‘There’s no key?’ I’m like, ‘No. No.’”
What’s the appeal?
Using a fun pen color and adding stickers, washi tape or a wax seal to an envelope are all ways of personalizing a note to a friend, loved one or pen pal — something a text or email can’t convey in the same way.
“How many emails have you printed in your life?” asked Schwartz, of Stationery Trends. “But if someone sends you a card during a meaningful moment in your life, you might save it. And if you pull it out in 15 years, it might bring you back to that moment…. That’s sort of the magic of it. And I definitely think people are recognizing it.”
Favorite has an artist friend who lives out of state and sends her letters written on the back of sketches. The two have been regularly corresponding for years, having met years ago while working together at, where else, a paper store.
“We’ve shared a lot of secrets through snail mail, and it brings you together,” Favorite said. “There’s just an intimacy that you can share on paper that maybe you wouldn’t face to face.”
Something happens mentally when a person writes by hand, she said, that’s different from typing in front of a computer screen or tapping at a phone.
“I find when I’m typing, my mind will kind of wander here and there, as you’re just doing the keystrokes,” Favorite said. “But there’s something about physically sitting down with a pen and paper and intentionally writing — something happens in your brain where you almost create a flow state where words just are coming faster than you can write.”
A shopper eyeballs various fountain pen inks at Atlas Stationers. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
All the disparate corners of the stationery world converged on Chicago in late March for the city’s first-ever Stationery Fest, only the second of its kind to take place in the U.S., close on the heels of a similar event held in Brooklyn in 2024.
The fest was the brainchild of Paper & Pencil’s McCall and Campbell, who were inspired to recreate the kind of business-to-business stationery marketplaces they’ve attended — only for consumers.
“We saw the community out there, and we wanted to bring people together,” McCall said. “A space where it’s just us, it’s just the people who get it, just the people who are excited about paper and inks and those cute things.”
Tickets sold out in a flash and excitement ran so high that the event venue at Artifact Events in Ravenswood maxed out on capacity at one point.
Carol Waitse, who grew up in Chatham and lives in Woodlawn, was one of the early-bird VIP attendees.
“What I love about stationery is connecting with people through and on paper,” Waitse said. “Whether it’s a card, a postcard, a letter, a sticker — it’s just a very tangible way to demonstrate your level of love or care for someone.”
Waitse is part of a generation that came of age in the analog world. She had pen pals as a child, got into FranklinCovey planners as an adult — her group, Midway Planner Ladies, meets monthly to plot out their calendars — was a scrapbooker back in the day and is now beginning to dabble in fountain pens.
“I just like doing things with my hands,” Waitse said. “I crochet, I bake. I think today in such a digital world, we’ve missed that connection with ourselves through our hands.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Raymond Dean, who works in the tech field, but is big into journaling.
“This is an outlet for me, because I’m in a digital space,” Dean said. “It’s a time for me to disconnect and just play with stickers, play with my stationery.”
But also, funny enough, he added, he “disconnects” by connecting with other stationery enthusiasts on Discord, YouTube and Instagram. In fact, Dean’s photo on his festival badge was his Discord avatar, so that people on the forum would recognize him.
Within 20 minutes of arriving at the fest, Dean found himself sitting with a group of total strangers, all of them opening up their journals and notebooks to share their latest handiwork.
Nikki Ameling, one of Dean’s newfound circle of friends, had traveled from northwest Indiana, where there’s no stationery store to be found in her small town.
“I have no stationery friends, but I can come here and meet wonderful people and immediately connect,” Ameling said. “You’re able to find people that seem like-minded.”
Digital calendars don’t work for everyone. Some people need to physically write something down to remember it — and there’s a planner to suit every need. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
Annie Driscoll and Sharon Stahl are longtime pals in real life, but live hundreds of miles apart, in Dayton, Ohio, and Montreal, Canada, respectively. They usually attend anime or Comic Con conventions, “so this is sort of the same, but a different crowd,” Driscoll said.
The two were on the hunt for fountain pens.
“I’m afraid of ordering them online,” said Stahl. “I want to see how it feels first.”
For Stationery Trends editor Schwartz, who mingled among the fest’s VIP attendees, the evening was a marked departure from the industry events she’d been attending for nearly 30 years.
“I’ve been going to trade shows since 1997 … I never get to see the consumer. I was looking around,” she said, “and it’s very exciting to see the consumers embrace it.”
The demise of stationery has been predicted more times than she can remember, Schwartz said, and here it is, come full circle: “Now it’s cool.”
P.S.: On another note
Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]
