Page 9 of Post-it® & Sticky Notes

Use Post-it notes to communicate more effectively

The colorful stickers you find on surfaces ranging from refrigerators and monitors to books and contract papers have been around since the late 1960s. They were an unintended invention by a scientist seeking to make a better adhesive and a friend needing an improved way to mark book pages, rather than using loose strips of paper. Today, a variety of manufacturers make sticky notes, with added functionality for communicating thoughts and organizing work and study tasks.

Post-it notes are colorful for a reason

The original Post-it notes came in canary yellow. Now you can find them in blue, white, black, pink, mint, purple, green, red, and orange. The colors draw attention, making them an essential communication tool for the office, home, or self. Use the different colors to organize thoughts, notes, and files, and to maintain ongoing reference markers by subject or topic. The notes come in 10 designer colors, from Miami to Rio de Janeiro to Bora Bora shades and hues. Each provides an eye-catching visual for quick communication and reference. Find pink Post-it notes in bold, bright neon, and contrast those with yellow Post-it notes to highlight particular information provided.

Sticky notes come in different sizes

The traditional Post-it note is a 2 x 2-inch square, but the practicality of stickable, removable, and re-stickable paper notes soon demanded an array of sizes. Today’s most popular common size is a 3 x 3-inch sheet, but other sizes range as large as 5 x 8 and 8 x 6 inches to as small as 1 x 2 inches and 1 x 0.5 inch. The larger squares provide plenty of room for writing messages, while the smaller, narrower strips, referred to as Post-It tags and flags, provide a convenient size for bookmarking and reference notation.

Sticky notes are available in two dispensing styles

Post-it notes pads have two types of pad-adhesive configurations. Some pads come with adhesive along just one edge to pull one sheet off at a time. You can carry these pads anywhere, or place them in a holder on a desktop. The other style contains sheets with alternating adhesive edges. They're called fanfold pads, and they work with several desktop Post-it dispensers.

The dispensers come in different styles and shapes, including fashionable and whimsical desktop designs. Several are simple but elegantly contoured holders in vibrant enameled colors that mirror the notes, while others come in fanciful designer dispensers, such as stylized apples or cameras. Fanfold dispensers are weighted, so you can pull out sheets one at a time with just one hand.

Post-it adhesives let them stick to just about anywhere

The standard adhesive on sticky notes has always worked fine on paper surfaces and flat surfaces like desktops. It gives the notes their singular stick-on, remove, re-stick quality. However, the notes also have two other types of adhesives that provide that same quality on just about any surface or under any conditions. Post-it’s super-sticky adhesive, available with 3 x 3-inch notes, lets you put reminders and notes on surfaces that are slick and vertical, like mirrors, glass, and freshly painted walls. In fact, stick them upside down on ceilings. With two times the holding power of standard sticky notes, they’ll stay there as needed.

An even more steadfast sticky note is the 3 x 3-inch Post-it Extreme note, available with Dura-Hold™ adhesive, that sticks to wood and brick, or in wet or hot-cold conditions, even outdoors. The Dura-Hold Post-it also comes with a set of four Sharpie® pens offering extreme fade-resistant ink, so you can leave notes on construction sites to give other workers a heads-up about ongoing electrical, plumbing, or gas-line renovations.

Post-it flags and tags

The small-dimension 1 x 2 inch and 1 x 0.5-inch flags and the 2 x 2 inch and 3 x 3-inch bicolor tabs are part of a line of specialty sticky notes that let you stay organized for project-specific work, whether academic writing assignments or work presentations and projects. Solid-color flags attach to the margins of reference materials so you can identify and locate specific material while also annotating passages in pen. The flags are ideal when working with lending-library reference works. Some flags have arrow-shaped ends to pinpoint an exact passage or chart row. Post-it tabs come with white adhesive backings and non-adhesive color tabs. Stick them to files, reference-work margins, binder contents, or planner schedules to color-code subjects, topics, and appointments, while leaving annotated thoughts and notes on the white background.

Other special-purpose Post-it notes

Some manufacturers make Post-its for exclusive purposes:

• White sticky tabs with color borders - for labeling and identifying file folders or binder dividers and arranging them by subject
• "Sign Here” sticky strips - to show where documents need signing, dating, initialing, or notarizing
• Novelty notes - for self-expression or creative whimsy using different geometric shapes, animal likenesses, and other stylized patterns 

In addition, lined Post-it notes are available with ruled lines for preparing to-do lists or organizing team daily tasks or milestones. They’re available in larger sizes, with dimension ranging from 4 x 4 to 4 x 6 and 5 x 8 inches.

Purchase sticky notes in bulk

Find many sticky note colors and shapes available in Post-it value packs for huge cost savings. These bulk Post-it notes contain anywhere from 3 to 24 packs, each pad containing from 45 to 90 sheets a pad. Check out Quill for this array of note, memo, reference, and organizational Post-it note options.