Product Focus: Planners Part 1

Want to always keep track of everything? Always keep your schedules in tip top shape? Or simply keep things organized and planned without worrying about forgetting important dates or overlapping schedules?

Then you ought to get yourself your very own planner. Whether you'd like a simple monthly planner or perhaps the bulkier ones with every kind of scheduling options available. Whatever your need is, there's definitely something out there for you. 

Me being the self confessed O.C. that I am, this is the first thing on my list of to buys whenever the year ends. I got a couple of them actually; 6 in total. I know it's a lot. But in my defense I got the first three planners on separate occasions when I dropped by the bookstore some few days ago. Then the other three I got from Taobao, which included my long awaited Ardium planners which I failed to get last year. I wasn't expecting that I'd get to have an Ardium planner this year. And two for that matter.

Anyway for the first part we'll be taking a look at the first three planners I got from Taobao. 

Left to Right: Ardium Purple Light Planner (Diary Series), Ardium Project Manager (Monthly Diary), Scheduler

Ardium was established based on the motive of experimental creativity and moderate design aesthetics. 

Ardium which initially launched stationary products under the brand name of "Design DaDa" in 2005, have attracted attentions not only from Korea but also from overseas. 

Also, Ardium has been recognized as "High Quality Brand" with it's own products and local partner's original technology.

Furthermore, Ardium, with its  expanded design scope will make our best efforts to develop products in order to increase the company's brand recognition through cooperation with local and overseas partners. 

----- Company/Product description taken from ARDIUM planner:

The Light Planner is about a centimeter thick.  The layout is clean and simple and the sections were arranged from general to specific, therefore you'd have more room to jot down any other additional info about a certain task in the succeeding portions of the planner. Simple notes with the yearly and then expound in the weekly or daily section. The boxes are ample sized, enough to fit whatever things I'm supposed to jot down on it. You can spiffy it up without making it look cluttered because the white washed pages and lightly inked grid and lined pages provides a good canvass for accessorizing and personalization. 

Ardium Project Manager is about the same size as the Light Planner, but is half a centimeter less in thickness. Compared to the light planner, this one is mainly for Monthly planning hence the size, as compared to the other one which has an extra daily section.; there's an additional free notes section of two types, one is gridded while the other is lined, and a yearly checklist + yearly plan.

The only concern that I have is that I am not sure as to whether the pages is sturdy enough because its sewn together. The issue I have is that the pages tend to get ripped and the threads snap after prolonged use, which is usually my case so I prefer to have planners whose pages are stapled together.

The scheduler from Papier, also a company from Korea, is slimmer compared to the previous two discussed in this post. Exact size indicated is 96 x 170mm. Really handy and easy to carry around in your bag without adding any kind of bulk. The other two aren't that heavy per se but if you'd just want to have a planner in easy access to take down scheds as you plan it then this one is more ideal. It's open dated so you can use this whenever year you want.  

All in all these are really good buys. The quality is really good and bonus points since it came with its very own plastic sleeve covers which would really help protect it from stains, dirt and accidental water spillage.