Moleskine Planners 2011

Yes I know it's only February, but I'm already chomping at the bit for next year's planner designs!

Last night I googled, and found, the Moleskine Planners 2011 catalogue. There is some really exciting stuff in there!

First let me say I was exceedingly underwhelmed by many of their new products this year: the seemingly useless page per day desk calendar and one book per month daily planner set spring to mind. There were also some products that are good but just slightly miss the mark: for example the Panoramic Planner is an excellent design, but the pocket size seems too tiny to be very useful. This format in the large size would be much more effective.

But unlike the 2010 products, the new items coming out in 2011 have really wowed me, bigtime. There are new sizes, colors and formats in the ever-growing Moleskine lineup that I'm finding really interesting and I'd like to go on about now.

The first thing that caught my eye is that there are colors! Specifically, their new Extra Small daily and weekly planners have hard covers in colors like lime green, sky blue, and dark pink, among others. You can see the daily planners on page 14 of the catalogue and the weekly ones on pg 19. The Extra Small size is 2 1/2 by 4 inches. For comparison, their Pocket size is 3 1/2 by 5 1/2. (Check out the size chart on pg 7 of the catalogue.) And especially interesting to me is that the tiny, colorful day per page planners have blank pages. No lines. Just the day and date at the top of the page, and you fill in the blank page however you want. I absolutely must have one, and have pre-ordered it already on Amazon to make sure I don't miss out!

Another new size of planners for next year is the A4 size. For reference, American standard-size paper is 8 1/2 x 11 inches. A4 is European standard size office paper, and it's slightly narrower (8 inches) and taller (12 inches). Which means the A4 Moleskine planners are huge. Check out page 13 of the catalogue to see the A4 daily planner! It has an enormous page for each day. I have seen this size of daily book used in offices and businesses as record-keeping books, which they seem excellent for. I can't imagine being so busy as to need to use an A4 page each day as my daily planner, but I'm sure there are people in this world who are that busy.

Another exciting A4 size planner is the weekly planner on pg 18 of the catalogue. Each day has its own full-size column, even Sunday. There is space to record appointments every 15 minutes. And, there is an extra column for notes and lists. This is a fantastic format--I'm always searching for a planner with all 7 days as full-size columns. And in the huge A4 size, it's great for very busy people. The only problem is portability: for a planner that will go from workday to weekend, it needs to be small enough to carry everywhere. I'd love to see this format in the more-portable Large size.

So those are some of the fun new things from Moleskine we can pine for (I mean look forward to!) for next year!