Quo Vadis Planners - Journal 21 Review

A huge thank you to Karen Doherty, Vice President of Marketing, who sent a 2009 Journal 21 Daily Planner for my review. Quo Vadis is quietly building a reputation over on the Fountain Pen Network, one of my favorite sites. To have a chance to test drive one of these Exacompta products was a real treat.

A parcel came today with the planner, as well as a Clairefontaine notebook, and one of the new Habana notebooks in a cheery chili pepper red. Expect additional reviews of these products in posts to come.

The Journal 21 can be viewed at http://www.quovadisplanners.com/catalog/journal21 and should suit the heavy calendar user. It's refillable, so I'll be able to renew my calendar next year.

I need a full page per day for notes and multiple appointments. I was pleased to find the front of this planner contains both a line per day quarterly and block per day monthly calendars, permitting an overview of one's schedule. There is a line per day quarterly for 2010 in the back of the planner as well. As that's been one of my problems with the traditional notebook style calendar fillers, I was glad to see it.

Observations:

1. Personal Information page - overhaul it. People will put their contact info and emergency contacts, but few of us in this day or age will write down something as personal as blood type or medical insurance policy number. That space could be used for blank lines permitting customization by the user.
2. The holiday list includes a token date or two from the Christian, Jewish, and Moslem faiths, but not the Baha'i - the fourth largest, fastest growing world faith. Canadian holidays appear both on the holiday page and on the major world holiday page. One wonders why Hispanic Heritage Month appears as the sole ethnic/racial entry. There seems to be an inherent bias there. Additionally, the tear away tabs at the bottom of the page take off the last holiday or two if actually used and removed.
3. The major world holiday pages list 11 countries and are heavily weighted toward Europe, with only China and Mexico falling outside the European continent. This is a useful feature for those of us with global contacts, but seems outdated given the strong growth of business centers in the Middle East and India. Expand this please.
4. International telephone access codes are very useful, especially with the time differences noted. Thank you!
5. The page with the US time zones shows Canada as well. However the rest of the hemisphere is missing.
6. The lines of the address section in the back are faint enough to permit writing over and customization by the user for those contacts that take more or less than the suggested entries.
7. Even with the removable thumb tabs at the bottom of the page permitting quick flips to the current page, a ribbon bookmark would come in handy. I'll probably end up marking the quarterly and monthly pages with paper clips to aid my flipping back and forth

Now to the planner itself. Though bound, I found it easy to crack the spine and make the book lie flat. The format is perfect for my needs. Day, date and month appear at the top, with the date large enough for imperfect vision. The month appears in one top corner, with the week of the year and the number of days from beginning/to end of year in the right hand corner. If the day is a holiday, that is noted in the top center. The times cover a 12 hour day for workaholics beginning 8AM and ending 8PM. The numbers are not so dark that someone with different work hours couldn't write over them. And the lines are faint enough to act as a guide, yet permit overwriting.

The paper - ah, the paper. This is where the Quo Vadis line excels. Smooth, sensual, the paper in this journal begs for my finest fountain pens. I selected a Visconti stub nib, known for its juicy wetness, loaded the pen with Private Reserve Spearmint, a rather saturated ink, and let the nib glide over a page seemingly designed for an elegant writing instrument. What bliss! There was no feathering, no bleed through onto the next page. This is the paper a fountain pen user yearns for.

Never again will I jot my notes and schedule onto a planner page, only to find the next page unusable due to the ink bleeding through. This is quality paper in a quality product. Sturdily bound, this planner appears ready to withstand being tossed into my purse or book bag. As I type, it remains faithfully open to the page I selected. I'm perfectly happy with the black vinyl of my review copy. At last, I'll be able to snatch up the pen of my choice. This is a product I can recommend.

Pencil leads glide as effortlessly over this paper as fountain pen nibs. I grabbed a favorite #2 pencil and transferred my appointments from the back pages of this year's planner. No punching through, tearing, or failure to write due to coating - all phenomena I've deplored in other brands with cheap paper.

This is a product I'll happily carry for the next year and refill in the next. Stay tuned for more reviews of Quo Vadis products. I suspect these planners and notebooks will sell themselves once the word gets out.