I’ve spent several weeks beta-testing the new customization interface for Agendio, a company that has innovated the planner by making the entire process customizable from the size of the finished planner, the page layouts, fonts, colors, paper weight and even the type of finished binding. They have recently added some paper weights specifically to cater to the fountain pen crowd. They offer 24# (90gsm), 28# (105gsm) and 32#(120gsm) text weights. I ordered my planner with 32# paper for the best odds of being fountain pen friendly.
Agendio allows you to input (and save for future planners) personal events, activities and holidays that can be pre-printed onto your calendar. The events can be birthdays, anniversaries, garbage day or anything else that happens with some regularity that you would rather not have to write down every week. They will save your information for future planners so once you’ve added events and activities, you won’t need to do it every year. You can also select specific holiday calendars depending on your religious preferences, naationality, etc. AND… you can even edit out holidays you don’t want included. That’s a pretty awesome extra.
I ordered the planner in the Journal (5.5″x8″) size with a standard wire cover (approx. $47 plus shipping). There are two larger sizes in the bound planners: 7″x9″ Medium and 8.5″x11″ Large. There are dozens and dozens of cover options and the option to customize the cover with your name or other cover text. The cover is then covered with a thick clear plastic cover to increase sturdiness.
I don’t often purchase spiral notebooks so I forgot how nice it is to be able to fold the book over completely so it takes less space on my desk or lap. The spiral is sturdy and I think it stand up to having heavy object sat on top of it without collapsing.
When you start with the Planner Pro designer, you can select starting your page building with either a blank page, community designed pages or one of Agendio’s pre-printed templates. I wanted to create my own layouts and see what options were available so I started designing from the “blank page” option.
My sample planner includes monthly, weekly and daily pages for the months of November, December and January. Agendio allows you to choose how many months you want in your planner, starting with just three months. I wanted to do a test run with the layouts and design so three months seemed like a good time frame.
I wanted to try some new layout options for all my pages. The monthly layout is probably the most standard of any of the layouts. For the weekly layout, I went for a vertical layout but since my life doesn’t have as many tine-specific activities, I removed all the time markers and was able to remove a lot of the lines so I could be all loose-y goose-y like I like. On the far right, I left space for longer writing, lists or whatever pops in my head.
For the weekend pages, I adjusted the open area on the top of each page to make room for a mini photo from my photo printer. Since weekends tend to have more activities that I want to document, I really like this little hack. I left space below the photo area to add a caption.
The weekly pages have a smaller space for doodling, ink swatches, or random nonsense.
I haven’t had a lot of time with the planner yet since it just arrived last week but overall, I really like that I was able to customize it exactly the way I wanted it.
The Paper Quality
As for the paper quality, Agendio sent me extra pages so that I could try to all three stocks and show you my results.
Th 24# (90gsm) paper bled with many of the brush pens and most of the fountain pens, even with fine and extra fine nibs. If you are a fountain pen user or someone who likes to add decorative lettering with brush pens, skip the 24# together.
The 28# (105gsm) paper was better with fountain pens. Some of the fountain pens had a bit of show through. The 28# paper had the least spreading of the lines with fountain pens which I really liked. I think the 28# might be a bit smoother than the other two.
Only the orange brush pen bled through to the back of the page. So for those among us that like adding lettering or doodles, the 28# might not be for you.
Finally, the 32#(120gsm). While this paper is quite thick, it was definitely the best of the three for fountain pens. The 32# paper is a bit toothier than the 28#. There was just minor show through with the fountain pens. There was the least showthrough on the 32# with the brush pens, just a few spots at the start and stop of each letter, with the orange brush pen (Akashiya Sai brush from JetPens).
Overall, its great that there are paper options with Agendio. For fountain pen people, the 32# will be the best option though I still wouldn’t recommend using super broad pens in your Agendio planner. If you want a lighter, slimmer planner with more pages, the thinner 24# and 28# papers might work better for you but you’ll have to be careful with pens that might bleed through. Make sure to add some blank pages in the back to do pen tests.
I still need to work through my layouts and figure out how I best want to use the spaces I created. Not everyday in my weird little stay-at-home life requires a full page so I need to play around a bit to best utilize the space — adding in book reading stats, other media consumption and such to fill out my pages and make my life look a little less blank.
I love that Agendio provides almost endless options for customizing and creating your own planner. There are wrap covers, you can get hole-punched pages for a Filofax or similar, you can choose the color of the printed ink, choose line widths, customize the text and so much more. If you are at a place in your life where you want a planner layout that doesn’t exist anywhere, Agendio may be the answer for you.
I hope you’ll check it out and try their page builder. Let me know what you think.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Agendio for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
