Category Archives: Gillio

Gillio Appunto A5 Planner Cover – Anthracite – Review

The Gillio Appunto range of leather planner covers was initially released in March 2016. They originally came in both A6 and A5 sizes and have been joined by ‘Slim’ and B6 sizes.

The Appunto was originally designed for the Hobonichi style planners, but any notebook/planner of the same size will fit in to these covers.

  • A6: all standard A6 notebooks; Hobonichi Planner & Hobonichi Techo A6 and A6 Avec
  • A5: all standard A5 notebooks; Hobonichi Techo Cousin and Cousin Avec
  • B6: all standard B6 notebooks (e.g. Stalogy)
  • Slim: Hobonichi Weeks and Weeks MEGA

This review is of an A5 Appunto which I have recently received to review and try out.

The review sample is also in a new leather colour ‘Anthracite’ which is a lovely dark grey colour. It isn’t as stark as pure black, but not too light a grey colour either.

The Appunto is in Italian vegetable tanned leather, there is no stiffener between the layers, so it is soft and supple to the touch.

With the A5 Appunto open you can see that there are plenty of pockets and slots for most peoples requirements.

The inside front cover has 4 regular card slots and two deeper card/note card slots. There is a full height slip pocket on the outer edge as well.

On the back inside cover there is a full height zip pocket and a half height secretarial flap pocket. The elasticated pen loop sits above the broad clasp.

There are two book marks in the central section.

There are slots on both the front and back inside cover to hold your planner/notebook.

I intend to use the Appunto with my Quo Vadis Daily 21 planner, which I use as my daily journal. I’ve been using this make/model/size as my journal since 2013. The paper is excellent and it takes fountain pen easily.

The Daily 21 being A5 size, slots in neatly in to the A5 Appunto.

The Daily 21 has stiff covers, so I only slotted the back cover in to the Appunto, but for soft cover planners/notebooks you can slot both the front and back covers in to the Appunto, it has provision for this.

The A5 Appunto also has a full width back cover, so you can also carry loose A4 size pages as well.

I scanned in the new leather and an existing Gillio Compagna in Royal Blue, so you can see the difference in the leather colour. Grey is often a difficult colour to photograph, so scanning it in often produces a more accurate result.  You can see the other Gillio leather colours in a previous post on Philofaxy.

Gillio Epoca Royal Blue (828) Anthracite (780)

The A5 Appunto measures when closed measures 230mm high by 170mm wide including the clasp.

Here is Mella’s video:

 

The new colour will initially be available in the following models:

  • Pocket Compagna – 223/14
  • Medium Compagna – 224/02
  • Slim Appunto – 282/02
  • A5 Appunto – 281/02
  • A6 Appunto – 280/02

Thank you to Gillio Firenze for the A5 Appunto review sample in Anthracite.

Further information: 

Gillio – IIC bvba
Breedveld 2 unit 7
1651 LOT (Beersel)
Belgium

Tel: +32 (0)2 380 63 19

Email: helpdesk@gillio.eu
Website: https://www.gillio.be
Facebook page: Gillio Firenze
Facebook group: Gillio Firenze
Instagram: @GillioFirenze

Industry News: Gillio Firenze Un-dyed Leather

At PlannerCon Europe 2017 Gillio Firenze announced the release of products in un-dyed leather.

On Monday 6 November, they released a range of products in un-dyed leather including:

  • Pocket Mia Cara (ref. 223/08)
  • Medium Mia Cara (ref. 224/08)
  • A5 Mia Cara (ref. 238/08)
  • Medium Compagna (ref. 224/02)
Also released in un-dyed leather:
  • A6 Appunto (ref. 280/02)
  • A5 Appunto (ref. 281/02)

The Appunto is their Hobonichi cover.

I expect that they will be releasing other products in un-dyed leather in the future.

Back in December 2016 I was sent a Gillio Giramondo in un-dyed leather to test out. Other prototypes had been sent to other admins on the Gillio Facebook group to test over a period of months.

The other people did fairly normal usage tests by using the products every day. I wanted to look to see what would happen if a customer applied any leather care products to the un-dyed leather, what would happen to it, what would it look like etc etc. Gillio were naturally interested in what customers might experience and so they would be prepared for any bad experiences.

Un-dyed leather is literally untreated, it is the natural hide so it is very susceptible to absorbing the oils from your hands, to sunlight, as well as being contaminated by anything it is left close to or it absorbs from our natural environment.

So here is a series of photos of the Giramondo that I took and what had happened to it at each stage of the tests.

So these first photos were taken on the 23 December the day I received it. 


Just a close up under slightly different lighting.


Once Christmas and the New Year was out of the way I decided to give it some leather care treatment using this product. I’ve used this on other leather organisers before now to enhance their appearance.



On 4 January 2017 straight after spraying the Giramondo looked like this:


As you can see this has changed its appearance quite drastically, and you can be forgiven for thinking ‘what has he done!’


The Giramondo was then left over night to air and stabilise again. About 12 hours later this is what it looked like:

It is a bit more uniform now in colour and not quite so dramatic in what it looks like.

Later that day (5 January 2017) I decided to have try a little experiment whilst also exposing the cover to the sun. I printed out the Gillio logo on some paper and then carefully cut around the outline of it. Popped it under the elastic and put the item in the sun at my home here in France.

 

And a few hours later, yes that worked! You can clearly see the logo on the front cover!!

Two days later and after some more sun, the logo is less obvious, but you can still see a line where the elastic closure has been:

Fast forward a few weeks to 6 February 2017 and on any sunny day the Giramondo was out there claiming the best spot in the sunny side window! I had been mainly exposing the outside to the sun and as you can see the elastic tan line is more distinctive and the colour has become more golden.

I found a way to expose the interior in a similar way to the exterior so for a few more weeks as we went in to Spring sunshine the interior was also given some sunshine treatment.

By 19 April 2017 it had taken on this colour:

Behind the secretarial flap once opened shows the contrast, no leather care was applied behind there, or in to the inside of the left hand slip pocket.

I quite like the finished result, the variation in colour and how the texture is magnified adds real character to the item.

The leather during this comparatively short test has remained supple and I think will improve with age and usage.

To learn more about how un-dyed leather changes with age, I strongly recommend reading Janet Carr’s (This Bug’s Life) posts on her Van der Spek Un-dyed organiser which she received to test back in November 2014, there are many posts in the series.

Thank you to Gillio Firenze for supplying this sample for me to test out!

 

News Release – Gillio – Restock: Appuntos!

The second part of our appunto shipment has been quality checked & unpacked, and is waiting to be adopted by you!

(==> If you signed up for email notifications after the last restock, you already received a warning about the new stock this morning!)

Are you still looking for the perfect cover for your Hobonichi planner or other notebooks for the new school year? Then you’ll love what we’ve restocked today:

1. More Appunto Slim covers (282/02) in the black matte croco leather (colour 456)

2. More A5 Appunto covers in several colours:

  • 456, black matte croco
  • 773, rust epoca
  • 776, burgundy epoca
  • 827, olive green epoca
  • 828, royal blue epoca
  • 822/774, yale blue & gold epoca

Get yours before they sell out – and don’t forget to register if you missed out on a colour, to be notified for the next restock!

See: http://www.gillio.be for full details.