Category Archives: Review

William Hannah Card Wallet

William Hannah have just released a new product. Whilst it might not be a notebook or planner. It does complement their other products perfectly.

The card wallet has four pockets, two larger ones on the inside. And two on the outside which will will hold one or two cards each.

The design is simple and straight forward it can be used for business cards or bank cards keeping them snug and secure inside the pockets of the card wallet.

The leather quality is excellent along with the delicate stitching. The packaging is exquisite and this would make the perfect gift for a friend or family member.

It is available in the usual William Hannah ready to ship leather colour options or for slightly more money you can pick a custom bespoke colour option.

Initial embossing is also available as an optional extra.

See the website for full details and current prices.

See the previous review of the pocket notebook here.

Further Information:

 

Gillio Giramondo Deluxe Review

The Gillio Giramondo was originally launched in 2014. The design was a fairly simple one, but it is made to the usual high standards by Gillio in Italy using their high quality leathers.

The design in my opinion lacked some features though, which have been rectified with this revised new edition, the Giramondo Deluxe announced today.

The first obvious edition is the clasp closure instead of the simple elastic loop closure.


Open up the notebook cover and you will instantly see new secretarial pocket arrangements on both sides of the cover with eight credit/business card slots in each one.

Another long awaited addition is there are now two elasticated pen loops, the original one had none! So Mr Gillio how about two pen loops on your A5 and Medium size organisers as well please….<lone voice shouting!>

The other obvious change is the increase from one set of double loop elastics to three sets neatly arranged in the spine of the notebook. This increases the capacity of the notebook cover.


Another change is in the way the Giramondo leather is finished at the edges, on the original the two edges are simply sewn together and a resin coating added to the edge. It is now booked like their other products, the edge of the leather outer cover is feathered at the edge making it thinner around the edge so it can be folded over and then stitched to the inside leather. This gives a neater overall finish to the notebook cover.


Here are the two together so you can see the differences, my original ‘undyed’ version and the new version in grey leather.

This image shows the differences between the internal layout of the original Giramondo and the new Giramondo Deluxe.

Just picking up the new one you will might not notice at first that it is slightly bigger in size, but it is very slightly taller.


More noticeable is the necessary increase in width so that it can have the extra capacity for additional notebooks compared to the original. This is how much wider it is:


I loaded it up with six regular size notebooks. I use A5 notebooks that I reduce in width to the standard 11cm wide. With two pens in the loops the cover accommodates the notebooks perfectly with no overhangs and the clasp closes with no effort.



The Giramondo Deluxe is only available in the regular size in 11 colours at present, potentially it will be introduced in the other sizes as well if it proves popular. It also does not replace the regular Giramondo, that will still be available in all the current colours.

Thank you to Gillio for supplying this review sample of the Gillio Giramondo Deluxe.

Further information:

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

+32 (0)2 380 63 19
Email: helpdesk@gillio.be
Website: http://www.gillio.be
Facebook page: Gillio Firenze
Facebook group: Gillio Firenze
Instagram: @GillioFirenze

Letts Travel Journal – Review

At Plannercon Europe this year I was given amongst many other things, a Letts Travel Journal. I’ve only recently had a chance to take it out of the packet and look at it in more detail. I’m glad I did because it will prove very useful for me when travelling around Europe.

The journal measures 130 mm by 200 mm which isn’t an ISO page size, but that matters less when it is a bound book. It’s not too big and not too small. It is fairly close to A5 in dimensions. The covers are card hard covers, so it will slip neatly in to your bag or backpack and it should be rugged enough to survive many journeys.

The journal is made up of 192 pages of 90 gsm paper and they claim it to be fountain pen friendly. The paper is very nice to the touch and it is stitch bound.

The introduction page gives you background to Letts of London which is one of the oldest companies still in the book binding business, they also claim to be the first commercial diary makers.

The personal notes page contains the usual headings for you to fill in as you wish.

There is then some contents pages, the main pages are numbered, so a contents/index pages will prove useful in coming years for finding your notes about specific trips.

This is one of the main journal pages, they are nicely lined with essential headings only. I personally prefer lined pages, my writing and hand/eye co-ordination doesn’t work well on blank pages for writing anything approaching ‘neatly’

After 148 journal pages there is a 12 month year planner spread over 4 pages. This isn’t year specific, so there are no days against the dates.

The city information is quite comprehensive covering most of the major cities in the world. You could of course add in information about the towns/cities you are going to be visiting in your travels.

A World Time Zone map is always helpful when it comes to knowing what time it is at ‘home’ before you try to telephone home only to later realise it is 03:30am!

There is some conversion/information/clothing size information on a couple of pages followed by Expenses pages. Useful for business travellers.

Dates to remember could be used for recording information you need to remember whilst you are away, or to provide an overview of your travel plans. It’s a flexible enough layout that you could use it as you wish.

We all meet people on our travels, my memory for names is terrible (old age!) so these pages will be useful for remembering who it was I chatted with in a bar/restaurant or on the train on that trip 6 months ago!

There are then some notes pages on un-numbered pages.

And finally in the back cover there is a slip pocket that you can use to save tickets or other paper ephemera from our travels.

Overall I’m very pleased with this journal and thank you to Letts of London for this sample.