17 May 2010

Dodo Acad-Pad personal size Filofax insert


The Dodo Acad-Pad is the academic-year version of the Dodo Pad diary. This is a very popular planner/ diary for students, teachers, school administrators, parents and others on an academic-year schedule. The Acad-Pads sell out every year (so everyone is encouraged to get theirs soon!).

Most of you have read about Dodo Pad diaries, whether here or over on Plannerisms. For the uninitiated, you can check out www.dodopad.com to see what these fun, quirky diaries are all about.

Due to popular demand, the Acad-Pad academic-year diary is now available as an insert for the personal size Filofax (or equivalent size binder)! There were a lot of customers who couldn't live without their Filofax, but didn't want to have to sacrifice the intelligent fun of their Dodo Pad diary. Now these lucky people have the best of both worlds! The 2010/ 2011 Acad-Pad Filofax inserts are available now, and the 2011 Dodo Pad Filofax inserts (both A5 and Personal size) are available now for pre-order, to be delivered in early July.

While I was in London last month I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Rebecca, Managing Director of Dodo Pad. She very generously gave me samples of the Acad-Pad diaries in all their forms: original desk size, wall calendar, mini pocket size, and the new Filofax insert! She told me about formatting the diaries and the way they were able to scale down the weekly grid and the artwork to fit the size and shape of the personal insert pages. It was an interesting glimpse into diary design!

Here is an excellent short You Tube video of Rebecca at the London Book Fair being interviewed for the Book Channel. In this video she talks about the Acad-Pads and Dodo Pads, and various ways to use them. Rebecca also mentions several of the other Dodo organizers. It's a great insight into the products.

Here you can see the entire range of Acad-Pads: the diary insert in my purple personal Finsbury (which I think looks great. Of course I love this year's cover color!), with the Mini size Acad-Pad lying on the inside cover. Bottom right is the original desk diary Acad-Pad, and on the bottom left is the Wall Acad-Pad, which is identical to the desk one but hangs up on the wall.
Below is a photo to show the size difference between the desk diary and the personal size Filofax insert. For scale, the desk diary measures 9 1/2 by 7 1/2 inches (24 x 19 cm).
You can also see some of the formatting changes required to fit the Personal size page (which you can see more easily if you click on the photo for a larger view).

Below is a photo of the personal size insert with the Mini size Acad-Pad, which measures 4.25 by 5.25 inches (11 x 13.5 cm).The weekly grid in the Personal size is just slightly smaller than in the Mini, but the Personal has more room in the margins for notes.

Here are a couple more close-ups of the inside pages (click photos for larger views):


Look closely at the picture in this one to get a glimpse of Miss Peabody, and Lord Dodo himself!

There are endless ways to use the weekly grid. Some people label the columns morning/ afternoon/ evening, with to-dos and deadlines. Or, you can do what I do in my A5 Dodo Pad diary insert and write across the boxes. It's very flexible, and you can use it differently week to week if you want to.

For more information about the range of Filofax-compatible Dodo Pad diary inserts, you can read Miss Peabody's blog post about it on www.dodopadblog.com.

Those of you who use an A5 size Filofax and are interested in trying the Dodo Pad insert for it, the 2010 inserts are now available on ebay for a very low price while supplies last. If interested click here to check them out.

6 comments:

  1. Hi Laurie,
    I think I'd struggle to write anything meaningful in the grids and having all the space above & below is simply lazy design...isn't it? If the grid filled the page as it does in the A5, it would be workable, but the way that the company has formatted for the Personal size is terrible or am I missing something?
    Having seen this I think I'll pass on buying a personal-size dodopad insert, which makes me a little sad since I was looking forward to using one.
    Simo

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  2. Any US reatalers? The shipping is prohibitive.

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  3. Hi Simon,

    I asked Rebecca about the grid design on the Personal size and if they could stretch it somehow to cover more space on the page. She said technically it is possible, but because of the layers of formatting on each page: the grid is one layer, the dates are another, the art is a different one and the text is another; it would be time- and cost-prohibitive to do so.

    JJ, Amazon has the Acad-Pad insert for $3.99 shipping:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1903001684/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&qid=1274167673&sr=8-13&condition=new

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  4. Hi Laurie,
    that’s a real shame because I certainly won't be buying what's on offer :-(

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  5. Hi Simon, the feedback from the customers who requested this size and format has been very positive. But, I do understand if you need more space to write each day. I have that issue with the Personal size Filofax in general.

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  6. Laurie: thanks for the tip. But the A5 inserts on Ebay are even more attractive... now, if I just had an A5 binder.

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