27 September 2011

Free For All Tuesday No 34

Well I'm back home in France still recovering from a hectic but excellent weekend.

But as always you can of course ask any Filofax related questions you might have.

25 comments:

  1. I keep meaning to ask this. I have two filofaxes with large pockets in the back. (I have a Special Edition with this and a Deco. I think they add to the bulk of the binder unnecessarily. However I'd be interested in what others use this pocket for in case I am missing a trick!

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  2. I suppose you could use it to store sticky notes, receipts in case you use your filofax to manage your finances. I'd use it to keep postage stamps and stickers, you know those colored dots that are used for color coding, and also some labels, that always come in handy,to flag addictional sections in my binder.

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  3. I don't have a question, but I just wanted to share how excited I am as my Vintage Rose Malden should be arriving very very soon! I'm already stalking the post van and keep looking out my window..! Will it arrive today, or tomorrow? Eep!!

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  4. I'm much more of a lurker than a poster, but I received my Personal Amazona in Almond yesterday (very quick shipping from the Danish 50% off sale) and I am in love. It just feels like 'the one'!
    So much so that there is no point in me keeping the others I am not using, so will be looking to sell my Rose Personal Finchley soon, I was never that crazy about it.

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  5. I just love love love my new German A4 Logic. The only problem is that it is so huge and heavy.

    I have already decided to use Logic as my next planner. I can't leave it in the office and I don't want to leave it home. I'm a one live one planner kind of person and I'm used to keep my planner with me all the time.

    Do I have to build up my muscles, hire someone to carry my Logic or teach my beloved FF to levitate?

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  6. This will probably seem like a really silly question but I am a filofax virgin and was recommended this site to ask my question!

    I need some advice about which filofax to buy so I am guessing some of you will have an opinion!

    I am looking to buy my partner a Filofax for Christmas. He likes to have an old fashioned 'paper' diary (as do I) having tried and failed with computerised versions. This is partly so that we can tuck bits of paper in! I wondered what people think are 'good' points of a filofax. There are so many out there and some are very expensive but they all seem slightly different! He likes the finer things in life so I will be looking for a good quality one so I want to get it right!

    What are the must have features for a busy buisness man?

    thanks for your help!

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  7. @Nia - remember and contact me when you decide to sell your Personal Rose Finchley! :) And enjoy your Amazona, aren't they something?...

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  8. @FirstTimer. Welcome..

    In response to your question. I think you might like to look at may be the Malden, or the Holborn models. Then you need to consider what size. A5 gives you lots of space, but can become quite bulky to carry around. Or may be a personal size which is a good compromise.

    Others that might be suitable are the Kendal, and the Cuban.

    Go for one that is all leather, they do last a long time. Some are a mix, such as the Finsbury which is leather exterior, but some of the interior is cloth.

    What do others think?

    Which ever one you buy for him... be sure to mention Philofaxy to him!

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  9. his current diary is A5 so I was thinking of going for that again.... is the personal one a lot smaller?

    I seem to remember from when my Mum had a filofax when I was a child that the inserts were very expensive.... was this just a reflection of my pocket money?

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  10. A5 is 148x210 mm
    Personal is 95x170 mm

    But the rings take up less of a percentage of the overall page size on the A5 if you look at them.

    I'm not sure when you are thinking about in terms of insert costs. The number of inserts available from Filofax is somewhat reduced now compared to the 1990's.

    But.... we have reproduced quite a lot of the old inserts, look on the Files page.

    Printing for A5 is easier than printing Personal pages, also easy to create your own customised forms and information pages which is where Filofax wins, because you can build up a system that will work for you(him) and he can then swap the contents as the system develops, it's one of the joys of owning a Filofax!

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  11. Which personal format has worked best for those of you who attend school/uni?

    I've been using week on 2 pages so far and it has worked great for work, but I can't help thinking space might become an issue if I was to use it for both work and study related stuff.

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  12. @Vanjilla - Sure I will do! and yes there is something so special about the Amazona in Almond especially, I just love the colour, it's so beautiful.

    @Elisabeth - years ago when I used my Filofax for school (yeah I was a cool kid..) I had a plain lined page in the middle of my Week on Two Pages so I could write my assignments in detail, and tick them off when they've been done.
    I'm going back to uni next year hopefully, and think I will do a similar thing but use a Week on One Page insert as I am doing now, and then either have one plain lined page on the other side for study-related tasks, or if I have a very heavy work load I might keep a few plain lined sheets next to each week, so I can have maybe half a page per day to list any tasks that need doing?

    Either way, for study I definitely need plain paper in addition to whatever diary I choose.

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  13. @steve
    Thank you
    I've found what appears to be a great deal on the kendal
    Holborn only seems to be A4 - is this right?
    Like the idea of leather inside
    thank you for updating me on the inserts. I seem to remember there was a huge array of options and the worry was that they would stop making the size you needed with the right number of holes in the right place!!!!!!!!!

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  14. Hi
    The Holborn is available in Pocket, Personal, A5, in Normal and Zipped formats.

    Also there is an offer at the moment until the end of this week to get an extra 5% off the price. See here:

    http://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2011/09/philofaxy-september-offer.html

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  15. I can now say without a shadow of a doubt that the Great German Train Robbery has been the highlight of my year so far (with the exception of buying my first ever Filofax in March). I saved myself a huge 1,035 Euros in the sale and now have some of the most fantastic Filofaxes ever, along with very posh wallet, travel wallet and a rather nice accessory case. They all arrived yesterday, but they are staying in their boxes until I have time to take photos for the grand unveiling :-)

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  16. My Malden DID arrive today! I will admit here that I took it out it's box and hugged it for a while! Hubby thinks I'm utterly nuts..!! It's so beautiful!

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  17. This isn't about filofaxes, but I know so many of you have blogs that I wanted to ask this question. Have any of you ever got spam comments? I got 4 today from the same place, it was very strange. I have emailed the company. What do you do about this, just ignore them or take action?

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  18. For awhile I was getting a bunch of spam comments. They were mostly on my older posts so I set my Comments security to require my approval for comments on posts older than 7 days. Pretty soon they calmed down.

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  19. Kate, Yes we get them too, mark them as SPAM in the comments tab on the blogspot dashboard, don't just delete them, the system will log them as spam and prevent future comments.

    Likewise we moderate comments on posts older than a few weeks.

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  20. Yay, the filofaxes I ordered from Germany have arrived! The yellow piazza is very nice, I now remember how I love that type of front pocket. And it was so nice to surprise my sister with her pocket one.

    I have a small question for you: I do not really like how "boring" my filo looks. I don't do colour coding, so there is only blue ink on the pages, and just cream paper. Does anyone have tips on how to make it more fun or colourful, without losing all of its professional appearance? I have to use it in front of clients (I am a consultant) and I already have that cute little girl look sometimes, can't make that worse considering they pay for me...

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  21. Thanks Steve and Laurie, I think I will set up moderation for older posts. Thankfully Blogger did identify them as spam, but it still sent them through to my email as real comments and confused me a bit!

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  22. girlinmaths, I understand what you mean about wanting some color without it looking too cutesy or girly. One option is to use color on your tabs (I use the colored sticky tape flags and trim to fit). Or, you could put in some cool graphic-design tabbed dividers, there have been lots of photos in people's blogs in the past couple of months of diy tabbed dividers that look really cool. You could also use colored paper, Filofax has non-girly colors like blue, yellow and salmon. I'm sure other people can think of ways to add color without looking frou-frou too. Anyone?

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  23. @girlinmaths

    i have the same problem. at the moment i use my black ikon. i carry it around with me all day and especially at work i can´t have a purple-striped filofax with pink dots all over it. still has to look reputable. but with just have my diary open, no one can see what colours hide in there ;)

    i love to use coloured dividers, as laurie already said. there are no pictures of mine on this computer, but imy made a blog about making your own dividers.
    http://imysworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/filofax-college-week-4-making-dividers.html
    U also can glue satinpaper (very smooth paper with a huge diversity of patterns) on stronger paper for your dividers. or just buy funny/cute/nice postcards, glue them on the filofax dividers and "pimp" all that with deco tape.

    great deco tapes at http://www.modes4u.com/en/cute/c129_Deco-Tapes.html
    (note that there are many more when you klick through the several categories on top. AND they are from hong kong. so it would last about 2 weeks till you get them. i´m still waiting for them ;) )

    (almost) no one would ever see your divider fronts. just the tabs of it. so that´s a way you can freak out a bit.

    hope it helped

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  24. There´s another "how to make your own dividers" post.

    http://thelifeoftheperpetualstudent.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-new-diy-dividers.html

    (for even more colour you also just chance you pen for a few days. or switch between several colours, each one for one day. you have to choose carefully for not loosing the "reputation" point.

    and you also can add some transparent business card holders to your filofax and put some colourful pictures in it.

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  25. Firsttimer,

    I would consider size for writing space vs portability (regarding size and weight). Does it fit the bag and would I realistically want to carry it around?

    I would also consider the organizers ability to lie flat and the number of pen loops.

    What industry is he in? In some businesses like banking only simple black may be acceptable, in others like advertising maybe something like the Scanda would be nice.

    In the current collection I'd recommend you look at the Aston and Holborn but there are tons from past seasons. Just look around the web lots.

    Paper refills are expensive today still, but thanks to computers and printers or the copyshop we can now make our own. If his company requires him to use outlook he could even print from there.

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