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Monday, February 21, 2011

Maps in planners

As I've said many times before, I love maps in my planners. I actually use them, and often. I especially use time zone maps, since I live overseas, and have friends and family all over the world.

The best maps I have ever seen in bound planners are in The Time Traveler planners (click here for their website).   (Edited to add: the position of Best Maps now goes to the Collins Classic Manager planner. Its maps are complete with topo and road information!  Click here to see my review and photos of the Collins Classic Manager planner.)

I bought my first Time Traveler planner in 2005, mainly because of the maps, and bought another one in 2009. They have an excellent time zones world map (which is also one of the very few I've ever seen which accurately notes that Nepal is in its own time zone of 45 minutes, not on 30 minutes like India).  Click on any of the photos below for a larger view.

Other maps in the Time Traveler planners include a gorgeous full-color map of the world (sorry for the bad lighting and shadows!):
 Very detailed maps of every continent, the US...
 Europe etc...
 A spectacular map of Asia...
 Africa, the Americas, everywhere. Even the North and South poles!!
The Time Traveler planners also have loads of pages of international information like holidays for lots of countries, international calling codes, clothing sizes, measurements and conversions, an extremely handy chart of international paper sizes, and more.  And it has monthly calendars! They are great planners and in fact I'm resisting the urge to order one up right now!

Filofax has some excellent maps. I like their pull-out map with the time zones on one side:
 and the world on the other:
I have some excellent Filofax maps including a very detailed map of Washington DC (not shown), and the British Isles map (with Scotland featured below):

Quo Vadis planners have excellent maps of all the continents that are nicely detailed and very comprehensive.  Recently I specifically looked in my Quo Vadis Minister planner to see just exactly where Jakarta is and what's near it:
Quo Vadis planners also have an excellent and useful time zones map:
Moleskine's notorious time zone map is so stylized it's nearly useless.  You have to consult a different map to find any cities not listed, accurate time zone boundaries, or any other information really:
Some notebooks even have maps.  Letts noteletts notebooks have very nice time zone maps:
What about you? Do you like to have maps in your planner and/ or notebook? If so, what planner or notebook with maps do you like to use? And, do you know of a planner or notebook with maps that I haven't listed here? Please post a comment and tell me about it! :)

9 comments:

  1. Oh I love maps! I've been known to buy planners just for the maps, then cut the maps out and fit them into my real planner!

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  2. I never use the maps, or any of the other information you get in planners (dialling codes, measurement conversions etc). Most of that information is person-specific so I store it in my phone contacts (eg. a relative's time zone and dialling code will be with their phone number). Measurements I either know and can work out on the fly or would get a calculator out anyway so I might as well look it up online (especially since for me it's normally weights which means recipes which means at home). If there was some time zone/dialling code/measurement/etc that would be useful to me, I'd write it down in the notes pages, but that's never happened to me.

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  3. I use the maps, dialing codes and all that so much that if my planner doesn't have it, I cut it out of another planner or photocopy it and stick it into the book. I don't have a smartphone so I have to have a paper version of this info with me all the time.

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  4. @Laurie: what size are the maps that you show above? And exactly what item did you order? I followed the link given, but I found that web site (TimeTraveller) to be very confusing.

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  5. Sarah the Time Traveler maps are in an A6 size daily planner, which they unfortunately no longer make. But their other planners have the same maps from what I understand. My sister saw a friends' weekly large planner from Time Minder and it has all the same maps, international info, monthly calendars etc. (Her friend was very nice and let my sister take photos of her planner, which my sis promptly emailed to me!).

    The Time Traveler website is very confusing, and doesn't have nearly enough info. Basically they have daily and weekly A5 size planners, pocket weekly and extra large weekly.

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  6. If you like big maps in your Filofax check out my post on Philofaxy

    http://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2010/07/want-to-use-bigger-pages-in-your-a5-its.html

    Or how to put an A3 page in to an A5 binder... or if you want to get very silly how about A2 in to an A4 binder. Same principal!

    I have a great A3 map of London in my A5 Finsbury. Doesn't strain the eyes when it's that big!!

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  7. A5 would work for me. But from the photos of the TimeTraveller, looks like the binding would make it difficult to cut the maps out and put into my own planner... Ah well... It's good to know I'm not alone in loving maps as well as planners and pens and all that jazz.

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  8. Sarah you are right, I think it wouldn't work to cut the maps out because they go right into the middle, so there would be a gap in the map (LOL) if you cut it. Nice idea though! I only have luck cutting out maps that are on a single page.

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  9. I've been known to cut through the binding of a bound planner and carefully try to free up the leaf of pages that I want. But you usually have to try to cut through glue and stitching and all that... and then figure out a way to affix the pages you want to something that you can bind into your own planner. Not brain surgery but too close to it (I run with scissors)!

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