Welcome to Plannerisms

Friday, April 20, 2012

NEW for 2013! Quo Vadis Hebdo weekly planner with NEW Texas cover!

I am very excited to review this brand-new planner from Quo Vadis!

The Hebdo weekly planner is new for 2013, and is an excellent addition to the Quo Vadis line. And, this one sports the new Texas cover, also new for Quo Vadis's 2013 planners!

Okay, so let me catch my breath here: It's a new planner for 2013. It's a new, awesome cover. It's Quo Vadis, with my favorite super-smooth paper. And, it's purple. Let me go get my smelling salts!

Ok, now that I've had a chance to recover a little composure, let me show you all the delights of this new planner!!

First of all, my apologies for the non-representation of the color. My camera tends to photograph purple as too far to the blue side, so I tried various settings and light to try to show the true color of the cover.  The photo above shows the color pretty well but a little too blue.

Below is a pretty good representation of the color, but not a very nice photo:

 This is a better photo, but slightly too pink this time:

 And here it is again outside, looking too blue:

Anyway, the cover is definitely purple, not blue. This cover is the Violet color of the spanking-new Texas cover, which is a PVC-free vinyl with a soft feel. It's described on the website as "smooth faux suede" which is a good description. It's not fuzzy, but has the texture of nubuck or flat suede. It's very pleasant and soft!

Note: the feature on the front of the cover is not a closure, just a smooth area to add detail.

So let me take you for a walk through the book. Click on the photo below for more details of the listed features.  Also if you click on the photo at the top of this post you'll see the paper is 90 gsm, super smooth white paper which is acid- and chlorine-free. (It's my very favorite paper in the world, and creates a very pleasurable writing experience).  The binding is sewn for durability and allows the book to lay flat very easily, and the planner is made in the USA.

The page size is 6 1/4 by 9 3/8 inches (16 x 24 cm) which is an excellent size for maximum writing space in a very portable book. The book is narrow, slim (less than 1/2 an inch thick) and very lightweight so it could comfortably go anywhere with you in your bag. I've used planners that are smaller than this and much heavier!

As usual with Quo Vadis there are plenty of excellent features. The first page has plenty of space to write in your Personal information. There is a very detailed page of International dialing codes (which I use, and appreciate enormously):
There are also pages for minimum and maximum monthly average temperatures for cities of the world, and a chart of international holidays (not shown).

Next we start getting into the meat of the planner. There is an anno-planner to see your entire year at a glance, with months as columns. There is a Priority box at the top of each month. Holidays are indicated on the day spaces and are highlighted in green:

Now here is where this planner starts to get especially exciting!  Thank you Exaclair for including MONTHLY calendars too!!!!
To be completely honest I was hoping for month-on-two-pages calendars, but hey I'll take it. Monthly calendars are an absolute necessity for me to see upcoming deadlines, bills due, holidays and travel. The two months spread allows for planning ahead easily.

Here is the excellent weekly format! It's a week on two pages, with huge day spaces! The Hebdo's weekly format is the same as the academic-year Scholar's weekly format, but goes Jan-Dec and is printed in teal and gray inks (as opposed to only gray in the Scholar).  Also, the Scholar doesn't have monthly calendars like the Hebdo does.  (By the way, "Hebdo" means "weekly" in French.)


The large day spaces measure approximately 83 square centimeters, which puts it well into my range of big-enough day spaces.  Sunday's space is slightly smaller, but still plenty big.


Each day has a space for the day's Priority, and the daily spaces are lined but not timed.

The large unformatted daily spaces can be used for work, school, home, or a combination of any/ all.  You can write in your appointment times, write your daily lists, make notes, do menu planning, record phone calls, anything at all. There's nothing to restrict how you use the day spaces.

Holidays and Daylight Savings Time for the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and phases of the moon are all printed in the day spaces.

At the end of each week you tear off the bottom corner to open directly to the current week easily.

At the bottom of the left page is a lined space for lists and notes.


The weekly pages go from January to the end of December 2013. After the weekly pages there is a monthly calendar for January 2014 for forward planning.

Then there is an anno-planner for all of 2014 to easily plan into the next year:

Next come the maps, and you know I love Quo Vadis's detailed maps!  These are just two of them:
There are also full-page maps of Canada, the US, South America, Australia and New Zealand,  Europe, Asia, and Africa. There is one lined Notes page.

The back page of the book has a handy reference calendar for last-this-next year. Tucked into the back cover is a removable address book:

The booklet has A-Z tabs for contacts but could just as easily be used for notes.
Quo Vadis does make Notes insert booklets that fit the Hebdo (which is the same size as the Minister and Scholar) but I don't know where to buy them. You can check the retailers who sell Quo Vadis or contact the company for more info.

The 2013 Hebdo planner isn't available for purchase quite yet, but keep your eye on the Quo Vadis Hebdo product page and check retailers. I'm not entirely sure but I think they will ship mid-May.  In addition to this Texas cover, the Hebdo will also be available in the Club, Soho and Duo Leather covers.

The Texas cover will be available on all of the Quo Vadis 2012-2013 Academic and 2013 calendar-year planners.

Huge, enormous thanks to Karen at Exaclair for sending me this planner as a sample to review!!  I love the planner and the cover, and I feel enormously privileged to have the opportunity to review this new addition to the excellent Quo Vadis line!

6 comments:

  1. This looks awesome! As a fan or both the Scholar and the Minister, this seems like the perfect planner - with the monthly calendars. But, I have lately been toying with my filofax planner and can't decide how to best use both. I was thinking of maybe continuing to use my Quo Vadis planner (LOVE THE PAPER) for a basic planner and filofax for goals/long term planning. But then I have two separate books going. Any thoughts? Or should I just settle on one? Or maybe one for business one for life? Oh the angst....

    PS- I ordered 10 of the notes inserts for my Quo Vadis planners. They were fairly cheap and work well. There are several online retailers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kelly do you mind saying where you ordered the notes inserts from, or how you found the retailers? I would like to order some too.

    After YEARS of going back and forth between planners and Filofax, here is what I've found is true for me (and I know others who feel this way too): the Filofax is great for everything EXCEPT as a planner. The pages are too small for the size of the book, so the day spaces are small in the weekly spread. I've found I need a larger weekly layout. What works well for me is to use a weekly planner plus a Filofax (I use Personal size) for notes, information pages, contacts, etc.

    If you want a "best of both worlds" situation and don't mind ordering from overseas, check out Steve's post on Quo Vadis France inserts that fit various sizes of Filofax!

    http://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2010/10/all-change.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for validating what I already knew, but was afraid to admit. I really love my filos, but can't make the planners work for me. And the paper is terrible.

    I live in the US, but I order my inserts from Classic Office Products.(http://www.classicofficeproducts.com/shop/index.php/quo-vadis-extra-notes-insert.html.)

    They aren't easy to find, but Classic always has them!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kelly thanks so much for the link! I'll definitely get some of those notes inserts.

    And for reference for everyone, the Hebdo is the same size as the Minister, Scholar and Space 24 so the inserts in Kelly's link will fit the Hebdo.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Laurie, would you mind sharing how you set up your personal Filofax? Do you use it for goal setting? Do you do any modified GTD?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Right now my Filofax is mainly my medical record for myself and my family. I posted a little bit about it here:

    http://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2011/02/filofax-medical-journal.html

    I also use it for contacts, and lists since it goes everywhere with me.

    I don't do GTD at all, but I do write weekly, monthly and quarterly goals in my planner. I like to have my goals on my planner pages where I see them all the time, and also so I can work my goal tasks into my day along with my other tasks and appointments.

    I wrote a big long post about how to use a Filofax for goal setting that you might like if you haven't already seen it:

    http://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2011/10/setting-goals-with-your-filofax.html

    I hope this helps gives you some ideas! :)

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.