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Friday, November 1, 2013

Free For All Friday No. 8: pre-printed holidays?

I like holidays pre-printed in the day spaces of my planners, but not everyone does. I need the US and UK holidays at minimum. I prefer having as many holidays as possible, even when I'm not associated with the country they are for, just out of interest. But I can see why some people wouldn't want their day spaces cluttered up with holidays that don't pertain to them.

The 2014 Moleskine planners don't have any holidays printed in the day spaces. In past-year's planners they had the abbreviations of countries having a holiday that day without actually printing the name of the holiday, to save space. But now they don't even have the country abbreviations. Seeing all those empty, holiday-less days makes me sad.

Moleskine does have a website where you can go to find all the holidays for all the countries of the world, to write in yourself. As much as I like having that information available, I resent having to sign in with my email address. I don't want Moleskine knowing my personal information every time I want to look up a holiday.

My favorite planner brands for having lots of holidays printed in the day spaces are Brush Dance, Quo Vadis and Filofax. They have national holidays and other special days like Mother's Day.

What about you? Do you like lots of holidays in your day spaces, only the ones immediately relevant to you, or none because they clutter the space up too much?

And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything planner-related!

14 comments:

  1. I like the Holidays. If not on the page the day of, then at least a list elsewhere in the book. Presently in all my calendars I draw a box around the day of Holidays allowed for us where I work.

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  2. This is one reason I love having a digital planner too. I have downloaded the iCal calendars of holidays that pertain to me, but they don't interfere with my paper planner. I do find it annoying when there is a long list taking up a lot of space in a small planner box.

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  3. To keep costs down, manufacturers are trying to reduce the number of different editions of their product they have to make. Ideally they would just want to manufacture one version for the English speaking world, one for the French etc. This isn't that easy! For example: most countries now take Monday as the start to the working week, whereas some still like the traditional Sunday start.

    Mothering Sunday is a good example of why Moleskine has stopped printing dates. Wikipedia says there are 32 different days that are used worldwide to mark Mother's Day!

    Personally, if it's now uneconomic to print a bespoke UK or European version, I think a printed page of dates in the planner is probably the best compromise. We live in an international world! Users can then browse dates and insert them on the dated pages as they prefer.

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  4. I definitely like the holidays preprinted--one reason I hate DIY pages--but I am only interested in US holidays. Raised US so I like Sunday as the beginning of the week too.

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  5. Sunday and Monday are my weekend (I work Saturdays) so I'm always suffering with the ubiquitous Monday start pages. And recent planning for a UK trip not only required looking up standard holidays but school holidays too so really, for travel I'd never rely on holidays on a printed page. But for phone calls, etc., I think the separate list of holidays is best. I recall Day Timer pages from years ago that had international holiday lists.

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  6. I like pre-printed holidays. That's the one downside of my new Organized Mum inserts - I have to enter US holidays, like Thanksgiving, since they only have UK holidays (from what I can tell)!

    It's not a deal breaker, but it just looks so much nicer when they are pre-printed.

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  7. i like pre-printed/program-generated holidays so i get them on the right dates and don't mistakenly flip two pages at once and write it wrong. most of the holidays i need end up DIY anyway so I get all the ones I need in the right places and in the right language, but it's nice to have some of the work done for me. one day i'll get smart and generate tiny labels so i can just stick them on the appropriate dates, but that project never seems to materialise despite my saying i'll make it happen for years.

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  8. Hate 'em. They take up valuable writing space. Moon phases are handy tho!

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  9. I'm a teacher, so we usually have days off around holidays. So, for me personally, it wouldn't really matter. However, I'm sure I'm in the minority here. But I agree with Tim--they're marketing for a global economy now. And Rori--it does take up space!
    PM

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  10. I really like this feature in the Personal Planner. You are able to save your own list of dates to be printed on the pages, and at least on the US site can choose whether you want American, Australian, Danish, etc., holidays. The UK site previously just printed UK holidays; I don't know if that offers a choice now. The holidays and personal dates are in very tiny printing so they don't take much space either.

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  11. Thank you for mentioning Brush Dance. Before our most recent year of production, we did an informal poll of or Facebook members and most people who replied love having the holidays listed. We have added even more special days to our pieces in recent years.

    It is definitely more expensive to have them included with every product style...all of that proofing, but we want to always provide the consumer with what they find most useful.

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    1. Hi Christine, thanks for your comment! It's great to know your customers enjoy the holidays and special days as much as I do. I have to admit your products are my gold standard for holidays, moon phases, monthly info like birthstones, etc.! I love the added special days too.

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  12. I've been happy with the approach to holidays on my Quo Vadis Visual planner - they are subtly listed at the top of the days in Week view, listed at the bottom of the Month view and marked in gray if a federal holiday, and a fairly complete listing of International holidays is on two reference pages at the front.

    I'm particularly happy that US and Canadian holidays are both listed, as I work for a bi-national company. I'm assuming my Visual is a specific North American edition, as Quo Vadis also prints planners for other countries. Or maybe the Visual is North American only?

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    1. Hi Bree, the Visual is in the Exacompta Prestige line for North America, as you suspected, so it only has N. American holidays printed in the day spaces. Other planners also in Quo Vadis's Exacompta Prestige line are the Journal 21, Daily Pocket, Space 24 and Space 17.

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