Desert Island Filofax

You are ship wrecked on a desert island, but you rescued your bag before it went in to the water....

You can only keep one Filofax and one pen, which Filofax will it be and which pen? 

Tell us in the comments which size and model of Filofax you would keep and which pen and what type would it be you would use?

Favourite pens and pen loops - by Anita

After reading Steve's post called Pens and Pen Loops, I decided that it was time for me to have a look at my pens and write about the subject too. 

When I purchased my first Filofax back in 2009, I just used any old pen that was laying around, but over time I've become a bit more picky and have decided to treat myself to something that I really enjoy using. 

Here are my favourite pens to use with my organiser (including two recently acquired vintage ones on the right):

 

Ballpoint - Parker Jotter
I don't remember a time when there wasn't a Parker Jotter knocking around in the house when I was a kid, but I hadn't used one for quite some time until I started getting into vintage Filofaxes with their teeny-tiny pen loops. I think I'd been using a freebie biro in my first Winchester which kept drying out, so I searched around and found my faithful burgundy Jotter. From a pen loop point of view, I don't think that you can go wrong with a Jotter as they're slim enough for most organisers.

Gel pens - Pilot G2 Limited
I love a G2, so I decided to upgrade and buy a gold Limited version, which has a nicer grip. However, rubber pen grips are not a Filofax's best friend, so this is a pen that will either just have the clip attached to the pen loop or I'll use an Oli Clip to keep it inside the rings. 

For highlighting and for a bit of colour - Staedtler Triplus Fineliner
Before I started using gel or fountain pens more in my organiser, I'd use a normal highlighter, but moved over to Triplus fineliners as otherwise there would just be smeared ink. Instead of highlighting, I will just add an asterisk or shade around something to make it stand out. I also like using a different colour when using my Hobonichi stencil to draw lines or checkboxes.

Most of my organisers haven't had two pen loops (apart from the Dundee and Van der Spek), so my small Oli clip is attached to the flyleaf and the second pen sits within the rings.

Fountain pens - Kaweco Sport, TWSBI Eco and vintage Parker 51
For a long time, my favourite fountain pens to use with my organiser were my Kaweco Sport and TWSBI Eco. I've found that the Kaweco is small enough for many pen loops, but it also works with a Muji metal pen loop like this with a Kensington:

 

My TWSBI Eco is too large for most of my organiser pen loops, but it'll happily sit within the rings and is large enough that it doesn't tend to fall out, so I don't need to use an Oli clip.

However, I've been busy this weekend with giving some vintage pens a bit of TLC, so I'm all about the vintage ones right now. My late Mum gifted me her beautiful Parker 51 some years ago, but I admit that I put it away in such a 'safe' place that I couldn't find it! Thankfully I finally found it recently and am absolutely delighted that it's working well as it hasn't been used for such a long time. I've never used a Parker 51 before, and it's an amazing pen that thankfully fits in the Kensington pen loop too.

I also have a couple of other vintage pens (the two that are placed vertically in the photo above) that I'd promised to get working for a family member, so I may be able to keep one of those and instead donate some of my others instead. The black vintage pen is a Parker Slimfold, but I'm not 100% sure about the blue one yet, as it doesn't have a model name on it, but it might be a Parker 17 Lady. 

In general, I think that the best organiser pen loop that I've come across is on organisers made by Cordwain Higgler (sadly no longer trading) as they are adjustable. The leather has a slot cut out of it and then it feeds through itself to loop round to allow a pen to be inserted.

 What are your current favourite pens for using with your organisers and do they fit in the pen loops?

Guest post series - 'Filohax' No.7 - Paul

Thanks again to Paul for this seventh instalment of his wonderful guest post series. You can find all of the 'Filofhax' posts here. 

To pen loop or not to pen loop  

If, like me, you fell in love back in the 80's and are still in the same relationship, chances are you intimately know your loved one's short comings, and have had to learn to live with them. Yes, I'm talking about my Winchester's poor pen holding capacity! However, recently I decided to do something about it (after seeing an elastic pen loop for sale for £1!). 

I've often thought that planner designers have missed a trick in not utilising the void created between the rings of binders, so decided to do a little experiment, and instead of positioning the pen loops outside of the inserts have put it to hold the pen on the inside of the rings instead. 

What's wrong with outward facing pen loops? Well, the downsides of positioning loop/s on the outside of our binders, to me, are obvious - sooner or later the pen is going to interfere with tabbed dividers. There is also the aesthetic effect that adding loops has in 'cluttering' the look of binders - Winchesters with their one loop attached to the back cover consequently have very clean lines, whereas the Cavendish looks cluttered by comparison.

 

But the main problem with pen loops for me is the pen snagging.

 

For work I use a Cavendish - with it's ample double external pen loops' capacity - and carry it in my shoulder bag. However, the pens are constantly snagging the insides of the bag as I pull the Cavendish out (it's a testament to the rugged construction that the snagged pens haven't pulled the stitching apart!). So I decided to experiment by using the new elasticated loop on my Winchester 

 

and have made a breakthrough - initiated, counter-intuitively by a major design flaw in the new elasticated pen loop... The problem being that if you dare try to push a stubby tipped pen into the elasticated loop...it catches and stops you from being able to use the loop. 

 

That is until I remembered one of Neil's Flatability videos demonstrating how to wedge only the pen's 'cap' into overly tight pen loops, and simply pulling the pen out of the trapped pen cap to use and then clicking it back into the cap. 

 

 

It's working like a dream, so I now have adopted it for my work Cavendish. 

 

Come on Filofax, isn't it time for a radical reimagining of how we accommodate our writing implements into our binders?! 

Current writing instruments?

The right pens and the right paper come together in harmony to make the perfect organiser experience. Although some people prefer to use pencil instead of or as well as pens in their organisers. 

I recently rediscovered my technical drawing pens in a cupboard whilst looking for something else. They are very nice to use, but not for casual use in an organiser!

This year I've gone back to using a Pilot Frixion Slim pen for my daily use, although I keep a Uni-ball Vision Elite 0.5 pen and my Pentel mechanical pencil to hand as well. 

I still use a fountain pen in my daily journal.

What are you using to write in your organiser?

Guest Post - Review of the Myequil Equal 2 smart pen and how it can be used with a Personal Filofax. - Mark

I'm sure we all mix technology in our day to day planning with our paper organisers. Thank you to Mark for this review of the Myequil Smart Pen.

We live in interesting times, I am 53 years old, so can remember black and white TVs taking an age to warm up, then produce a grainy picture, which nose dived if it rained. Now I can get an instant crystal clear video, anywhere on a smart phone. I am probably the last generation to really appreciate this technological revolution. That is what I'm writing about, the best of the old tied to the best of the new. A smart pen that compliments a Filofax, with all its heritage.

Much loved Malden personal with equil charging unit.

Like a lot of people I own to many ways of jotting down notes, 2 personal Filofax organisers and a pocket, a mini.  I think very highly of the flex system, which seems out of favour these days, but is the only true ‘pocket note pad’. The problem with this collection is that I'm not organised enough to remember what I wrote where, although each has its own job. 

My first meeting with a smart pen, was at a meeting where someone had a ‘Livescribe’, this seems to be the market leader in the smart pen world. What impressed me was the hand written minutes were emailed to me before I got home from the meeting. I had a look at the livescribe, but it wasn't going to fit into my world, having to purchase special paper meant being economical with its use, a nice idea though. Then my interest was sparked by a company called Bamboo, that do a smart pen system that uses any A5 pad. So I started digging and found the equil 2.

The Equil 2 uses a similar technology to the Bamboo, but can be used with a Filofax and is used as my note taking partner with my personal Filofax. 

Receiver on the top of the page, pen left and charger unit to the right.

What it does is record up to a 100 sheets of paper onto a small control unit that clips onto the page you're writing on, then sends them via blue tooth to your electrical devices, smart phones tablets laptops, etc. The device is clearly aimed at Apple, but will work with anything bluetooth enabled that has the equal apps in its app store. There 2 apps, one for notes and one for sketching. I have only used the note taking app, which is more than powerful enough for me. You can cut, copy, change font colours and generally mess about with the text to your hearts content. 

It can even convert your handwriting into text, an impressive trick. You can also add media to your notes email them and save them as PDFs. So they don't just live in the app, you can print them or store the PDFs in computer files. The clever bit for me is you can organise the notes into ‘collections’. These appear in the app as notebooks. You can have as many as you like and call them what ever you like, they are effectively files. So whatever note pad or Filofax I use, the note ends up on my, phone and MacBook (I'm now hopelessly tied into the Apple eco system, mainly because of Windows 8). They all connect via my iCloud but any cloud system should work.

The result is I have taken all the dividers out of my Filofax, loaded them up with blank paper and organise my rambling thoughts in the app, which is pretty straight forward. You can also tag each note making it easier to find. 

Personal Malden A4 pad Receiver on top of the Pad and pen

The whole thing consists of a charging unit, which is 16cm long and powers both the pen and receiver. The receiver is about 8 CM long and clips onto the paper you're writing on, ideally it wants to be on A4 and in the house thats what I use, but it works fine on a Personal and I have got it to play on the Flex, but really it is not great on small paper. The equal would probably be best at home on an A4 Filofax, but I don't have one and can not justify another Filofax, I can't, I really can't.

The receiver and pen connect via infra red, so need line of sight. Once you have had a play with it it becomes second nature. The charger and receiver both have a quality feel to them, the pen maybe less so, but I'm assuming has to be plastic because of all the connectivity it has to do. Refills although small, are available from high street retailers for less than £1.00 Sterling a refill. Perhaps soon premium pen makers may join this market, much as Brietling and Tag Heuer have both made smart watches. In fact this would be an interesting direction for Filofax to move forward to. Build a receiver into a cover, make the cover the charger, so the (perhaps mock fountain pen) and receiver were charged from the cover. The app could be very Filofax based, easy to use and very organised.

Find out more at the Equil Website

Pens?

I was sorting through my rather varied selection of pens the other day and started to want to change from the pens I have been using in my organiser to something else.

For the last few years I have been using Pilot Frixion pens, they use an erasable gel ink. I prefer to use the 0.7mm but in the 0.5mm barrel, as they fit most pen loops better. See this video for an explanation.

I have recently been expanding my use of fountain pens and roller ball pens for general writing and journal writing.

Although my hand writing isn't the neatest on the planet I find a certain satisfaction writing with a reasonable quality fountain pen. I'm not talking expensive ones, more the lower end of the price range. I'm not sure if I would notice the difference myself.

Using a wet ink pen with your organiser can be a bit of a challenge. The combination of the ink and paper can be a bit of a compromise. Finding an ink you like in your pen, and paper that doesn't bleed through or if the paper is coated, finding paper that allows the ink to dry and not then be prone to smudging.

Despite these issues I think it will be a worth while change for me and one I will be trying out different options in the next few weeks.

So what pens do you enjoy using most in your organiser?

London Writing Equipment Show 2013

Myke from The Pen Addict podcast went along to his first pen show in London a couple of weeks ago, he described the show and his thoughts on the pod cast. Pen shows are also popular in the USA and no doubt elsewhere too.

There are pictures on the 'Vertical Paper' blog. Listen to the Pen Addict podcast here.

Can you imagine a show like this, but for planners? Walk in to a room with tables laid out with all different makes and sizes of organisers and bound planners? Other tables and racks filled with inserts and dividers, it would be like Etsy and Philofaxy and My Life All in One Place all in one large room with people wandering around looking and buying?

Pens Poll - Result

Thank you to everyone that took part in our 'Pen' poll, as you can see from the results the ballpoint pen remains a popular writing instrument for most people. Not far behind is the fountain pen.

Obviously the ballpoint will write on any paper without any bleed-through issues, they are very portable, the refills last months sometimes longer.

The fountain pen is a little more tricky, I've certainly had them leak in the past. But of more concern to Filofax users is their performance with the currently available paper.

At the weekend I tried out a couple of fountain pens on some of the different paper I have here:

• Filofax 'white' 70 gsm - As we know there was some bleed-through, not major but potentially annoying
• Filofax 'coloured' 70 gsm - No bleed through, it performed even better than the white paper and I was quite surprised at this, but I will come back to this paper in a moment.
• Filofax Cotton Cream - Excellent with my sample fountain pens, although the ink did take longer to dry on this paper. 
• Rohdia 80 gsm jotter pad - no bleed-through and it takes the ink well no feathering
• Datacopy 80 gsm copier paper - No bleed-through issues, but the ink did feather a little.
• 'Bristol' paper, although this is in excess of 100 gsm, no bleed through and no feathering, it even performs well with solvent heavy CD marker pen without bleeding through! But you won't get many pages of this weight in to a Filofax. 

So only a small sample, but then I remembered back to the meeting in November with Filofax, the coloured Filofax paper isn't dyed, but printed, so the colouring might be acting as a further barrier to the wet fountain pen ink?

I jotted this down then promptly forgot about it until I saw a You Tube video at the weekend and the person on the video made a similar comment that the coloured paper performs better than the thin white Filofax paper, it jogged my memory. 

The realm of 'Fountain Pen Friendly' paper is quite a difficult problem to solve. The paper has to not absorb the ink too much, yet it has to be receptive to it so that the ink dries quickly on the paper, this is particularly important for left handed users if they are going to avoid smudging what they have just written with their own hand.

My tests weren't exactly scientifically performed or conclusive but having seen others make similar observations I don't think they are too far wrong. The performance of the thin paper might vary with the type of ink used? But the coloured Filofax paper was the surprise of this test. 

Have you tried different ink on different papers to see if it makes a difference?

Notebookism

A beautiful new blog, Notebookism, recently used a Philophoto of mine to illustrate an article by someone else. Hey, I'll take it any way I can get it! What's cool is that the article was about writing, and the benefits of using paper for same.

I suggest reading the full text of the story, here, which goes into more detail about the author's rediscovery of pen and paper.

What do you write with?

I haven't been giving much thought to writing instruments lately. But surfing around one sleepless night, I visited Pencil Revolution and started drooling. Wow. Who knew people were so passionate about pencils? I love writing with a pencil, and hated it when I reached 4th grade and slippery ball point ink became a requirement. I went through a fountain pen phase a few years back. At one point, I had four going at a time, with different color ink in each one. Then, when I realized I desired better, more expensive fountain pens but didn't want to spend the $$ on them, I switched to gel pens. The gel runs out quickly, but they're refillable. Recently, I abandoned gel because it does clot and skip sometimes, and I also wanted a finer point.

Now I write in my 'faxes with Sanford uni-ball pens, with a "micro" point. They come in a "deluxe" model, with a bronzish body, and another model ("regular" I guess) with a matte black body. You can buy them by the dozen at Staples, and I keep them all over the house. Sometimes I pencil events into my 'fax, if I'm uncertain of their likelihood. Maybe I'll take a note from Pencil Revolution and start rebelling against the tyranny of ink more often!

UPDATE: After first writing this entry, I bought some new pencils and a case. You can see more here.

Time Machine

I was rooting through my drawers the other day for a pen, and I ran across one of these bad boys:


I was disappointed to find that all its ink reservoirs had dried up. I have no idea how long it's been with me; it's probably moved from house to house for years without ever alerting me that it had fallen into disuse. A couple days later, I saw this close relative in the wild:



I don't recall ever seeing the orange-barreled, or fine-tipped, version of the Bic 4-Color before. But when I saw it, I had the same reaction I have whenever I run across a new flavor of Pringles or Doritos: I Must Have It. $1.99 and a short car ride later, I was ripping open the package at home. As I got my paws on the pen, I felt a curious metamorphosis. I looked down: My shoes had become navy blue Roos, with tiny side pockets and velcro straps. My contact lenses disappeared, and in their place I was wearing think, brown-framed glasses. My hair, oh my hair: It suddenly was present along the top edge of my forehead, where it had not been present moments before. But it was unruly and helmet-ish. My metal-banded analog watch became a black plastic Casio digital watch with (could it be?) a calculator pad.

Yes, I had been transported back to 1982, when I was an awkward fourth-grader and the Bic 4-Color was what my Dad carried around. I would play with it incessantly, clicking colors up, clicking them down, trying to trick the pen into having two colors deployed at once. I would unscrew its parts and disassemble the fiendishly simple interior structure. I would draw epic pictures of fantasy worlds, each nation-state bound by borders of different colors. (It so happens that, if you have access to four colors, you can draw any map without two regions sharing a border of the same color.) But the real significance of the pen was not what I did with it, but the fact that it was my Dad's pen. It's what he used to do whatever he did to be a man. It's what he used when he did whatever he did to generate and sustain all that he had provided for me. It was his mystical tool.

Now I have my own.

I was really disappointed to find that it doesn't fit in the pen loop of my Filofax. And, truth be told, it's not even that pleasant to write with. But it gives me pleasure just to look at it, and feel its unabashed hard-plasticness. No "soft-grip," ergonomic construction here. It's just a no-nonsense, rock-hard tool for color-coding.

Maybe I'll get my Dad one for Christmas. I'd bet he would get the same kick out of it I did.

Certainty, Chance, and Ink

What good is paper without a pen? It can still be used for making paper airplanes, but it would be really stupid to use overpriced, pastel-colored Filofax paper for airplanes. So when I made The Switch recently, I had to come up with a writing implement. I already have piles upon piles of pens at home, most of which have been inadvertently (no, really!) taken from various jobs in the past decade. I have a habit of sticking pens in my pockets when I get up to go to a meeting, and they're usually still there when I empty out my pockets at home. So there's been a slow, steady migration of office products from my desk into pen storage receptacles in my home. The pens run the gamut: I have felt-tips; I have ballpoints. I have thick, rubber-coated pens; I have stick-like implements that look like eyeliner applicators. I have green; I have red; I have blue; I have black. I have pens with hotel names on the side. (It's a real weakness of mine: pads and pens inscribed with hotel names. Now that I mention it, it goes beyond pads and pens. We have a basket full of shampoo, conditioner, soap, shower caps, sewing kits, lotion, and mouthwash from various hotels. God, what a freak I am.) I also have a Mont Blanc rollerball that my Dad got me for high school graduation in 1990. Over the years, I have made various attempts to make the Mont Blanc my primary pen. But -- and I hope this is not sacrilegious -- it doesn't write very well. It usually hums along well for a couple weeks, and then it starts skipping badly. A fresh refill will lead to the same result.

On top of all those pens, I also have pencils. In 1997, while I was in law school, I worked for a summer at a law firm that kept all offices and conference rooms stocked with pencils stamped with the firm's name. They were too good to pass up, so I accumulated a few dozen at home. They're just wood, not mechanical, pencils. Because I have so many, I generally just stop using one when it gets blunt, and move on to a sharp one. So I have a few dozen really blunt pencils at home. I have a few mechanicals sitting around. I bought a bag of them when I was briefly into Sudoku puzzles.

Most calendar users use pens, it appears. Pens are far more pleasant to write with. There is a pleasing sensation of pressure and release when you apply pen to paper. Pencils, on the other hand, scratch along the surface like a nail on brick. The usual hard-leaded pencil makes faint markings, too, with a low level of contrast against the paper. A bold blue pen is easier and more pleasing to read.

However, and here is the kicker: Pens cannot be erased. Pencils can. For the Filofax user, this presents an interesting conundrum. Plans change. Airlines cancel flights. Meetings get moved. People change their phone numbers. The way I see it, I have three options in dealing with these uncertainties:

1. Use a pen and the scratch-out method of planner modification. This is a low-maintenance approach, but leads to a messy planner. At the same time, though, there's something satisfying about scratching something out with a flourish and making new notations. It's artistic, it's a license to violate the lines on the page. It's fun, like playing in the mud or running through the rain without an umbrella. But when plans change repeatedly, the fun stops and your planner page can start to look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

2. Use a pencil and the erasure method of planner modification. Neat, orderly. But completely unaesthetic. There's no fun it in it, and your eyes have to strain to discern the pencil's faint markings. There's no art in it, either. This is what an accountant would do. I am a lawyer, which is totally different.

3. Use moveable Post-It, or similar, notes. Ah. A clever end-run around the permanence of ink. Apply ink to the Post-It -- and move when necessary, or replace when plans change substantially. Another advantage is that it preserves valuable calendar space on a small-format planner. In my Filofax, for instance, I would be hard-pressed to fit a lot of specific data about an appointment into the area allotted for the day. I can, however, put that data on a Post-It and stick it right on top of the page, preserving the option of writing appointments on the space below. However, this approach does take some effort. Plus, it may look nerdy.

Thus far, I am using a hybrid of all three approaches. I use the pen for things that are unlikely to change. If I have a pencil handy, and I need to write down something that likely could change, I'll use it. And I'm open to the Post-It idea. When I had to record some flight information relating to a trip my wife is taking next week, I used Post-Its. If the flights change, I can discard the notes. I can also temporarily remove the notes if I need access to the calendar space below.

The pen vs. pencil vs. Post-It debate is likely to rage on in my life for some time. Hopefully, the distraction will not be so great as to utterly paralyze me.