Day Designer Flagship 2016 Unboxing and Review

I spent a couple of weeks poring over different planners to decide which one I should order. Turns out, some planners order their planners for the next year as early as September! There are planners that sell out, actually sell out, at the beginning of fall for the start of the new year! All of a sudden, picking the right planner seemed like an important decision. Erin Condren? Plum Paper? Inkwell Press? Emily Ley? iBloom? Day Designer? So many options.

Here are the things that helped me make my decision.

Day Designer: Gold Foil, Black Spotty and Black Stripe.

Cover: I needed the cover to be somewhat professional and well designed. Something that wouldn't look out of place in a meeting with conservative industries but wouldn't look so boring that it wouldn't be a joy to use everyday. Unfortunately, many of the planners have very casual covers that are more geared towards colorful and playful designs. I narrowed in on Erin Condren, Inkwell Press, Emily Ley and Day Designer for their more subdued cover options. Emily Ley and Day Designer actually look quite similar down to the wonderful brass corners that prevent bending over prolonged use. In the end, Day Designer had the perfect classic but stylish cover.

The slide out keepsake box the planner comes in this wonderful!

The interior flap can hold onto notes that need to be processed.

Colors: Going along with the professionalism, I am not a huge fan of rainbows and tons of color. I know a lot of people like to decorate their planners like they decorate their scrapbooks so having a lot of color options might be attractive to that set. Personally, I'm not going to do a lot of decorating and if I do end up decorating, I want something of a blank slate, as in a neutral colorway in basic black, white or grey, to start with. Erin Condren and Emily Ley have very colorful tabs and layouts which I didn't like very much. Inkwell Press had nice subdued color palettes while not being boring but I just loved neutral color options of the Day Designer.

I chose Black Spotty in the end because Black Stripe comes with hot pink accents and I am not a fan of pink. Gold Stripe was attractive but I felt like the gold would wear down quickly with prolonged use. Plus, I really like the accent color on Black Spotty. It's a few Pantone boards away from Tiffany Blue which makes it feel luxe but fresh.

How adorable is this pattern?

Daily Versus Weekly: Planner page layouts are extremely important. This past year, I used a weekly layout and found I never had enough space. I also noticed that I try to assign times to tasks around my appointments which made the need for a daily hourly layout pretty important. Erin Condren, Emily Ley and Day Designer all offer weekly and daily layouts for their 2016 planners. I preferred the layout of the Day Designer page because it has room for many of the things I already try to note in my daily plans like what I'm having for dinner, top 3 things I need to accomplish that day and a reminder for a daily gratitude.

Sample Daily Planning Page

Also, the hours on the agenda side of the page go from 5am to 9pm, which I think is really handy because my day doesn't go from 7am to 7pm or some of the other hourly layouts available on other planners. Planning pages are available from Day Designer here for new users to determine if the layout works for their life.

Planning Guidance: For me, November is about planning for the next year. Erin Condren's Life Planner and Day Designer have extensive planning guidance at the beginning of the planners that really provide some life guidance to achieve the personal and professional goals. I really liked this about them and felt this was a huge value add.

How to use the Day Designer for a well balanced, goal driven life.

I used to be a huge fan of an electronic only planning via smartphone and cloud computing but found that as I was juggling more in my life after becoming a working mom, it helped to write things down on paper to clear my head. My current organization system includes adding dates as they come up directly to the applicable calendars on Google Calendar. I have a shared calendar with my husband to keep track of family engagements as well as a work calendar I keep track of my meetings and deadlines on. I have a sketchbook that I use for project planning, meeting notes, and a basic catch-all for my ideas. The sketchbook was ideal for me because I didn't want lines for when I was doing actual sketches for layouts and designs. The paper also tends to be much thicker than lined notebook paper with a much nicer feel.  My planner is used in conjunction with my Google Calendar and notebook to plan out each day so I have a road map for the things I need to get done or need to follow up with other people to get done.

Unboxing Details:

It took about 5 days, 3 business days, to get my planner. I ordered on November 11, 2016, during the November stocking, and it was shipped immediately. There were pre-orders starting in September where orders were not sent out until late October/early November also. I was thrilled to get this so quickly.

Checkout the closeups below of some of the construction details:

The gold brass coils are sturdy and well color coordinated. 

I didn't go over the entire planner with a fine toothed comb because the planner is going to get dinged in use anyway but I did notice this one area by the lower brass corner that had an imperfection in the cover. Thankfully, the spotty pattern really hides flaws well.

Reinforced corners protect the cover while adding a slightly Campaign feel. 

The Day Designer logo is framed and printed in gold foil. Very pretty.

Annual planning pages add value to this planner system over others. 

I was really excited to see the planning guidance offered by organization guru and entrepreneur, Whitney English. The advice did not disappoint. The size of some of the cells in the planning pages doesn't leave a lot of room for descriptions which was not as functional as I had hoped. I will need to have supplemental pages to flesh out my plans and then transfer the finalized details into the Day Designer planning pages.

I once read advice from Warren Buffet about setting annual goals that seems to be incorporated here. Make a list of 10 goals and then pick 3 of them. Do not do anything related to the remaining 7 goals as they are distractions from the 3 most important goals. Whitney English includes a Big Three Ideas detail to the planning pages which is really a smart way to focus on achieving realistic goals.

Envision how to achieve 2016 dreams.

Set deadlines that need to be achieved for each aspect of life.

The big goal list!

The gold foil tabs are just perfect. I can't say enough how much I just adore the colorway of this planner and the layout of the daily planning pages. I can't wait to start using this and getting excited about 2016!

Is that not just so gorgeous?

If you're interested, you can watch my video unboxing and review on YouTube!


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Here are a few great blogs with planner reviews:

http://www.prettyneatliving.com/simplified-planner-vs-day-designer-planner-comparison-review/

http://kaysepratt.com/2014/12/ultimate-planner-review.html

http://www.theperfectcatchblog.com/2014/06/five-on-friday-lets-talk-planners.html