As the title suggests, what is the perfect day planner and journal? One where I can use any fountain pen I want without bleed thru and/or feathering. Cause I'm really tired of trying to match ink and nibs to make it work. And I'd bet a lot of you are too. If one more person tells me they are using a moleskine with their Visconti BB nib with Noodlers ink and are having no problems, I'm jumping thru my computer monitor to get them.

I'm just a poor soul who wants to use a FP of my own choosing and not have the paper dictate what I need to use. Am I alone on this or are others secretly having issues with it?

The perfect planner/journal would be printed on HP 32lb paper, with a template of your choosing from DIY Planner, That way, you would have paper which is truly FP friendly, and the format would exactly to your liking. All that remains is finding the binder you prefer, and placing the printed pages therein.

Or, if you want to go truly hardcore, make your own binder, with assistance from here and/or here.

Donnie

edited to add binding info.

I'm not-so-secretly having issues, but I'm dealing with them

I think the tricky bit is matching paper quality to page layout - as it happens, the page layout in the moleskine is best suited to my needs this year, and that pretty much trumps everything else. Right now my moleskine planner works great, with my wettest pens, but I don't use anything broader than an M. However it will take any FP ink I put on it, much better than rollerballs or fibretipped pens.

That said, I have used Quo Vadis planners in the past, and they're probably more consistent for paper quality than moleskine. I would give them a try again if I could find a page layout and size that suited me.

^^^ What Donnie said. Also, it would use the Rollabind/Circa or Atoma/Myndology disc binding systems. And would smell of chocolate.

I sell astrology planners at PsyPlan.com printed on heavy paper. Works great for me and my fountain pens. Available in sizes from wallet to pocket to booklet to full-page. At that site with the ZodiacEvents link you can print your own.

I've found that laser paper, when passed through the printer twice (printed on both sides) works fine with fountain pens. Not so good out of the box -- I guess the heat of the laser printer loosens the paper somewhat, just guessing.

I read a post here a few weeks ago, that I need to find and comment on, atleast just to thank the poster for the tip. The tip was that Office Depot will print and coil bind a planner for you with 32lb paper. I just had one made about 80 pages and it cost me all of $10.00 with tabs separating my sections and a nice linen cover.

You can pick a template from diyplanner.com or create your own. I created my own, so it is exactly what I want down to the quotes on the pages! The planner I created uses my task/calls/goals pages w/calendar <--created my own, a section for "waiting for items", a section for notes and a section for outlining projects/goals (modified a diy template for these).


I will try to post a pic tomorrow.

I'm with you 'bro. Been looking this week for one. Would it be so hard for some of the people who make quality journals to make a day planner, two pages per week?

ditto

I remember the thread. I did pick up a package of 32lb HP paper. There's something weird with that stuff I can't put a finger on, the ink seems to sit on top of the paper instead of being absorbed by it. Do you know what I mean? Maybe there's somwthing to what JaDy does when the 32lb paper is run thrun the printer twice. I'll try it. Good paper that HP 32lb. Not knocking it.

Yeah, pics would work.

I firmly believe the perfect writing tool for a moleskine is a pencil. Don't want to start Mole bashing again but man, these things are horrible with fountain pens unless you are using a dry fine nib. Call me crazy but I'd swear they use different papers in the different notebooks, some work well, others just suck. I keep a MS notebook just for testing different combinations of pens/inks and I'll tell ya, not many pass the test. Sometimes a medium thats dry will work. And you know what, I was looking at the Moleskine dayplanner and that works for me, I like it. I'll probably get one and make it work!

BTW - Love the avatar Greencobra!

Here are some pics of the planner. It's nothing fancy, but it is exactly what I want and need. For instance, I don't need an appointment block as this is kept on my system and sync'ed with my bb every day. But I do like to keep calls and tasks separate. I also don't need detailed task lists. But I like to have room to list some active goals (home, work, health, etc.). I kinda subscribe to both the FC and GTD methods with a bit of customization to work for me.

On the paper side, my tests with the 28lb and the 32lb paper worked great. But I do write primarily with fine and xf nibs. However, for giggles I checked out a medium/broad (MB 149) and on my smudge test it performed ok (slight smudge on the last word in the sentence after a three second pause). Maybe the paper maker is the difference, Im using HP.

Anyway, here are the pics for my planner.





Some close ups of my planning pages..



The other tabs are just list tabs (someday/maybe, waiting for, notes, etc), pretty standard so I didnt take a pic of them. The tab dividers are a little bigger than I want so I may trim them down a bit.

Very nice AJP. I can do two this way, the planner and the journal.

I'm wondering if you know if there are planner templates online. To keep the book to a minimum of pages, I'd like to get 2 days on a page. I'll start a new thread for this question.

Thanks for the photos.

Yes. There are tons of templates at diyplanner.com just go the templates section. Good luck.

I need to find somewhere in the UK that will bind like that. My local printers are not interested...

I have the same problem, no local printers are interested!