It’s always exciting to choose a new Diary at the beginning of the year. Like a set of New Year’s resolutions, the blank pages of a new diary holds so much promise for the experiences of you and your organisation in the year to come. But it’s also an important purchase that requires some careful thought, especially a bulk purchase of the diaries- because ultimately this book is meant to keep life simple and everyone informed about their responsibilities!
To convince yourself and your management to make a perfect diary purchase there are 5 important factors that you have to look into-
1. Interior Design of the Diary
Diaries are typically available with two interior formats: Week-at-a-Time or Day-at-a-Time, while monthly overviews are often available as a supplementary feature.
Monthly overviews are good for people who like to plan in advance and are best for seeing overviews for vacation, official holidays, and important deadlines.
Day-at-a-Time diaries typically have a page for every day of the year and are ideal for the detail-obsessed person who works in a detail loving organisation. Allowing the user to focus on each day, these are excellent for people who have a lot of appointments or who want to record more detailed information about their days like phone calls, expenses or tasks. For anyone else, however,Week-at-a-Time diary will probably be a better fit. Often, this is the most popular interior format because visually it shows its user an entire week at a glance (with every week of the year fitting on a single two-page spread), making it easier to see how their schedule will look for that week. This gives a much better overview than with a Day-at-a-Time diary.
If the Week-at-a-Time format is your ultimate choice, you would then have to decide on a Horizontal or Vertical. This decision ultimately comes down to personal preference. The benefits of each:
• Horizontal: The most common format, with horizontal spaces for each day
• Vertical: Each day has a long vertical column. This allows for long lists or for a full chronological list of a day’s events.
2. Compaction, Length and Width-
The diary size that best fits your needs will depend on a number of factors: how portable you need it to be and how much writing space you will need.
Below are the size options from smallest to largest:
Sizes (and their approximate dimensions) include, from smallest to largest:
· Micro: 70 x 90 mm | 2.75″ x 3.625″
· Mini: 95 x 140 mm | 4″ x 5.5″
· Slim: 90 x 180 mm | 3.75″ x 7″
· Grande: 210 x 300 mm | 8.25″ x 11.75″
If you like your colleagues to take their diary everywhere they go than it needs to be small enough to fit in their purse, or, smaller still, to fit in their pocket. Micros, Minis and Slims may work best. However, it might be advisable to go bigger if you feel they have a lot to write and their writing tends to be on the bigger end of the spectrum. Grande-size diaries are good if the diary never leaves their desk.
3. Add-ons and Features Supplementing
The amount of extra pages and supplemental features may be important as well. These features – everything from maps, conversion charts, holiday lists and address book inserts – can transform a typical diary into so much more than just being an agenda. Examples include:
Diaries for the year can include-
· National and international holidays & celebrations summary
· Useful telephone numbers and websites
· International dialing codes and emergency numbers
· Clothing sizes, measurements, and temperature conversion tables
· World time zone chart
· Travel planning memo page
· Birthdays page
· Important dates memo page
· Lined notes pages
· Year planner for the following year
· Holidays & celebrations for the year
· Convenient, removable address book insert
4. The Craftsmanship of the Diary
Something else to consider is how nice or high-quality you’d like the diary to be. Typically the nicer the book the more expensive it will be. Factors to look at: binding, paper quality, and additional features (closures, pouches, ribbon markers).
Your choice in binding depends on how well-built you want or need the diary to be. Do you need a finely-constructed book that can be resistant to any storm or is your diary generally always going to be in a safe place (like on the office desk)? If you’re think the diary has to be carried everywhere or the thought of pages falling out horrifies, you may want to bypass that cheap quality diaries and spend a little extra on a finely-bound one.
Paper Quality: You may be fine with any kind of paper or you may specifically like something higher-grade. Higher-grade paper will have a smooth finish, a high opacity (the extent to which printing on one side of the paper will be visible on the reverse side) and minimal to no feathering.
Finally there are the additional features you might look out for: ribbon markers, memento pouches, closures (elastic bands, metal clasps, magnetic wraps, etc.) But again, the nicer the book the more may have to be spent!
5. Cover Design and Customization
Even the cover design of a diary can be important. A nice cover design could inspire the user to bring it out more. But also, the environment you’re using it in may be important too. If you’re using it in a conservative workplace, you might want to go with something more subtle or if you’re wanting something really attractive and modern, you can bring out your creativity. The diaries can be created exclusively for the mentioned requirement for example- Printing your Logo on the diary or printing the logo on the diary for all the pages, You can!
