The healing process has begun. After the battle at midterms, SCAD students are spending the next few days recovering from grueling all-nighters, last minute changes and caffeine withdrawal. 10-week quarters inevitably mean compressed project timelines; and in order to make it out alive, it’s highly recommended for students to improve their time management to increase productivity.
In the beginning of October, NeuYear.net designers Jesse Phillips and Trevor Collins released their design for what they consider “the world’s most beautiful and functional paper planner.” The project was announced on Kickstarter to raise money for production. In a world where new productivity apps are released every day, this tangible and functional piece of design is a breath of fresh air.
Though some may have to bring around slightly bigger bags, the decreased weight is guaranteed to make it “easier to carry around.”
Cleverly called The Week Dominator, the planner is meant to inspire success. In their Kickstarter video, Collins and Phillips admit to being “frustrated with the existing paper planners… a lot of them are unintuitive, they box you into a way of thinking and they’re just ugly.” Seeing the final designs, even digitally, it’s apparent their product is a vast improvement from most planners.
In order to ensure success, they researched “success principles, time management techniques, creativity methods and even Ben Franklin.” They then applied basic design principles to build each page. It’s evident that every pixel printed has a reason. Not only were they able to create something functional but it’s beautiful as well.
A slight glitch in the planner’s design is that it’s too large to carry around easily. Each page is 8.5 x 11 inches. Add in the cover and the binding, the final size sits at 9.25 x 11 inches. But the volume of the planner compensates for this. The set breaks down into two books of six months each.
However, the size of a planner ultimately comes down to taste. Considering that most people want a lot of real estate to organize their weeks and days, this might actually be the perfect size.
The Week View (top) shows every weekday with a daily list of hours and a priority list at the top. The Week Re-View (bottom) dedicates the left page to idea generation and the right to weekly tracking, a list of ideas and relationships, weekly highlights, losses and fixes.
The organization of the planner also adds an interesting perspective to time management. The first two pages contain something called “The Front Matter.” It’s inspired by the Paretto Principle, usually used to analyze businesses, which states that 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. In this way, users can tally their productivity so they know what to better focus their time on. Following this is a repeating flow of The Week View and The Week Review spreads.
On both of these spreads, there are areas that feel a little bit superfluous. There are spaces to list things to be grateful for, track relationships, and note weekly highlights, mistakes and fixes. While these features are entertaining, they make the planner feel a little more like a diary instead of an efficient time management system.
The planner’s weeks lack dated. This was intended for the user to have freedom and flexibility, but it’s easy to imagine users getting confused between certain weeks. There’s room for human error, and writing the dates in manually creates more work for people. For something that’s meant to save time, this added step ironically wastes time.
Beyond this, the layout is intuitive and the headings are subtle. The typography appears to be set mostly in a mid-tone gray and dotted grids (instead of using only solid lines) open up the space.
The digital designs published online are strong, and the only determining factor left is the material of the planner. The designers are going “to use beautiful, thick paper.” Just knowing that it’s one of the top things they considered is promising.
The Week Dominator Kickstarter project will be open to backers thru Oct. 30.
Gabby Manotoc has been Creative Director for District for the past three years. She also designs the Port City Review, the student produced and curated annual literary arts journal of SCAD.
