Planning a Planner v2019 Part I August 24, 2018 05:00

For the past several years, we've taken our readers on a transparent journey of how and why we've made decisions for updates and changes on products and specifically, the UPstudio Planner.  The first year we created the planner was obviously the most extensive amount of work we've done and information we've compiled.  You can read more about the entire process starting here, but in the meantime here's the cliffnotes version: we came up with ideas, put together a sample, solicited a focus group to use the sample, compiled feedback, made changes, and produced the *original* UPstudio planner.

  (here she is!)

Fast forward to the next year where we outlined our process in the Planning a Planner v2017 series.  The biggest change for the 2017 Planner was the binding type and cover.  2016 had a spiral binding type and a chipboard cover, but after using the planner for a year, we felt (and heard from you guys) that changing the binding to something less obtrusive and upgrading the cover to something more durable was critical.

  (lemme lemme upgrade!)

For the 2018 Planner, we revealed in the blog series a few upgrades, a big change in Monday starts to the weeks for the month layouts, and the most exciting change: a second cover color option.  

 (sisters!)

The UPstudio Planner is now developed enough that small tweaks are the biggest changes.  The 2019 Planner will look very similar to the 2018.  We reached out to you all for opinions on a few thoughts we had, and those ideas were pretty clearly vetoed through comments on the blog post and on social media.  Because our main goal is versatility for everyone, and we *do* listen to all feedback, we decided to not make any changes to the composition.  We did have a few other things that we knew would make the planner better, however, and we are revealing those in this series:

  • The first change has already been revealed - upgraded ribbon!  We've wanted to upgrade the ribbon in the past but because we're *ultra* picky, we decided not to settle on something we didn't love.  We're truly excited about the new texture, thickness and durability that this new ribbon will bring.  See ya later, unraveling ribbon!
          
  • Another change that we knew we wanted to make was with the front pocket, and it's purely aesthetic. (see above: ultra picky).  The folder in the 2018 Planner is constructed so that you can see the backing above the top edge of the actual folder.  In 2019, this is greatly reduced (and oh so pretty!)
          2018 vs 2019  
  • We concentrated on quality A LOT.  We were disappointed in some aspects of the 2018 Planners, which were largely printing errors.  To be clear - we like our printer very much, but we also expect a lot.  We expect near-perfect crops and construction, and we had multiple instances where planners were constructed less than perfect, and we put a lot of planners into the scratch and dent pile due to less than stellar crops.  We expressed all our concerns with our printer, and they have worked extremely hard to live up to our standard this year.  The production photos that we've seen are truly great, and we are very excited about the 2019 Planner!
  • Speaking of excitement... oh wait, I can't reveal this one quite yet.  Stay tuned for next week's big announcement and our biggest change for 2019! What a cliffhanger!