Review: Filofax 'The Original' A5 Yellow

Hi guys!
Another review for you all!!


I'd like to firstly say thank you to Jess from The Ideas Network for sending me this sample to review, and Steve for his support! P.S. All opinions are my own, and I wasn't paid to do this review!

It arrived in a box, wrapped in some lovely blue tissue paper, with a note. I must say I had already opened the package and unwrapped the Filofax, and then had to rush off to work, so I rewrapped it quickly- it was wrapped much more nicely than it is in this photo!!

I chose the 'Original Yellow' colour because I wanted something a bit different from all of my pink, red and brown Filofaxes! It is a lovely warm colour, very sunny!

The Filofax is wrapped in a plastic covering, as you can see above. This is a new type of Filofax cover which I haven't heard of for any other Filofax, and I don't know if Filofax intend to use this type of cover for all of their new Filofaxes, but I have to say I prefer the traditional boxes. I understand that this cover means that the Filofax can be handled in a shop without the leather being touched too much by people's hands, but I think that if this is the only cover being used to protect the Filofax when posted to you from Filofax directly or by Filofax online stockists, it wouldn't protect the Filofax and the ring mechanism as much as the traditional box!

With the cover off, the leather is gorgeous! It is very smooth and supple, a lot more so than I thought it would be, as I expected it to be stiff, similar to the Domino! There is no cardboard type 'stuffing' inside the leather as there is in other Filofax- just 100% leather! In fact, the leather is made by The Leather Satchel Company, a UK satchel company, so you know if should be great quality leather! You could even get a satchel to match your Original Filofax!
I'm excited by the fact that this Filofax was made in the UK, where the majority of Filofaxes were made in their heyday in the 1980s and 1990s! This is something people have been asking for for a while, so Filofax UK is listening to us, on this and a number of other features I'll talk about later.

The leather is so supple that this Filofax lays perfectly flat... not only that, but...

... it practically bends back on itself without any effort!

The Outside:

I think The Original binder has clean, classic looks. There is definitely a close resemblance between this style and the older Filofax binders of the 1980s and early 1990s, with the simple design, small clasp and button popper, as it is supposed to look like, being called 'The Original'! Many Filofax users love the 'vintage' binders of Filofax's heyday, and I think Filofax are trying to recreate that style to meet their users' desires. I hope that the quality of The Original is as good as the vintage binders!

I really like the button/popper- it has a very classic but cute design, and gold writing, which is a lovely touch to an otherwise plain exterior.

Down the spine you can see the rivets of the ring mechanism, similar to on the Domino.

The Interior:

I think this is the most controversial topic about this Filofax among the Philofaxy community. Many people haven't been impressed by the interior pocket layout, and I have to say I agree with them.

On the front inside cover, there are only two card slots- these are not pockets, because the card goes straight through to the underside of the yellow strip of leather, there's no fabric or leather lining or pocket that the card would sit in.
The elastic band in the middle is divided into three, with two pen loops and a wider 'loop' that is designed for a phone or something similar. In several of their products, Filofax is trying to sell to technology lovers by encouraging smartphone and tablet users to also use their paper products by making it possible to integrate their phone or iPad within a ring binder organiser, such as in the Pennybridge ipad case with ring binder attachment, or this strip in The Original to hold your phone. I'm not sure how effective this elastic strip is- once you insert your phone, you will have a big strip of elastic over your phone's screen/keyboard, so this feature must be designed for phone storage rather than being able to use the phone while in this holder. Also, I tried to insert my Samsung Galaxy S2 phone into the elastic band, but it wouldn't fit, as my phone is quite wide at 7cm, and trying to do this left the elastic almost out of shape- so I think this strap is designed for a narrower phone like the iPhone.
The placement of the pen 'loops' isn't well designed, in my opinion, as the loop on the left is too far inside the binder and the pen pushes down on the divider tabs when the divider is closed, and when a pen is in the right loop, it sits against the middle of the pages and creates a lump, which is especially annoying if trying to write on the left-hand pages when the pen is still in the loop. Moreover, it is difficult to get any cards out of the slots when a pen is in the right loop.

I love this stamped area, which also attests to being 'Made in the UK'.

The layout of the interior back cover is simple, with two slots into which the cover of a 'jot pad' can be slotted. There are two slots, so theoretically you can use the binder upside-down, with the pad on the left for left-handed users, as with the Domino. The slots aren't big enough for to insert a traditional A5 notepad that most A5 Filofaxes come with, however, with some cutting down of the backing card of this A5 notepad, it would be possible to insert an A5 pad!
There's no zip pocket on this Filofax, however in the inserts of this binder, Filofax have included a zip-lock pocket insert.

The cover of this Filofax is 100% leather, and besides the pocket area of the interior, the remainder of the interior is made up of the very smooth underside of the satchel leather. The photo above shows some marks in the leather of this binder, which are barely noticeable!

The ring mechanism on this binder isn't too bad, the 2nd and 3rd rings don't come together completely, but they don't snag on the paper, which is the important thing. I do wonder how the plastic cover will really protect the ring mechanism of The Original binder during transit and shipping!

The Inserts:

There are some very interesting inserts in this Filofax!

The first insert is the flyleaf, which on first glance looks like it has this partial Union Flag design on it, but on closer look it's a plain, regular flyleaf, with the Flag design printed onto paper underneath it.

The dividers are 1-6 blue and green dividers, similar to the ones available in the Chameleon range. Interestingly, there are no A-Z dividers in this Filofax.

The paper inserts in this Filofax are different than inserts available in previous organisers.

The organiser comes with lined white paper, which I suppose is intended to make up for the lack of the lined white notepad. Additionally, they have provided sheets of gridded paper- interestingly, this isn't squared paper like normal, but rectangles! The Filofax also comes with plain paper inserts.

The coloured paper inserts provided are three colours- dark blue, green and pink. I've never seen green coloured A5 paper made by Filofax before, so this is new! In fact, all of the inserts in this Filofax are dated 2013, so they are all new; Filofax isn't just using up its old stock, but making new inserts for us!

The To Do and Contacts pages are white, but are based on the design of the cotton cream personal pages. Members of the Philofaxy community have been asking for cotton cream inserts for the A5 size for ages, because the cotton cream paper is much better quality, and the layout of the cotton cream for personal size diaries are generally better designed than the white diary inserts.

The diary inserts provided in this Filofax are the WO2P horizontal 2013 July to December multilanguage format, and the 2014 WO2P vertical format. It's nice that Filofax would provide 18 months of diary, but I think it's a little strange that they provide two different types of diary! 

The vertical format is based on the cotton cream format with its fonts and non-capitalisation of the names of the days, again on white paper, which is interesting! I've tested this paper briefly with some inky fountain pens, and I must say that, on first look, it looks like it handles ink much better than existing white Filofax paper! I will be doing more paper tests on the inserts provided in this Filofax in another blog post. I would say that Filofax have been listening and trying to carry out Filofax users' wishes for future inserts!

I'm quite pleased that the Filofax comes with a frosted ruler and an ziplock pocket insert. Until recently, I had never seen a frosted ruler for A5, and had to buy two of them in the Conduit Street store because I had never seen them for sale anywhere else. Many people have complained that the black rulers that are typically provided with Filofaxes are annoying because they get in the way and you can't see through them, so it's great that Filofax have started to provide this ruler as standard! It does seem like Filofax are listening to their customers! Also I've never used a Filofax brand ziplock pocket, and as there is no zip pocket in the Filofax itself, it's a great touch that Filofax have provided one in here.

All in all, I really like The Original Filofax Organiser! Filofax have tried hard to listen to their customers and make positive changes, such as manufacturing this Filofax in the UK, using 100% quality leather, and making improvements to their inserts and the accessories they provide with it!

Thanks again to Jess for providing me with this sample of The Original!