Last Updated: 05.26.2020
- Included information about the Pocket Agenda which was originally out when published
Disclaimer: All PLANNER photos are from the Gillio official website, and I do not claim any intellectual property over these. They’ve only been included for informational purposes
If you’re a big fan of planners and organizers, you’ve probably heard of Gillio at least once. And if you head to their website, you’ll find that they sell a wide collection of leather goods, most notably their premium planner covers. Maybe you’ve even see the Instagram posts of people posing with their planners with the tag #Gillionaire (that’s the fanbase made term for a Gillio owner by the way).
As you explore their leather planner cover collection, you’ll soon find that there’s a total of 31 different options in just size and model alone excluding color options. It can be pretty overwhelming or exciting (or maybe even a little bit of both) depending on who you are a person.
Today, I’m going to break it all down for you in an easily digestible post.
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Intro
For some background, Gillio, or Gillio Firenze, is a Belgium based family business that produces luxury leather planners using authentic Italian leather. The leather that they source is vegetable tanned using traditional methods, and the quality of the leather is guaranteed with a Certificato de Garanzia, meaning that the leather preparing process has met the strict authenticity requirements of the governing body. All of their planners ship with a Certificato de Garanzia, and it’s required if you ever need to warranty it.

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Planner Covers
Gillio has 6 main model designs of their planner covers; they are Pocket Agenda, Appunto, Giramondo, Amica, Compagna, and Mia Cara. They can be further divided into 2 categories of rings and no rings.
The no ring category is composed of the Pocket Agenda, Appunto and Giramondo. The Pocket Agenda is designed for smaller booklets, the Appunto is designed for books while the Giramondo is designed for Midori Traveler’s style booklets.
The rings category is composed of the Amica, Compagna, and Mia Cara. They are designed to be used with Filofax-style binder ring page inserts. Gillio ring planners use Krause rings (the so called Rolls Royce of binder rings) and include the additional benefit that allow them to be removed and replaced as necessary.
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No Rings Style
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____Pocket Agenda
The Pocket Agenda is available in one size and can take inserts sized at 16.5 cm x 9 cm.
Key features of the cover are five credit card slots, left side pocket and right side pocket.
The Pocket agenda is flexible in that it can house a number of booklets styles which include but are not limited to the popular Hobonichi Techo Weeks and Traveler’s Notebook style booklets after trimming the length. Some people prefer to use the slightly thicker but no-trimming required option of the Nanami Paper CAFE NOTE Pocket Edition (256 pages).
There’s also the additional option of Gillio’s own weekly insert available directly on their website.
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____Appunto
The Appunto comes in 4 different sizes (slim, A6, A5, B6) , and includes a unique trifold variation (A6 only).The slim size fits the Hobonichi Techo weeks book.
Key features of this planner cover are a popper strap, two sewn in bookmarks, right side secretarial pocket, right side zipper pocket, pen loop, and several credit card slots.
The trifold Appunto is only available in the A6 size, and does not have the typical popper strap but rather a full sized popper fold over front cover.
The Appunto model was designed by Gillio in collaboration with a client named Theresa Hall to meet the needs of a planner that would fit over a book-style planner, most notably the Hobonichi Techo planner line. This is particularly evident with the sizing of the slim option which fits the Hobonichi Weeks perfectly.
The Appunto is designed so that the front and back cover of the book slide into the front and back pocket of the cover. However, many users prefer only to insert one cover under the pocket, and leave the other side free. The Appunto has the flexibility of fitting any true A6, A5, and B6 book giving the user true freedom in picking which notebook or planner book to use with it.
Other popular book insert options include the Jibun Techo series, Midori MD Notebook series, and Nanami Paper Cafe Notes series. Users have also been able to fit Levenger-style disc planners (i.e. Happy Planner) into this cover as well.
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____Giramondo
The Giramondo comes in 5 different sizes: XS, S, regular, B6 and XL.
The XS (extra small) is designed to hold passport sized Midori Traveler’s inserts measuring 12.4 cm x 9.0 cm.
The S (small) is designed to hold Field Notes booklets and Moleskin Pocket notebook inserts measuring 14.0 cm x 9.0 cm.
The regular is designed to hold standard sized Midori Traveler’s inserts measuring 21.0 cm x 11.0 cm.
The B6 will hold any true B6 size inserts measuring 19.0 cm by 12.0 cm.
The XL (extra large) is designed to hold Moleskin large inserts measuring 21.0 cm x 8.3 cm.
Key features of this cover include rivet strung elastic strings to secure your inserts with, a elastic closure, elastic bookmark, right side secretarial pocket, left side pocket and several credit card slots. You can tell that the layout of the Giramondo is consistent across all sizes.
The Giramondo was designed with elastics so that booklets could be slid through the elastics and secured. The elastics are strung through riveted holes that allow for easy replacement and elastic customization.
Although the Giramondo was designed to be used with booklet-style inserts, it can easily be altered to be used with books as well by slipping the elastic under each cover. The B6 is particularly popular because it can easily be used with many popular planner books without the added weight of extra leather unlike the Appunto.
The Giramondo is light weight and utilitarian, staying true to it’s namesake of Globetrotter.
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Rings Style
The ring bound planners all comes in 5 popular sizes: mini, pocket, medium (also known as personal), A6, and A5.
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____Amica
Key features of this cover are a ring mechanism on the inner spine, popper strap, pen loop, and credit card slots. Depending on the size of the Amica, there may be additional side pockets and a secretarial pocket.
The Amica DOES NOT have a back pocket nor an A6 sizing option.
The Amica has the largest amount of variation out of the ring planners with the placement of pockets on the left and right sides.
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____Compagna
Perhaps the most popular model of the ring bound planners, the Compagna has the most sub-size variations out of all the planners.
The Compagna includes models further sized at -XL and -wide. The -XL line includes a bigger ring mechanism that allows for more paper to be inserted allow for a thicker planner, and the -wide line includes a wider planner that allows for inserts to have a larger surface area than normal.
Key features of this cover are popper strap, large back pocket, zipper pocket, secretarial pocket, credit card slots, additional side pockets, leather flyleaf, and pen loop.
Compagna A5 – Front Compagna A5 – Inside Front Compagna A5 – Inside Back Compagna A6 – Front Compagna A6 – Inside Front Compagna A6 – Inside Back Compagna Medium – Front Compagna Medium – Inside Front Compagna Medium – Inside Back Compagna Medium XL – Front Compagna Medium XL – Inside Front Compagna Medium XL – Inside Back Compagna Personal Wide – Front Compagna Personal Wide – Inside Front Compagna Personal Wide – Inside Back Compagna Slim – Front Compagna Slim – Inside Front Compagna Slim – Inside Back Compagna Pocket – Front Compagna Pocket – Inside Front Compagna Pocket – Inside Back Compagna Pocket XL – Front Compagna Pocket XL – Inside Front Compagna Pocket XL – Inside Back
Additional things to note of the Compagna models:
The medium size is the same as the Filofax Personal size.
The regular medium Compagna comes with 25 mm sized rings but can be replaced with 30 mm sized rings. It is unable to fit the Franklin Covey compact sized inserts without overhang.
The medium XL Compagna comes with 30 mm sized rings.
The personal wide Compagna uses personal-wide inserts which are 12.0 cm x 17.0 cm comes with 30 mm sized rings.
The slim Compagna is still a medium size but comes with 14 mm sized rings. And, it does not have a zipper pocket. It is also unable to fit the Franklin Covey compact inserts.
The A6 Compagna has some extras not seen in the other models including a removeable leather ring protector and an extra penloop on the flyleaf.
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____Mia Cara
The largest and most luxe of the Gillio planners, the Mia Cara (Italian for my love), is the heaviest of the ring bound planners.
The Mia Cara’s design features an full leather outer planner cover with a removeable inner leather ring binder allowing for flexibility and portability. Other key features include a popper strap, popper pocket, zipper pocket, large back pocket, credit card slots, and a full sized leather pen slot in the inside of the outer cover’s spine.
Mia Cara A5 – Front Mia Cara A5 – Open Mia Cara A5 – Binder Removed Mia Cara A6 – Front Mia Cara A6 – Open Mia Cara A6 – Binder Removed Mia Cara Medium – Front Mia Cara Medium – Open Mia Cara Medium – Binder Removed Mia Cara Pocket – Front Mia Cara Pocket – Open Mia Cara Pocket – Binder Removed Mia Cara Mini – Front Mia Cara Mini – Open Mia Cara Mini – Binder Removed
The Mia Cara is consistent in design across different sizes. While there are only minor variations, there are several things to note.
Although the A5 Mia Cara is listed as “A5” the inner binder is better suited to half letter sized inserts as true A5 inserts can have slight overhang. However, when the inner binder is placed inside the outer cover, there is no issue with true A5 sized inserts.
The A6 Mia Cara includes a flyleaf with pen loop which is not included in any other Mia Cara size.
The mini Mia Cara lacks the full sized pen slot in the outer cover inner spine, but instead has a small pen loop attached to the outer back planner portion.
The Mia Cara is considered to one of Gillio’s most iconic planner covers, and is considered a “must add” to any collection.
I hope you find this post helpful, and if you have any comments or suggestions, definitely leave a comment!
If you notice any errors, please let me know. I tried to be as comprehensive as possible without overwhelming.
Thank you for this post! My daughter is looking to buy me one, and now I have better idea of which one to get.
I think slim compaga will be nice and light!
A planner is such a thoughtful gift.
I hope you love yours. And if you need ideas on how to use it, feel free to comment and ask 🙂
I just placed an order for a medium mia!!! I’ve been wanting one for a while but wasn’t too sure on sizes bc i couldn’t decide between personal or pocket.
TY!
Hey Lin,
You’re welcome! I hope you enjoy your new Mia! I have yet to try the pocket but the medium/personal is an amazing workhorse for edc!
Are you ever restocking the pocket agenda?
I have been looking at your product for a while now. I am looking for something that I can make a planner / calendar that will hold 5 years total. I would also like it to be the size of a planner so that I have plenty of room to write in the blocks.
Can you please let me know if you have any the size that would hold 8 x 11.5 paper? If you don’t I understand. If you do can you please let me know what the price would be in US so that I know how much to save up.
Hi Deborah,
I am not affiliated with Gillio at all. You would need to reach out to them at gillio.be.
From what I understand, they don’t have any ring binders that would fit letter size pages. The only thing that they have that would fit letter vertically is their folio. The A5 mia can hold letter pages that are folded in half.