Road to Kickstarter #05: Dinoland

Greetings Heroes,

Welcome back! Get ready for an exciting new series of sneak peeks into Gertrude’s various “Otherworlds” (monthly planner settings) that our heroes in The Hero’s Guild have been helping us design & test. Ryan will tell you all about your first destination! Meanwhile, Nick shares some philosophy behind how a movie and a quote helped inspire the creation of Gertrude, and Kyle updates us on the progress of the Kickstarter campaign (did we mention there's a video in the works?). It's all happening right here with Project Gertrude, where heroes of all realities come together to conquer chaos. Read on for more, and don’t forget to download some freebies at the bottom!

Ryan, Art

Now the Otherworld Travelogues begin! In these I will be giving details about the various parallel realities Yew visits on their adventure. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil too much. I just want to give you all an idea of the cool stuff I’ve been working on for Project Gertrude.

The first “otherworld” Yew and the Shadow Buddy visit is a land entirely populated by dinosaurs. Dino World! Hidden somewhere in this prehistoric paradise is one of the glyphs Yew needs to get home. Following the guidance of the H.O.P.P.E.R. device and the Shadow Buddy’s intuition, Yew finds not only the glyph, but dino danger as well!

Every kid goes through a “dinosaur phase” but it’s safe to say mine never really ended. To this day I’m reading thick nonfiction dinosaur books, keeping up with paleontology news, and getting goosebumps watching Prehistoric Planet. When we decided Project Gertrude would be a series of alternate realities I knew right away I wanted to do a dinosaur sequence. I think my 6-year-old self would be proud.

Nick, Product 

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.” - Annie Dillard

The cornerstone of any planner (or organizational tool/app/exercise for that matter) is to make the person using it feel more organized and less overwhelmed. The hope is that this planner does that and more. We held off on making a planner for a few years, because we didn’t really feel like we could enhance the experience of using one. In other words, why would we reinvent the wheel?

We were satisfied for the most part with what planners offered. Until one day, when an unforgettable movie and a beautiful quote gave us an idea on how to enhance the way we plan. The movie is Everything Everywhere all at Once, and the quote is from Annie Dillard. I realized that an unorganized life feels like a chaotic mess of alternate realities all competing for your focus. This invisible battle starts the moment we wake up. We can feel everything everywhere all at once fighting over our attention. In other words, fighting over the main timeline, if you will. In the story, Yew is addressing all these different realities to bring order to their main timeline.

In short, a multiversal story helps portray the necessity for taming the chaos of daily life. More than just making another run of the mill planner with templated weekly spreads, we are innovating by telling a story. One that shares a motif with the cornerstone of planning: defending from chaos and whim. We still have a lot of work to do, but we can’t wait to help heroes of all realities become more organized, and less chaotic.

 Kyle, Operations

My week was dedicated to making sure our timeline was on track and we are able to not just make the campaign fun and exciting, but also possible. Nick and I had our first meeting with a super talented creative director to discuss the vision for the video that we need to create for the header of the entire Kickstarter campaign. It is exciting to talk through all of the different directions that our video can go, and all of the things that *Project: Gertrude* can provide for all of you amazing Heroes. We are not 100% sure on the tone of the video yet, but we can promise one thing, it will be shot, edited, and curated to help you all feel more heroic and empowered to tame the Chaos life can throw your way.

John, Community

Testing out these pages with 200+ other heroes in The Hero’s Guild over these past several months has been an absolute blast, but I can’t wait to finally start getting some feedback from more of you! In the Guild we have a small group-style community that we call “The Guild Hall” where heroes have been sharing so many amazing Gertrude pages and custom layouts with each other. A total of 47 of them in fact! Yep, we’re keeping count. The creativity and ingenuity of heroes in the Guild Hall never ceases to amaze us. We love seeing the different printing and binding strategies that heroes are coming up with, and getting to see planner pages that are colored in is officially one of our favorite things in the world. It’s inspiring to see how Gertrude is already being incorporated into the lives of so many heroes, and we can’t wait to see what else y’all come up with. We’re just getting started! 

Check out a few examples from the community, and then download your free sample below: