About Us
ABOUT TIME
OUR MISSION
What’s the one precious thing we never seem to have enough of?
It’s time – our most valuable asset, but sometimes the most overlooked as we get sucked into the ‘doing’ and the ‘should be doing’. Assuming you live to be eighty, you’ll have about four thousand weeks on this planet. That’s it! When I discovered this fact, it led me on a journey to build awareness and understand my relationship with time, how best to use and organise it and make sure I was spending it on the most important things to me.
We have become obsessed with our never-ending to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, and the struggle with distraction, but it’s time to take our time back.
Maybe the ultimate point of all our frenetic ‘doing’ is to get all this stuff out of the way so we can spend more time with loved ones or have a better life with balance. Still, ultimately, the busyness pushes genuinely important stuff further and further away. The key is to let go of our obsession with ‘getting everything done’. Instead, we need to realign our relationship with time and choose what we want to make time for.
The more you believe you can ‘fit everything in’, the more commitments you naturally take on, and the less you need to ask yourself whether each commitment is worth a portion of your time. So more of your time gets filled with activities that don’t serve you or you don’t, especially value. As a result, you get swept along with life, never stopping to evaluate how you spend your precious time.
Our mission is to change all that. We understand modern life can be overwhelming, juggling family time with a work schedule, managing multiple tasks, running a home, and the endless life admin as women we have to deal with after all this business came out of me experiencing total burnout, so I hear you.
But I successfully turned that overwhelm and focus around by using my planner every day to keep everything together. So now it’s my vision to help as many women as possible manage the chaos of life through our award-winning planners, productivity pads, notebooks, talks and content.
Our products are all made in the UK with a commitment to quality, creativity, attention to detail, and sustainability.
OUR JOURNEY SO FAR
Throughout my 27-year career, I have been obsessed with the simple beauty and limitless possibility of great design, layout and typography. I have always loved stationery, and I am a pen and paper devotee; I love writing notes, sketching ideas and ticking off lists.
In 2018 after helping other businesses build successful brands, I thought it was about time I took on the challenge of building my own when I founded HELLO TIME after a period of total burnout. I was feeling overwhelmed and trying to do it all. I quickly realised I could do anything but not everything and looked at how to spend my time better. At that point, I was shoehorning everything into a simple daily diary, and there wasn’t enough space.
I carried around several notebooks, to-do lists and scraps of paper.
I searched for something to help me organise my life, but every tool I looked at was either very prescriptive with overwhelming layouts or didn’t have enough space. Instead, many online planning tools, diaries, notebooks and planners told me how to plan my time rather than why it was necessary and how it would benefit me.
I wanted to fix a problem that no other product could do from my research and experience. But, most importantly, I wanted one place I could keep everything together – goals, ideas, notes, to-do lists, plans and my schedule. So I designed my own, initially doing a small print run to prove the concept.
I called it the HELLO TIME Planner. It changed my focus from being busy to productive and my life.
Being more organised makes me more focused, and being more concentrated makes me more productive. Being more productive means, I can say hello to time doing the things that are important to me.
So if you are a go-getter climbing the career ladder, bravehearts running their own business, or the hero at home raising a family. The planner works as I have many returning customers who wouldn’t be without their HELLO TIME Planner now that they have found it.
What’s more, if you are a planning obsessive and into the detail or entrepreneurial and bigger picture, the HELLO TIME Planner will support you, whatever your personality preference, in keeping everything together, quite literally. Our award-winning planner has very quickly become our hero product. The smart, carefully designed layout means organising your life has never been easier. You can easily manage multiple tasks and stay on top of your work schedule, family time, to-do lists, notes, goals and ideas in one place. You won’t find any gimmicky graphics or unnecessary boxes; our minimal layouts give just enough structure without being too prescriptive.
I am so proud that now, for thousands of people, the HELLO TIME brand name acts as a natural break from the daily chaos of life.
We invite you to do the same and say "HELLO" to your most precious asset. Our products are a daily reminder to use time well!
MEET THE MAKER
Hello, I’m Sam Smith. I’m not only the founder of HELLO TIME and the creator of the HELLO TIME Planner, but I’m also a hands-on, creative and branding specialist with over 27 years of unique design experience. I’ve been lucky enough to work across many market sectors, from motorbikes to groceries, members clubs to clothing and construction to education, with multi-national start-ups and small businesses alike.
My core skills and specialism lie in branding, whether design for print, digital or environmental branding. I’ve worked on it all, and after several years in London, working with exciting start-ups and well-known brands such as Virgin, Chinawhite & Smirnoff, I became a creative director at Midlands design powerhouse Linney Create, where I worked with Mars, The Post Office, Whitbread, Slimming World, Mothercare, Triumph, McDonald’s and Bupa, amongst many others.
I mix my creativity and brand-savvy approach to attain actual commercial results for my clients. I set up my design studio, Alilia, in 2009 and launched my range of art commissioned by interior clients across the globe. I was so lucky to be chosen by Heal’s to become a Heal’s Discovers artist, which saw my work sold in-store and online by my all-time favourite iconic interior brand.
In 2018 after helping others build successful brands, I thought it was about time I took on the challenge of building my own when I founded HELLO TIME after a period of total burnout. And here we are four years on!
PLANNER HIGHLIGHTS
Made in the UK
All our paper products are made in the UK by specialist printers & book binders chosen for their quality attention to detail & craftsmanship.
Case Bound
Case binding is one of the most robust methods of binding which is why we use this technique to bind our planners.
Unique Layout
Six unique sections designed to manage multiple tasks in one place. Goals, Diary, To-Do’s, Notes, Plans & Ideas.
Book Mark
Our planners have three printed ribbon page markers to bookmark pages of interest or index popular sections within your planner.
No Fancy Box
Our planners don’t come in a fancy box you’ll end up throwing away. Instead arrive beautifully wrapped in our signature HT wrapping paper.
Planet First
We only use FSC certified paper from responsible sources & print using vegetable inks. We recycle packaging & use paper tape.
SUSTAINABILITY
Our Printer
Our planners are printed by one of the greenest printers in the UK & bound by craftsman with over 30 years of experience.
Our other family-run printer is just down road from our studio, which helps to minimise our carbon footprint.
Our Paper
The paper in our planners, pads & notebooks is FSC Forestry Scheme Certification accredited and manufactured from mixed or recycled source material. The paper is printed using a reel-fed system which dramatically reduces the volume of paper wastage.
Our Ink
We use vegetable or water-based inks which are biodegradable. Soy ink is more environmentally friendly, they significantly reduce the amount of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) released into the air during the printing process.
Our Packaging
Our bookwraps & mailers are manufactured from 100% recycled & recyclable material. Our eco-friendly tape is made from kraft paper using natural glues and we save and reuse packing where we can from other suppliers.
Our Studio
Our studio is based at my home in Worcestershire. Our team work from home or are local to, thus minimising our daily travel and carbon footprint.
Our Products
We have phased out plastic bag usage for pads and greetings cards in favour of paper belly bands and paper bags where possible. To see more detailed eco creds for each product, see each individual product pages.
