A PLANNING AND INFORMATION SYSTEM
The invention relates to an information and/or planning or reminding system comprising a carrier medium, which defines a substantially smooth supporting surface and which is preferably divided into a plurality of fields or areas, and comprising slips or stickers having a front surface on which a piece of information or a message may be written and a back surface which is provided with an adhesive of a type allowing adherence of the slips or stickers to and subsequent removal of the slips or stickers from the supporting surface of the carrier medium without any part of the adhesive remaining on the carrier medium.
Rectangular slips or stickers provided with an adhesive of the above type on the back side along one edge are known, and such slips or stickers are sold in the form of pads. When a piece of information or a message has been written on the front surface of such a slip, it may be placed on and adhered to a sufficiently smooth, desired sup¬ porting surface by means of the adhesive, and later, when its task has been fulfilled, the slip may again be removed without leaving any of the adhesive on the supporting surface. Pads of slips or stickers of that type are marketed by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA under the trademark POST-IT®. Boards having a front surface which is divided into fields of various kind and adapted for receiving the said adhesive slips, which may have a message, a reminder, or the like written thereon, are known. Thus, it is known to divide the front page of the board into rows of rectangular fields each corresponding to a specific day of the week. The adhesive slips or stickers may then be placed in the rectangular field which corresponds to the day of the week and possibly also the time of the day to which the message or reminder is related.
Because the slips or stickers used in connection with a board of this known type must have a reasonable size so that also messages or pieces of information which are not quite brief may be applied there¬ to, a board which should be able to receive a reasonable number of slips obtains relatively big dimensions. In situations where a plura- lity of persons located at the same place (for example in firms,
institutions, private homes, etc.) have a need for such a board, the known system will not be suitable because the use of a plurality of such relatively big boards at the same place will normally be un¬ suitable for practical and aesthetic reasons.
The present invention provides an information and/or reminding system allowing use of one and the same carrier medium substantially more intensively than the known system. The system according to the inven¬ tion is characterized in that the slips or stickers comprise two or more visually different types of slips or stickers, and that these types of slips are related to different persons or localities to which the piece of information or the message to be written on the slip is related.
When the system according to the invention is used as an information and/or reminding system for a plurality of persons, for example the persons in a family or in a firm, one of the visually different types of slips or stickers is assigned to each of these persons. Even when slips with a message or a piece information to a plurality of dif¬ ferent persons are adhered to the same carrier medium, each single of the persons may immediately see whether any of the slips adhered to the carrier medium is for him or her, and this is true even when the slips are arranged such that they are partly overlapping each other so that a plurality of slips do not occupy much more space than a single slip. Obviously, the system according to the invention may also be used when the different types of slips or stickers are not related to persons, but to localities. Thus, the system according to the invention may, for example, be used as a reservation system in restaurants, because the individual types of slips may then for example be related to the tables of the restaurant. In a similar manner, the system according to the invention may be used in small hotels or boarding houses, because the types of slips may then be related to the rooms of the hotel or boarding house.
The carrier medium may be of any type defining a substantially smooth supporting surface, but the carrier medium is normally in the form of a board which may be hanged on a wall or placed on a table, or it may be a sheet of paper, plast, paper board or the like which may be
adhered to a wall or table surface. The types of slips or stickers included in the information system according to the invention may for example differ visually from each other in colour, contour or print (for example different numbers, figures, signs or the like).
In its simplest form the supporting surface of the carrier medium serves the purpose of hanging of the slips or stickers at a more or less random place thereon. However, as mentioned above the carrier medium is preferably divided into fields or areas each of which may be connected with some kind of information, so that not only the message or the print of the slip, but also the location of the slip in a certain field or area provides information to the receiver thereof. Thus, the supporting surface of the carrier medium may be divided into fields corresponding to the days of the week and/or the months of the year, and each of the slips or stickers, which are provided with a message or a piece of information, may be arranged in a field corresponding to the time to which the message or piece of information is relevant. The fields may for example be in the form of columns whose width substantially corresponds to the width of the slips or stickers, and when more slips or stickers are arranged in the same field they may be arranged in such a manner that they large¬ ly overlap each other. When choosing suitable visual differences between the kinds of slips, for example different colours, the rela¬ tively small uncovered area of each slip will be adequate for a spectator to immediately see which of the slips are relevant for her or him.
Each of the slips or stickers is preferably provided with an adhesive along one edge thereof. The strip of adhesive may then have a width corresponding to the area of each slip or sticker to be uncovered. The slips may then be arranged on top of each other like tiles, the narrow strip of adhesive being adhered to the supporting surface of the carrier medium.
The invention also relates to a plate or a sheet to be used as car¬ rier medium in the system described above and having a substantially smooth supporting surface, and the plate or the sheet according to the invention is characterized in that the supporting surface is
divided into parallel columns having widths corresponding substan¬ tially to the widths of the slips or stickers and each being related to a specific day of the week. Further, the plate or sheet may be provided with prints indicating which person or locality is related to each of the visually different types of slips or stickers.
The invention will now be further described with reference to the drawings, which show an information system according to the invention for use in a family, and wherein
Fig. 1 shows a calendar sheet with adhered sticker, Fig. 2 shows the calendar sheet with belonging pads of differently coloured stickers, and
Figs. 3 and 4 show how the stickers may be attached to the column for the individual day of the week.
As shown in Fig. 2, -the information and reminding system illustrated in the drawings comprises a calendar board 10 and a number of pads 11 of message or reminder stickers 12, which are preferably of the pre¬ viously mentioned type marketed under the trademark POS -IT®. The stickers of the pads 11 have different colours which can be easily distinguished from each other, and in the present case the system comprises five pads 11 of stickers with different colours, the system thus being usable for a maximum of five person. It is obvious, how¬ ever, that the system may comprise still more different colours and can be used by a correspondingly large number of persons. Alterna¬ tively, it is possible to use stickers which are otherwise visually distinguishable, for example stickers with prints of different fi¬ gures, signs or numbers or with different contour.
The board 10, which may be of a stiff plate material, such as a stiff cardboard or plast material, may be meant for placement on a wall or a table, or the board may be of a flexible sheet material, such as plast, paper or pasteboard, which may for example be plast-coated or treated otherwise so as to increase its durability. When the board is made of such sheet material it may be meant to be adhered to a wall or another suitable supporting surface. In the embodiment shown in the drawings, the front surface of the board 10 forming an adherence surface for the stickers 12 is provided with seven elongated rectan-
gular fields or columns 13 which, as shown in Fig. 1, are each re¬ lated to a specific day of the week. The front surface of the board may further be provided with a printed year's calendar 14 over said fields 13 and further with a name or trademark 15 for the system. Below the fields or columns 13 is arranged a number of colour coded fields 16 having different colours corresponding to the individual colours of the stickers 12. Against each of the colour coded fields is a space for writing the name of the person to be given the colour code in question. In Fig. 1, the colour codes are for practical reasons replaced with pattern codes, such as dot patterns, hatch patterns, etc.
In Fig. 1 the system according to the invention is used as a remind¬ ing system, in which the arrangements and meetings of the various persons is written on a sticker having the colour code belonging to the person in question, and then the sticker 12 is positioned in the column 13 corresponding to the day of the arrangement or meeting. As the arrangement or meeting in question may be one or more weeks ahead, the date and time is written at the bottom of the sticker 12 as shown in Fig. 1. The first sticker in a column 13 is positioned at the bottom of the column as shown in Fig. 3, and the sticker 12 is adhered by means of an adhesive on the back of the sticker. As men¬ tioned above, the said adhesive is preferably of the type which does not harden and, when the sticker is later removed, which follows the sticker and does not remain on the board 10. The adhesive is prefer- ably only applied to the stickers 12 in a narrow strip along one edge thereof. When more stickers 12 are positioned on top of each other in the order indicated by the numbers 1-4 in Fig. 4, they will largely overlap each other like tiles without any interconnection. Thus, it is possible to take hold of the free protruding end of any of the stickers and remove it from the board without removing any of the other stickers at the same time.
As the stickers in one and the same column are arranged in such a manner that they largely overlap each other, a large number of stick¬ ers may be arranged in each column. If the date of the arrangement or meeting is written on the lower uncovered part of each sticker, any of the users can at quick glance at a given field 13 of a day see if
his or her colour code is present and, if so, the date in question may easily be read.
It is obvious that several other embodiments of the board 10 of the information and/or reminding system according to the invention than those shown in the drawings are possible. The fields 13 may for example be horizontal instead of vertical, and they need not be related to a day of the week, but may for example alternatively be related to the months of the year. In the latter case, the system may be used as a planning system. Furthermore, the colour codes 16 need not be related to persons, but may instead be related to localities, for example tables in a restaurant or rooms in a small hotel, so that the system can be used to give a comprehensive view of reservations.