Author | Jackie

If you’ve been tempted to start designing your own digital planners but aren’t sure where to start, this guide is for you.

We’ll look at the main components and tools you need for designing digital stationery:

1. Software
2. Style
3. Content
4. Templates

If I could give you just one piece of advice, it would be just have a go!

With the essentials in place and a day or two of your time, you will be amazed at the digital planner you can create.

Once you’ve created your first planner - and realised it isn’t rocket science after all just the patience required to acquire a new skill - you will be thrilled you took that first step. 

It is very exciting to open your first planner on your tablet and see it works!

1 | Software

What type of software?

To design a digital planner, you will need software that allows you to layout pages. This is the primary function of desktop publishing software. It is also how presentation software pages work.

What to look for?

The key functions you need to look for when choose digital planner design software are:

• Master pages
• Global colours
• Text styles
• Hyperlinking

The software you choose will depend on your previous experience, what you currently have, and your budget. I would suggest the following.

Affinity Publisher (No 1 recommendation)

• Professional design software.
• More affordable one-off payment, with no recurring subscription.
• Has a free trial period.
• Has a learning curve but when used with a professionally-designed template or a short course, this can be reduced.
• New skills can be used for a wide variety of online business graphic design needs, e.g. social media, sales page graphics, mockups, etc. It is a good business investment of time and money.

Adobe InDesign

• Professional design software. 
• Monthly subscription makes it less accessible.
• Has a free, 7-day trial period.
• Has a learning curve but when used with a professionally-designed template or a short course, this can be reduced.
• New skills can be used for a wide variety of online business graphic design needs, e.g. social media, sales page graphics, mockups, etc. It is a good business investment of time and money.

PowerPoint 

• Widely-used presentation software.
• Monthly subscription with Microsoft Office suite.
• Easier to learn but limited in advanced functions.

Other Presentation Packages

• Mac users will have free access to KeyNote. 
• Google Slides is only available online, so you will need Internet access.
• Both have similar features and functionality to PowerPoint.

Canva

• User-friendly, drag-and-drop design software.
• Has a free 30-day trial period for Canva Pro.
• Is only available online, so you will need Internet access.
• Easier to learn but limited in advanced functions.
• Maximum page limit of 350, so will need to use other software to combine multiple documents.

My own background is in Adobe InDesign. As a professional designer, I was able to get value for money and use the entire Adobe Suite of design software. I realised, however, that this price point wasn’t accessible to all. If I wanted to teach planner design, I would need a more price-friendly software.

For that reason, I decided to try Affinity Publisher (plus Designer and Photo) and have never looked back! It is great professional software, incredible value, and I recommend it wholeheartedly as someone who uses it on a daily basis.

Best Affinity Publisher Tools | grab the Free Guide

2 | Style

Although the contents of a digital planner are key, the style can also play an important role. Whether that’s for branding purposes or purely aesthetics, catching the eye of your ideal customer is a vital step in selling planners.

So, what do you need to consider when developing a style guide for your digital planner?

Inspiration

You start by gathering inspiration. This will warm up your creative muscles and help you start to visualise your digital planner and the person who will be using it. 

Colours

Bold or bright, soft or subdued, colours make a huge difference to the look of a digital planner. Simple colour theory can help you create a palette of beautiful colours your customers will love!

Fonts

Both functional and decorative, choosing the right fonts can have an impact on the style and readability of your digital planner. Simple font theory and how to combine fonts well will get you off to a great start.

Elements

Elements can be functional, decorative or both. They can play an important role in navigation. They all add a ‘designed’ look and an extra flourish to your planner. 

Style Guide

Finally, you will need to pull everything together into a Style Guide. This will set you up perfectly for the next stage of your planner design.

Digital Planner Style Guide | from Inspiration to Style Guide

3 | Content

Core Pages

Core Pages will make up the bulk of your planner and form the main navigation. Examples include: calendars, monthly, weekly, and daily.

These pages have a huge impact on the final size of your planner. A one-year weekly planner will be around 100 pages, a daily planner over 400!

Niche-Specific Pages

With your Core Pages forming the structure and navigation of your planner, you can now look at your Niche Pages - the pages that make your planner unique and valuable to its user.

Niche Pages will vary enormously depending on your specialism.

Make Your Own Digital Planner | Free Guide Download

4 | Template

One of my favourite topics - the power of Templates! 

Templates can:

• help you learn faster
• speed up your design process
• give you access to professional design without the price tag

When buying templates, make sure they have been set up with the following attributes.

Master Pages

Fundamental to the design of digital planners which are big documents. Making changes and keeping page design consistent gets harder the bigger the document gets. This isn’t a problem if you use Master Pages. They do the hard work for you. 

Need to make a change to your daily page? Just change its master page and the change will ripple through hundres of pages in seconds! Master pages are a must.

Global Swatches

As master pages are to page layouts, global swatches are to colour.

You can apply a global colour to hundreds of items on hundreds of pages. Want to make a change? Just change the global colour and the change is instantly reflected in your document. Another must, for sure!

Text Styles

And, at the risk of repeating myself…Text Styles are to text as global swatches are to colour. 

You can save multiple text settings in one style. Need a bold, italic, blue, size 30, Roboto heading? No need to highlight text and apply each setting in turn. Create a Text Style, and you can apply all these changes in one click. 

Want to change that style? Just change the Text Style and yes, you guessed it, all text in the document with that style will be updated, instantly.

Design Elements

If your template comes with additional design elements, they are a real time saver when it comes to customising page layouts - the key to keeping your customer happy and standing out from the crowd.

In the example below, the Make Your Own Digital Planner Course comes with over 50 page elements to give ideas and inspiration when designing your page layouts.

Design Your Own Digital Planner with Templates & Affinity Publisher

Designing Digital Planner - Beginner's Guide

I hope you can see that you don’t need as much as you think to get your first digital planner out into the world!

Good software, your own style, niched content and helpful, functional page layouts will keep your customers coming back for more.

Read to take the first step? Why not grab the free guide - 3 Questions you need to ask before you start to design.

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