Author | Jackie

With an abundance of digital and physical planners out there, you may be wondering how on earth you can add anything new or interesting.

Perhaps the idea of using templates doesn’t appeal. Won’t your digital planner look the same as everyone else who used that template?

The key to creating something new and unique is page layouts. 

What you don’t want to design are pages that sort of work for most people. You want to create planners that help specific people with specific problems. 

You are a planner user too

I’m sure you’ve used planners yourself that aren’t quite perfect…if only you could change that layout, or add this layout. 

We make do with the planners we have available to us. But, how much more helpful would it be if someone designed a planner for you? Someone who understands exactly what you need. Now, we’d all like a planner like that!

As a digital planner designer rather than simply a planner user, you are in the unique position to do just that. 

Below, we’ll look at some examples of digital planner layouts.

If you’d like to follow along, grab the free Workbook and start sketching your own ‘perfect’ planner pages.

Make Your Own Digital Planner | Workbook Download

Traditional Digital Planner Page Layouts

General layouts

There are a lot of traditional layout planners out there and you will have used many yourself.

Traditionally planners are weekly or daily and can include:

• a yearly overview with monthly sections or a year-to-view planner
• monthly pages
• weekly pages
• daily pages
• and notes, dates to remember, contacts, etc 

Niche-specific layouts

There are many niches served by a planner of some sort. For example:

• Business - goal setting, financial planning, project management, product development, social media and marketing planning
• Family - meal planning, travel planning, out-of-school activities, recipes, holiday activities, school logistics, contacts
• Teacher - lesson plans, mid-year to mid-year, attendance, classroom plans, results recording, parent contacts
• Student - multiple note page styles, coursework tracker, timetable, semester dates
• Course - content specific to the course structure, combining a planner with a workbook
• Travel - itineraries, contact information, travel documents, journal
• plus specialised Journals, Recipe Books, Workbooks, Project Planners, Event Planners, etc

Examples of Traditional Layouts

Here are some typical page layouts you will have used yourself for Monthly, Weekly and Notes pages:

Make Your Own Digital Planner | Master Page Examples

Monthly Pages

Standard Monthly Layouts

Whether you are planning a weekly or daily planner, monthly pages are standard. They are incredibly useful and essential when planning to get a big-picture view of what commitments lie ahead and what activities need breaking down into manageable tasks.

Adapting Monthly Pages

When designing a digital planner, monthly pages aren’t the easiest to customise. This is because they take up a lot of space on the page! 

There is scope, however, to expand monthly pages to include a 6-monthly or quarterly layouts:

• Would these better serve your customers? 
• Could you include one or maybe a page of each? 
• Does this support a service you offer? If so, does your program run over a quarterly or specific fixed period? Can you reflect this is your page layout?

Examples of Monthly Layouts

These page layouts have been created using the page elements included in the Make Your Own Digital Planner course. 

Even small changes can impact on the layout and make it better suited to the needs of your customer. The monthly page doesn’t have much space to work with but as you can see, you can still create a completely different layout with small changes.

Make Your Own Digital Planner | Monthly Page Examples

Weekly Pages

Standard Weekly Pages

Weekly pages are popular and have far more variation. With only 7 days to worry about, you have a lot more space on the page too!

One of the most frequent comments from customers on weekly pages is whether they have a horizontal or vertical layout.

For many people, daily pages are far too detailed and they work best with a combination of monthly and weekly pages. If you are choosing to make a weekly planner, the weekly page layouts are going to be important. This is where your customers will do most of their planning. 

Adapting Weekly Pages

Like I said, there is far more scope to customise weekly pages. When you do design the page layouts, think about your end user and the flow of the page. Having a lot of elements on a page is helpful but if there are too many, they can confuse and destroy the flow of the page.

Think about what needs to be on a single page in terms of planning a week. Once you have the key elements in place, you can add links to other more detailed pages. This will ensure the weekly page is full without being too busy.

Examples of Weekly Pages

These page layouts have been created using the page elements included in the Make Your Own Digital Planner course.

As you can see, there is far more scope to create niche-specific content on a weekly page.

Make Your Own Digital Planner | Weekly Page Examples

Daily & Notes Pages

Standard Daily & Notes Pages

Daily and Notes pages are about detail. For people who like working at this level - like myself - it is about the nitty gritty of getting things done.

No big-picture layouts tempting you to get distracted (yes, that’s me too!) Just focus on what needs to be done and done today.

Adapting Daily and Notes Pages

You have a lot of space to play with on a daily or notes page. You can design an hour-by-hour schedule style daily page or maybe just focus on a to-do list with priorities and notes. 

You can create endless variations on a notes page, including niche-specific trackers, checklists, specialised ‘paper’ styles, or combinations of all of these on a single page.

Examples of Notes Pages

These page layouts have been created using the page elements included in the Make Your Own Digital Planner course.

Make Your Own Digital Planner | Notes Page Examples

Digital Planner Page Layout Ideas

With any page layouts, you have to know who you are creating it for:

• Why did you choose to create a daily rather than weekly-only planner? 
• What do your users need from a daily page? 
• What do people say is missing from the planners they are currently using? 
• What is their ‘wish list’ planner layout?
• What is your digital planner designed to help them achieve?

I hope you can see there are a multitude of page layout ideas and little fear of someone using the same template as you producing the same planner.

Just start with your customer’s real needs at the centre of your thinking. From here, you can design page layouts to help them. 

Why don’t you download the Free Workbook and start sketching your ideas.

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