Author | Jackie

Text Styles and digital planner design go hand in hand. If you’ve ever worked with a digital planner design file before, you will know how big they can get. Daily planners are over 400 pages. 

So, how does using text style help you design a digital planner? 

Text styles:

• keep your design consistent, giving a professional look to your planner
• allow you to customise a digital planner template in minutes
• mean you can edit a style and it automatically ripples through your entire document

What is a Text Style?

A Text Style is a saved group of settings you can apply to text in one click.

For example, if you want your digital planner page headings to be: Roboto Font, Size 30, Blue Colour, Bold, Centred, that would require editing 5 individual settings. If you create a text style, you can save this combination of 5 settings into a one-click, single 'style'.

When you want to use this combination of settings on text, you can simply click the text style to apply all the settings in one go.

Styles are great for not only speeding up your work, but also for keeping the planner style consistent.

Let’s say you want to change a Text Style, for example make the title on the page Light rather than Bold text. You simply edit the text style and the Bold will be replaced with Light throughout the document, in seconds. No matter how many hundreds of pages you have.

Make Your Own Digital Planner | Workbook Download

Text styles Panel

Where to find the Text Styles Panel

You will find the Text Styles Panel docked on the right, alongside the Layers, Character and Paragraph Panels.

If you are not working with the default studio layout, you can open the Text Styles Panel from the Window Menu (Window – Text – Text Styles). The panel will dock on the right.



Text Style Panel Layout

On the Text Style Panel, you will find:

• a list of the styles associated with the document you are using
• a panel menu to manage, delete or import styles
• icons for updating or creating new styles

Affinity Publisher Text Style Panel

Digital Planner Template Text Styles Example

In the image below, you can see an example of a digital planner template’s Text Style Panel. This is taken from the Make Your Own Digital Planner course.

The styles include a font style for:

• the Cover - you can see from the preview, it is centred text
• the main Heading 1 - this is applied to the page headings and is a serif font which is left aligned
• a sub heading Heading 2 - this is a sans serif font, left aligned
• the Side Tabs - which are a sans serif font, centred and,
• the Table Text - which is also sans serif, centred, all caps

Example of Document Text Styles | Make Your Own Digital Planner Course

Editing Text Styles | Method 1

To change the fonts on a digital planner template, you will need to edit the Text Styles.

To edit a Text Style, double-click on the style you want to change on the Text Style Panel. This will open the Text Style Editor.

Affinity Publisher Text Style Editor

In the Text Style Editor you can change the Character and Paragraph settings. If you look at the left-hand menu, you can edit the:

• Character -- Font - for the font family, font size and font style (e.g. regular, bold) 
• Character -- Colour and Decoration - for the text fill colour
• Paragraph - for the alignment (e.g. centre, left, right)

When you've made your changes, click Okay at the bottom of the editor.

Repeat this process for any Style you want to change. Like Global Swatches, any changes you've made will ripple through your document.

Editing Text Styles | Method 2

You can also change a Text Style by making a change directly to the text on a page and then ‘updating’ the style to reflect this change.

Highlight and edit the text you want to change. Here, I’m changing the size of the text on the Side Tabs because I’ve changed it to full rather than abbreviated months. This has made the month text a little too long for the tab.

You can see on the Context Toolbar at the top of the screen a small + symbol has appeared next to the Style box. This will also appear in the Text Styles Panel.

To update the text style so all side tabs have a smaller font size, I can simply click the ¶ symbol next to the Style box. The + symbol disappears and the Text Style is updated throughout the document.

Updating a Text Style using the Context Bar in Affinity Publisher

You can also update via the Text Styles Panel:

• click on the hamburger menu to the right of the Side Tabs style
• choose Update ‘Side Tabs’

Updating a Text Style using the Text Style Panel in Affinity Publisher

Working with Text Styles in Affinity Publisher

When using digital planner templates, Text Styles are a must. If you are creating your own, make sure you use Text Styles from the start of your project. 

If you are buying templates, do make sure the designer has used Text Styles (and Global Colours and Master Pages). If it isn’t stated in the description, email and ask.

Keeping the style consistent is key to creating a polished, professionally-designed planner. 

By using Text Styles, you can update fonts and text formatting in minutes and be confident these changes are reflected throughout your planner.

If you are ready to make your own digital planner but are new to design software and using templates, why not take a look at the Make Your Own Digital Planner Course using Affinity Publisher and Templates.

It is focussed on the key skills you need to customise a template and get your first digital planner out into the world in a matter of hours! And - of course - the templates are set up using Master Pages, Global Colours and Text Styles.

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