Create a Digital Planner in Canva

1. Introduction to the class: Hello there and welcome to my class. Create your own digital planner in Canva. This class is all about teaching you the basics of designing an interactive digital planner that can be used with annotation apps on your tablet by GoodNotes or samsung Notes. We're going to be using a very popular and easy to use design software called Canva. And you may already be familiar with this software. Let me first introduce myself. My name is Michelle Marks and I'm a graphic designer and digital product creator. I love to share my techniques with you so that you can design for yourself and build your creative skills. In this class, I'm going to teach you how to design a beautiful digital planner with your own custom cover page designs and your own planner layouts. I'm going to show you how to make your planet interactive with clickable links and buttons in your planner so that you can easily navigate through the planner without having to scroll through to find the right pages. This class is set out in a step-by-step practical format so that you can create with me as we go. By the end of this class, you will have your own gorgeous planet that you can use on your own tablet to organize your tasks and projects. While this class is designed to help you create a plan of your own personal use. You can also use the techniques to design digital planners to sell commercially, if that's what you'd like to do. However, I want you to keep in mind that Canva commercial licensing rules restrict, which can be elements you can use in things you sell. I'm not going to cover Canvas terms much in this video, but I will share some reminders along the way when you need to check the terms. So excited to get stuck on this project. So let's get started on the first lesson 2. Design your planner cover: In this first lesson, I'm going to quickly show you through this planner and we're going to design the front page or the front cover of our planner. So this planner is the one that I have created to demonstrate along the way what we are creating so that you can visualize what the end result is going to look like. So then layouts and I've got here is the cover. I've got a Monthly Goals layout, Monthly Planner, Weekly Planner To Do list, or you can use that as a daily planner. And it also got my notes as well. Now, than layouts that you use personally will be different to what I use. Everybody has their own preference when it comes to what layouts they like to use. But if I can, if I can, in this class, show you how the basics of creating each layout. You then have creative license to go and create what ever layouts. You dream of knowing that you have the basic techniques down. So the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm gonna go back to my home screen. And this is where you can start creating with me. The very first thing we're going to do is we're going to Create a design. And Canva already has a preset size that works really, really well in planner layout. So you may not have it already on your suggested list because this typically goes by what you've previously used. But what you can do is if you go into the search bar and type planner, you will see here that you'll have a couple of journals and that sort of thing that are preset sizes. So these planner here now just take notice of this size. This planner is 21 by 29.7. Now that is A4 size. But typically on most tablets like iPads or Samsung tablets. And 8.5 by 11 inch, which I believe is US letter. That size tends to fit nice and neatly on the tablet. So this is your, entirely your choice, what size you make it. But for starting out, if you're not sure, I'd recommend sticking with the 8.5 by 11 each planner. So it click that. The other thing that you can do is you can create a custom size where here you can input the, the width and height dimension. So if we go 2 ", the width can be 8.5 and we can go by 11 ". Create the same size for us. Now, just bearing in mind this original planner that I made. I made this in a portrait orientation designed to use the when using the tablet in portrait orientation. Another thing that you can do is you can create a horizontal or landscape orientation. If you would like to use your tablet in that format or if you would like double pages. But for this tutorial, this class, I'm just going to create a single pages in portrait orientation. Okay, So it's entirely your choice. So let's create our me design. This is what we're going to be starting with. Don't be scared by the blank screen. I'm going to help you. I'm gonna guide you through the hallway, right? So we've got our page. The first thing that I like to do is set a background. Now, the original planner that I've created, I have designed it as though I'm looking at an actual planner sitting on the desk so you can see the elements. I've got the tabs and I've got the binder here. Now that is again, your choice whether you like to have that binder look or not. So what we're going to do first, if you're re-creating the planner that I have, I'm gonna go into photos and then I'm going to search for desk texture. There's a few different, a few different search terms you can put in there. You can just play maybe even a Canvas texture could be nice way you've got like a Canvas texture. You can have marble texture. Just choose like we can even have black marble texture here. Like how pretty is that? Anyway, we can have white marble texture. It really, it comes down to your own personal preference. But I'm going to duplicate the same one that I've created here. So I'm going to go desk texture. Because what we want it to look like is this though, we are looking at a bird's eye view down onto a table that's got a planner. And we can choose a dark wood. You can choose a lightweight are really quite like light woods. Now if you're using the free version of Canva, I've got the paid version of Canva, so I can use a lot of the pro elements. However, if you are using the free version of Canva, then just come up to the Settings button here and just toggle on the free. And that will show you all of the elements that you are free to use without needing to pay for them. Okay, so I'm just going to choose one that I like here. Oh, use that one. Okay. So once you've finished And you've got your desk texture. The next thing that we want to do is we want to add a, a frame. Now this, there's two ways we can go about creating our cover. The best way, I'll show you both ways. The first way is if you add a rectangle, shortcut or you can go into elements and add the shape. What we're going to do is we're going to essentially create the cover, the cover frame. What we want to do is create a rectangle. And just for now, let's make it white so that it looks like a page. This is going to form the base of our cover, and it's also going to form the pages as well here. If you would like to do a layout without the binder elements. So this binder element here, what I would recommend doing is you can re-size it using as much room as possible. But regardless of whether you're doing a plane page or a bound document, make sure that you've got room either along the side here or along the top. For when we place our tabs. The tabs alongside or along the top, again, it's your choice. I'm going to put them along the right-hand side. So I'm just going to leave a bit of space on the side for my tabs. I'm also going to leave space on the left-hand side for my binder rings because I really liked the look of that. But basically what we've got here is we've got a page. Now, if you would like to have the curved edges on your page, then select your rectangle. And then as you can see here, if you select border style, you've got a toggle here that's got corner rounding. And you can see as I'm moving this slider, you can see that the edges of the binder, the edges of my page are becoming round. Cheese. Personal preference to how round you would like that to be. And then, and then it's set. Okay. So what we're going to do, this is a blank page. And you can add elements to your design. So let's say if I wanted to recreate this floral pattern, what I can do is I can type in leaf outlines. Now, when you are using graphics that are in Canva, there's a couple of things that I want you to want to note. First of all, if you're using the free version of Canva, don't forget to toggle the free. Again. The other thing to note is if you are creating these planner to sell commercially, you probably cannot use the pro elements. You may only be able to use the free elements. So just check with Canva commercial terms. So if in doubt, just use the free elements or if you have some elements that you have purchased for commercial use from Creative Market or creative fabric, then you're free to use those as well. But what I'm going to do is we can create our planet template. I think mine was white. Anyway. You can create whatever color you like. I'll go back to these elements and I'll just add a few patterns. So basically, what we're doing is you can create your planner, cover from elements like this. And you can just position them on your planner In a way that looks aesthetically pleasing to you. Just bearing in mind to keep it looking realistic, makes sure that you don't have the planet elements coming off to the side. If you were to position them and you'd like to do them that way. That is one technique, however, I'm going to show you another technique if you would like to use patterns. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to elements and I'm going to scroll down two frames. So not the grids. We want the frames. Unless you want, if you would like frame that has sharp square edges rather than the rounded edges, then you can certainly go for the frame and just size it to the right size that you like. But there is a frame in here that has nice rounded soft edges, this one here. So that is the round corner rectangle frame. I'll tell you in a minute while we're using the rectangle frame. This one here, if you're using this size, works quite well because it's got the soft rounded edges and it's quite a good size so that you've got room for your tabs on the right-hand side, and then you've got room for the binder on the left-hand side. What this is going to allow me to do is I can I have a design. Like if I don't want to create the design myself, then I can actually place an image. So if I go down to photos and let's look at alcohol ink is got some alcohol and alcohol ink. Some of these designs are quite beautiful. So like if you see this graphic here, this photograph here, I can just select it and click and drag, and there's a beautiful cover for my planner. You may like to choose other photos that you would like to use as your planner. We could, even if you would like to have maybe a rainforest photograph, you can use that as well as the color of your planner. But for now what I'd like to do is I would like to use one of my pattern designs. So I've got patterns here so I can just click and drag. So that's the cover for my Monthly Planner. Right now we want to add a couple of the other elements. Namely, I want to add a drop shadow. So as you can see in this one, it's got a drop shadow behind it. And that basically makes it look 3D. It helps to make the planner look a little bit more realistic. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back to elements and I'm going to go and find a drop shadow in graphics. And it's just a matter of finding one that is the roughly the right size. You may have a little bit more trouble if you're using the free version because a lot of these or pro elements that if I go to free lists, it helps me narrow my search. So if you can't find the right side in a square, what you can do is you can take some of these elements, use this one for example, and just resize it. So I'll just re-size that there. And I will position it towards the back. Just like that, just to add a nice soft shadow to my planner. Okay, Now, the problem with this one is it's got quite sharp edges, but look, if you're not fussy than then that's perfectly fine. If you are using the pro version of Canva, they have more shadow effects that you can use and may even have there. I can use a square one. I'll just go with this rectangle one here. I'll just rotate it. Now, when dealing with frames like this, you might find that when you hover over, it wants to put the shadow into the frame. Just hold down the Control button if you're on a PC, or the Command button if you're on a Mac and it stops it from snapping into the actual frame, right? So we're just going to re-size the S. We just want to pull it a nice to resize that. Sit there and then I'll see if I can adjust that. Let's send it backwards and see what it looks like. It should be the background image. Okay? Alright, there we go. So we've got a, we've got a nice shadow there behind our behind our planner. Now I'm not happy with that. So I'm just going to, I'm sorry, I'm a little bit fussy. I like my designs to look good. Here we go. That's probably a bit better. We can also, if you've chosen a shadow that's a little bit too harsh, we can just drop off the transparency. You can say that it still adds the shadow without pulling focus. Right now the next element, if you want to add the binder rings, just typing binder rings or something similar. And you'll be able to see lots of different options for how to add binder rings. Again, if you're using a free version, just toggle on the free version so that you can find some other binder rings so you're limited with choice there, but they still look good. It's still occur and you can change the colors of those as well. If you have the pro version, then you can find different binder rings. So you've got gold loans, silver loans, bras. If you've got purple here, so just choose your own preference if you like the coil binder rings. I think that's what I used in this one here, and I quite like that Let's have a look at these ones. Those binder rings, they probably suit. They suit and open leaf. A little bit better. I'm just going to go down to these coil binder rings because I actually really like those. So we do coil binder rings. Now I'm just going to rotate this way. Because we want the hole punches see the black circles that we want those hole punches to sit in side the binder. Now just re-size so that it is more of a realistic size. And now I'm going to duplicate and just line them up so that they are the right length. Because we are going for what's a little bit more. We wanted to make it as realistic as possible, even though we know that it's not real. Just position them there. So now you can see that those few steps help to make this look more like a binder that's sitting on a table. So it's nice and realistic for us. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to select all of these binder rings. I'm just going to group them together. This kind of helps to lock them there. And I'm going to also take the shadow. And I'm going to, what I'll do is I'll group it together with my page, at least. So it just kinda reduces the number of elements that can be accidentally moved. In a later step, I'm going to show you how to lock them so that they don't move. Alright, but the last step that we wanna do, and you don't have to do this for this lesson, but I'm just going to add the Monthly Planner header. So that's the last thing I'm going to show you how to do for this lesson. So let's just add some text. I'm just going to do Monthly Planner. You can do like you can also do Michelle's planner or obviously use your name. But whatever you would like on the top, maybe it's a, you might like to have like an inspirational cover, like the little book of big plans or something like that. I'm just going to stick with Monthly Planner for now. The other thing that I will do is I'll choose a color that I can sample from my cover image. And that way it looks a little bit nicer. So I know I've got some dark blue in there so I can have Monthly Planner, I can have my texts and that color. I can choose the teal, the light teal, go with something that you feel looks aesthetically pleasing depending on the pattern or the cover image that you've got. I'm also going to choose some script fonts. So I'm going to search script. Now. Again, just bearing in mind if you are creating for commercial use, don't use pro fonts. Make sure you're using free fonts. And I'm going to choose a nice thick one. I'm going to try it now. I went on when I'm searching for fonts, I tend to get really stuck and I just want to find the perfect font. So I'm going to try and avoid doing that today. Going to reduce the spacing between my lines. Okay. Now if you were to leave it like this, it's a little bit difficult to read the cover. So what I'm going to do to fix that is I'm going to add a rectangle with a shortcut, are going to change it to white. Then I'm going to position it behind my text. And that way it helps to make the cover, the text on the cover nice and easy to read. There we go. You can also round the corners as well. Not quite aligned to the way. I'm not. Move it. There we go. Okay. How do you like the look of your planner so far? If you've been following along with me, you should now have a beautiful front cover of your planner. We haven't got the tabs yet, that's okay. We're going to sort that out in future lessons, but yeah, I would love to hear some feedback on how you went with your first, your first lesson, the cover image. In the next lesson, we are going to start forming the rest of the pages for the rest of your planner. So I'll see you over there in the next lesson. 3. Add your planner pages : Alright, in the first lesson or the last lesson, we created our cover image, the cover of our planner. The next thing we want to start focusing on now is we want to start adding our tabs and are additional pages. The first thing that we need to do is we first want to start off by adding our pages. The reason being when we go to link our tabs, we need to have the pages in the document established so that we can link to them. So the first thing that we are going to do is we're going to come back to our planner and we're going to use the work that we've done in creating the Planner. Create our next pages. We don't have to, we don't have to re-create the same thing each time where we can duplicate and copy, we will do so because it is a time-saver, creating planners can be very, very time-consuming if we don't use the proper shortcuts. The first thing that we're gonna do is we're just going to duplicate this page. So now we have to cover images. But what we're gonna do is we're going to delete a lot of these elements that we don't need in our planner. We left with a frame here, so we're going to select the frame. We're going to come across to color. We're just going to make it white for the time being. So what I've got now is I've got both my camera and I've got a blank page, lovely blank slate for us to start designing with. Now we want to establish how many pages we actually want to use, the layouts that I'm going to use. I'm going to have Monthly Goals, Monthly Planner, Weekly Planner To Do List and Notes. So we want to create five blank pages. So all I'm going to do here now that I've got my blank page is I'm going to duplicate it four times. What I've got here, just duplicate it one more time. So what I've got here, I've got my cover and then by blank pages. The other thing, and this is a tip that will be helpful for later, is we want to rename our pages. The reason being is when we go to link our tabs, it's easier if our pages and names so that we can find them. This is especially helpful if you have got planner with lots of pages like you might have. You might have weekly plan as you may even have one page for each month, in which case you're going to have over ten different pages. So it's much easier if you can rename your pages. That's what I'm going to do now. So I've got my color and then I'm going to do Monthly Goals. Then I'm going to do Monthly Planner. Page four is going to be my planner. Page five will be my to-do list, and page six is going to be my notes and scribbles, right? So now what we've done is we've got our cover, we've got our pages. And in the next lesson I'm going to show you, show you how to add the tabs and then link them to each individual page 4. Create clickable tabs: In the previous lesson, we created our blank pages for our Planner and we gave them names, which is very important for the next monkey. In this lesson, I'm now going to show you how we can add the tabs to this side of our planet and make them clickable. Saying that whenever we tap each of the tab, it takes us to the corresponding page. So let's start with the front cover. Now we're just going to create the tabs for one cover. We're going to link them and then we're going to duplicate the tabs for the rest of the pages. So there's a couple of designs or styles of tabs that you can create. The first thing I'm gonna do is I am going to make sure that my shadow is locked because every time I create these, the sneaky thing keeps moving. Alright, so let's create some tabs. Now there's a few different styles. If you come across to the elements. The elements menu on the left-hand side, come two lines and shapes. And here you will find a few shapes that you will find suitable for your, your tabs. Now, there's a couple that I quite like the what's this one called? The trapezoid? I was gonna say it, no, no, that's wrong. Anyway, the trapezoid makes quite nice looking tabs. If we just rotate them 90 degrees. Then if you position them on the side of your planner, the other one that makes nice tabs is the, the arch. Trust myself. So if we resize that a little bit longer and then again, rotate 90 degrees, they make quite so both of those make really nice tab options. And really it's personal preference. The one that I typically like to use these, I just go for a normal rectangle but I round off the corners because I was like soft corners. Now I'm going to rotate this and you may think I'm a little bit loopy for rotating a square. But the reason being is if I don't rotate it, I like to type directly into the shape itself. But if I don't rotate it, it's gonna be on the side. Rotate it 90 degrees, and then I'm going to position it on the side now it's gonna be too big. So I'm just going to re-size my texts and I'm also going to make it bold. All my text bold. I'll just change the color of the shape itself, the mint color, and I'll change the color of my text to blue. Okay. Now the reason if you're just using a square with if you're just using, sorry, the rectangle. Let me zoom in so you can see if you're just using the rectangle without the rounded edges, then you can bring yours right to the edge of the planner. But we'll just position it backwards so that it's behind the cover. Because what we don't want is we don't want the little edges of our planner coming to in front of the color. Otherwise it's just one of those things. It just makes it look a little bit less realistic. But what I like to do is because I like having my rounded corners. If I, if I zoom in here, it's going to have rounded corners at the bottom where the tab meets the cover. So I'm just going to extend it slightly. But what I also want to do is adjust my texts so that it is lifted up a little bit so that it's evenly spaced. I'm on my tab. What I'll do then is I'll just select my tab. I'll come over to Spacing and then I'll make sure that it is vertically aligned. The vertical alignment is towards the top, and that would make sense if it was rotated. Position it to the top. And then I'll just increase my padding a little bit just to bring it down a little bit like that. Okay, so now we have one tab. Great start. So when you're happy with your formatting of your tab, then you can just simply duplicate it. Now, I need five tabs because I'm doing Monthly Goals, Monthly Planner, Weekly Planner To Do List and Notes. So I'm just going to duplicate that another three times. Let's see. Now, I've got my five tabs here. And as always, let's make sure that they're all lined and vertically aligned. Perfect. I'm going to position them behind the cover. But in front of my shadow. If I place them behind the shadow, I can't quickly, I can't quickly select them or move them or rewrite, which is what I'm doing now. So I'm going to change the name of my tabs. It's Monthly Goals, Monthly Planner. Weekly Planner. Me want to do not feed him Do List and then make some scribbles like this. Okay? All right, so then we have it, we've got our tabs. Now, the next thing that we need to do is we need to link them to the corresponding page. This is where it becomes helpful that you have you have typed in the name of the actual page itself. Let me show you how to link these. So select the term that you would like to link. I recommend that you link the tab itself, not the text. This just provides a large, larger clickable area, especially if you've only got tabs that say something like your months in three letters. So Jn for January, it just creates a larger clickable area. But what we're gonna do is we're going to select our tab. Just above. We have a menu that pops up. We want to click the ellipsis that says more. Me want to link. Now, when you ordinarily link, you will put a URL in here like it, HTTPS colon slash slash, slash slash www dot something, one of those addresses and that links to a different page. But what we want to do this time is we want to link to a page within the document that we've got, right. So our Monthly Goals, we're going to link that to the Monthly Goals page. So we just verify that it's the page we want and then we'll click Done. Now what happens here is it pops an underlying automatically to indicate that there is a link. If you want to leave the link there, that's perfectly fine. If you don't want the link there, just click the underlying and that will remove that Formatting. We're going to repeat that for the other links as well. Select your tab, More. Link. Link to the corresponding page, which is Monthly Planner. Then I'm going to remove the underlying. I'll do the same for the Weekly Planner. Link to Weekly Planner, remove the underline. To Do List. Link to my to-do list, maybe underline. Then link the notes together. Done, remove the underlying, sorry. You were we'll test out these links a little bit lighter if you want to download this as a PDF now to test your links, you can do or we can just check each link and just make sure that each one is linked. You'll see that indicated there. So you can see that it's linked to the correct pages. I don't think Planner Monthly Goals. Okay, so all of those links are in place. So now we are happy. What we want to do now is we want to copy each of these tabs. We can do that in one fell swoop. So if you just click and drag, you can see that all of my tabs now highlighted. What we want to do is we want to copy. You can either go through the main, the More menu and click copy, or you can use your shortcut, which is Control C on a PC or Command C on a Mac. So I'll just click Copy may want to come down to each page. We want to paste all of our links. And the reason that will do that now is because it's going to bring across everything that's going to bring cross the design, the formatting, the spacing, and the links. You'll see that if I click on that, the link is still in place, which is wonderful. The last thing we wanna do is we just want to position it so that it is behind, behind the page but in front of the shadow. So let's repeat that for each page, I'm going to use my shortcut Control V, which is the shortcut for paste and just move it backwards. We use these little shortcuts. Then it makes the process a lot faster. Okay, so let's go back and have a look at what we've got so far. We're gonna beautiful cover page. We've got our blank pages with clickable tabs. So every time we click the tab, it takes us to the corresponding page. There is one more nice little feature. This is entirely optional, but one more nice feature that I love adding because it just adds that little bit. For each page, I change the color of the corresponding tab. I'm going to take the tab and I'm just going to make them lighter color. So the Monthly Goals tab on the Monthly Goals page is light in the rest are the darker teal. So the Monthly Planner, I'm just going to change it there as well. And what that looks like is it gives you that indicator, that visual indicator of the page that you're on now, some of these page colors are going to change in some of the future videos. But they're just adds a little bit to your planner, especially if you're creating these planners for somebody else. Yeah, there we go. So now we have got a cover page, are clickable tabs and all of our pages ready to create Las 5. Layout 1 - Monthly Goals: Now we get to start on designing the layouts for the inner pages of our planner. So the first one that I'm going to do is the Monthly Goals layout. This is the one that we're going to replicate today. So let's go to a Monthly Goals layout page. Now the first thing I wanna do is I want to lock some of the elements because what I'll be doing is I'm going to be designing with a lot of bits and pieces on the page. But what I really don't want to happen is for the elements that are in place for them to move. So I'm gonna highlight, click and drag to highlight all of the current elements that have gone. I'm going to go to the More tab and then I'm just going to lock them. So now I can't, I can click on things but I can't accidentally move or edit them. Alright, so while on Edit, and this is probably good thing for you to do as well. Let's do it for the rest of the pages. Let's just lock them so that they don't accidentally. While we're editing. Because some designs can have quite a few moving parts to them. We don't want to we don't want to mix them up. So now let's go back to my example. So now I had a teal page, lacteal page for that one and I really quite like that. So even though we're just unlock lock them all, I'm going to have to lock it again. So I'm just going to select the page and just change the color and then I'll lock it again so everything else should be looked lovely. The other thing that I wanna do is I want to create a nice little header that all use across the design along the top. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add some text. So what I'll do is all just write Monthly Goals. Okay. I'll just change the texts. That's just check that's playlist script. So I'm just going to change that again to playlist script. Re-size it. I'm going to change the color. That's probably like the look of that where it's just like a soft header, it's not pulling focus. And you might like that look over it as well. Just want you to bear in mind if you are creating these for other people that might not be contrasting enough. You might need to make the text a little bit darker, just in case people are purchasing these who don't have quite as good eyesight as they don't have like 2020 vision. They might struggle being able to see if it's low contrast seat or if you're creating something for someone who is colorblind. We want to make sure that this is inclusive design. If you are designing just for yourself, you can obviously go with your own preferences, your own personal preferences there. So I'll just leave it at that. The other thing I wanna do is I'm just going to bring the floral elements that are used up here. And I just want to bring them across to the top of the page there. So I'm just going to go across to elements. And I'm going to type in leaf outline. That's the search that I like to use when I'm finding these styles, these types of graphics. So I'll just choose one. That one looks like a nice, I think that's someone I used in the previous one. No, it's not. What I'll do is I'll just resize that a little bit because that sits nicely along the top there. One thing that I do want to do and I'll zoom in to show you is I want to make sure that the element itself is behind the binder element. So I'm just going to position that backwards just so that it looks a little bit more realistic. We don't want to have elements flying about the place, okay, so I'm happy with that there. I'm going to group these two elements together. And then I'm going to just copy them across the other pages because I'm going to use them as head is consistently across the rest of my design. But now that I've got them set, I'm also going to I'm going to lock both of them as well. It's I don't want them to move. Okay. I'm going the wrong page. Ungrouped. I'll select both the days and lock them. Okay. Alright, so let's go and have a look now. They this page, I've got five textboxes with five questions, so we're going to replicate that as well. So what I'll do is I'll create some more text. The first question I asked was, teach you achieve your goals last few months. Because I like to do a bit of reflection. I do love my monthly goal setting So we're just going to do I want that text in blue. We will want to need TO I think I wanted to teal. I'm going to you. Okay. Did you achieve your Monthly Goals last month? So that's the first question that I want to ask. And I'll just resize that text and left align it. Okay, now I'm going to put a rectangle and I'm just going to use the shortcut rectangle. Now, at time of recording. For some reason, the rectangle shape has disappeared from the gallery. So if you used to use the rectangle shape, There's a couple of ways around that. You can either use the curved square and then come up to the border style and just remove the corner rounding. Or you can use the shortcut for rectangle, which pops the square shape with no rounding. By the time you're watching that the shape may come back. I'm not sure that at time we're recording. If you don't have it, then there you go. There's your way around that now I'm just going to change the color because I'd like my boxes that are used to annotate in, in my, on my tablet. I'd like them to be white. I'm just going to make sure that they're in the middle. Okay. So I've got one text-box there. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to copy those and I'm going to duplicate them. For my next question, did you achieve a goal last month? What would you do? Frequently? What would you do differently? I'll just expand the box because that will a prompting question that will have a little bit more detail. So just adjust the size of the boxes depending on how much information you think you're right in there. Then I'm going to duplicate that one again. And this is going to be Monthly goal number one. And I'm to recycle a little bit and then let's duplicate that another two times. Now we've got three Monthly Goals. The page. So every month I can come to this and I can do a little bit of reflection. Did you achieve your goals last month? What would you do differently? Very powerful lessons learnt that way. Then I can establish my goals, my next three goals for this month. One other thing that you can do as well is you can, in the other Planner in liked to have like a bit of depth with more floral elements. So you can do that as well. What we'll do is we'll go back to our leaf that line. Of course, you can do whatever style you like. And I'm just going to choose one that I think would look nice. Again. Just a little reminder. If you are creating a planner to sell, you will not be able to use the pro elements, so you'll just need to filter for the free, for the free graphics. So just ensure that you are doing. You'll just, just double-checking as he goes like that one. So I'm just going to change that to white. I'm just going to soften it a little bit because I just want a bit of texture. I don't want to pull focus. And I'm not sure that one's doing job. I wonder if maybe a pattern of a leaf pattern would be better. We have any on here. That one. Like that one too. Oh my goodness. So much choice. Isn't Canva or maybe amazing. I can't change the color of that one, so I'm just going to choose something different. Let's go with that. Just adds a little bit of depth. Let's just drop the transparency. To reckon I can get away with. Maybe let's just delete it for now. Thanks. One thing that you can do, let's just go back to our normal floral element. That little bit of tips. Again, this is completely optional. You don't need to do this. It's just something I like to do. Okay. And I'll just make sure it's positioned underneath my text boxes. Alright, there we go. Our Monthly Goals layout is complete. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to do the Monthly Planner layout 6. Layout 2 - Monthly Planner: In this lesson, we are going to start designing our Monthly Planner layout. So come back to my example. And the part, the elements that we've gotten our Monthly Planner is we've got space to write a month. Now this is an undated planner. So we can write month. Then we've got plenty of space for the days of our month. We've also got a to-do list section and a nice and scribble section. So let's start recreating this planner. I'm just going to unlock the page again because I would like to create another TO page. And then I'll just lock the page again so that I don't accidentally move elements from it. The first thing I'm going to do is just add my section for where I can enter my month. So I'm just going to use the shortcut, change the color to white, and then I will re-size it and position at just above my head. Now what I also wanna do is just unlock my Monthly Planner. This right, the one, that one. Okay, there we go. So now I can write which month this corresponds to. While I'm planning. The next thing I'm gonna do is I'm just going to add my calendar. So for that, we are going to use the table elements. We will find under the elements menu on the left-hand side, come back to tables. Then I'm just going to pick a plane one because I'm going to format that as we go. Now, as you may have seen in his previous planner, I typically plan my weeks each day, but then I plan my weekend as a whole. So what you can do is you can either have the six, the six columns, so Monday through Friday plus one column for the weekend, or you can have seven columns and due Monday through Sunday. And the other thing is, you may way you are based where are you are living? It may be customary to start your weekday on a Sunday. Here in Australia, we typically start out weekdays on a Monday, so that's why I've done my weeks like that. So you just adjust your calendar. You adjust your calendar accordingly. So what I'm doing now is I'm just adding rows. I want six rows. One's going to be my header row. That's going to say Monday through Friday in the weekend. Then I want five rows for the four-and-a-half to five weeks in each month. So I've got my six rows now. I want to add some columns. So I'm going to add a column and I need six columns altogether. You might need seven. I've got six now, and now I'm just going to re-size my calendar. Alright, so when we re-size or reposition, you will notice that the columns, all the rows that you re-size, they will not become evenly spread. That's no problem, we can fix that. So what we're gonna do is I'm just going to select the top lift. Hold down the Shift button while I click the bottom right, and that selects the whole table. Then I can come to the menu. And I'm going to select the option for size columns equally. And that will just resize my table so that all of my columns are equal. Last thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to re-size the top column, the top row, because I would like that to be a nice theme one. Now, it's limiting the amount I can re-size it. It's giving me a minimum width and I want to change that. So I'm going to select the top left cell and the top hold Shift and the top right sell. Then I just want to sorry, it's going to be in this spacing. I'm just going to reduce the cell spacing. Then I can actually then re-size to have a very thin top header row. So there's my table. I'm quite happy with that. Last thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to select the whole table again and I'm going to change the color. I would like the color on the inside to be white. And then I'm going to adjust the border. I actually don't want a border color, but I'm just going to change it to the editor. It doesn't matter what color it is. Because when we go to board away, we can just remove the border altogether. But now you can see that our table has just turned into one big rectangle. So now we want to adjust the table spacing just like that. And then that creates them lines in the middle. So you might like thin lines, you might like thicker lines. This is just, this is personal preference again. But now we've got our calendar and I'm going to start writing the days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Friday weekend. Okay. I'll just format my text. I want my text to be teal. I'm going to reduce the size of it so that it's new, we have it. So you can change a few different things. Like if you would like your headers to not be white, then you can change that here. I can make it the teal color. So I've just got the headers instead. You've got a lot of freedom with the design of your of your planner. Okay, so I've got my calendar solid. Now I would like to have my Notes section, so I'm going to use shortcut. Change the color to white and bring it back down here so that I've got a to-do list. Got it to daily section here. And I would like to just line up my annotation space with the cell spacing. So I've got one there. I'm just going to duplicate that one and bring it over to this side. Okay, now pop a little header in here. So this will be To Do List. Change that. Well, and I just want to drop it down in signs. I've got my to-do list. Duplicate that, I'll be here. That's going to be Monday night scribbles. So we've got most of our layout here. One thing that I do want to add though, is I want to add some circles for my checkboxes here. One thing, one way you can do that easily can you can find the circles under graphics where you might want some fancy circles like that to be your checkboxes or you might want to use this one would be quite a nice one for a checkbox. I'll just resize that and position that here is my chatbox. So that's one option for you. The other way that you can create a checkbox is you might like to have a square checkbox this time instead of a circle world. In which case we'll select which is our shortcut for a square. And then if you make the interior with no color, select your border, increase your border, wait. And then you can change your border color as well. So you might like square checkboxes there. Then if you like thinner checkboxes, you can also change the corner or the border. Wait. If you want them to be a bit thinner. What I like to do is I'll create a circle and I'll just do the exact same thing and make it clear on the inside. I'll give it a border weight of one. And then I'll change the color of my border to teal. And then we'll just make it a little bit smaller. Here we go. So I've got one checkbox done. Now. We can just simply duplicate position the first one. And then I can just hit duplicate. And it will position each consecutive checkbox. Not enough room for that one, the same distance. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to spread them out evenly like that. So what I'm doing now is I'm holding the Shift button down each time I click one of the objects, that allows me to select multiple objects at any given time. Then I'll come over to position arrange and I want to just make sure that they or center aligned, which it's grayed out, which means it is center aligned and then I'll just space them evenly so that all of my checkboxes are the same width apart. So now I've got my just going to reduce the size of this text so that it matches the text inside my box. The box is I've got here. So size eight and I'll just make them teal as well. Okay, so now we have got our Monthly Planner layout. And I'm very happy with that. So hopefully if you've been following along, your planner layout is looking lovely as well. One thing I've just picked up here is that my floral element, I'm just going to unlock it because it's just snuck in front of my binder elements. So I'm just going to send that backwards there. Okay, and then I'll just lock them again. Alright, so that is our Monthly Planner layout completed. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to do the Weekly Planner layout 7. Layout 3 - Weekly Planner: Okay, So we've done our color, a Monthly Goals and our Monthly Planner. Now we're going to move on to create the Weekly Planner spread. So our Weekly Planner, let's just look back at sample design for inspiration. Now, there's a couple of ways that we can do the layout for the Weekly Planner. This is the way I like to design my Weekly layout, and I'm going to show you a couple of different variations of that. So let's come back to our Weekly Planner. I'm just going to change Weekly. Oops, make planner. To sound great. So that I can leave that you make a new group. Then again, move it backwards behind binder. And then I'm going to look at imposition so that it won't move on. Now, one example of the layout that we can do for Weekly Planner and a nice Some people prefer this, is they like to do, let's just add some text. We might do Monday. And just again, if your week starts on a Sunday, obviously that's the way you'll start. Have Monday. And then we might like to have a space for annotation that spreads across the whole planner. I'll make this a lot, a lot teal color. So we've got Monday and then we can duplicate those for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Okay. So won't have to make our boxes a bit thinner. Okay, So let's see. Now let's duplicate that. 1234567. Looks like it'll fit. Let's just let's green. Yeah, For some reason I'm just doing this manually because my keyboard has stopped working. So I can't actually use the Shift button. It's come back now in perfect. On Monday, Tuesday, select a minor to make things. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thursday, Friday. And I'm tabbing in-between. If you're wondering how I'm doing that so quickly. Sunday. Okay, So if you like to plan your week like this, this is one example of a layout that you can use. The other thing that you can do as well is if you'd like a really nice simple layout, then we can just do a line in-between each one. Really nice thin line. Maybe even a dotted line if you like. That just separates each day of the week. Just adding lines just to separate each of our days. So if you like the minimalist soil, then that's another option for a layout for you. What I'm going to do is I'm going to re-create the same layout that I used for the previous design, which looks like this. Okay, so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, weekend. And I'm just going to bring them up a little bit because I'll make room for nights. Create my rectangle. Cable's not behaving itself. So I'll just use Michelle, I don't want use the shortcuts. What I will do is I'll just reduce my corner rounding to around 13. 15 is good. You can just re-size my boxes so that they're all consistent. I'll duplicate. Copy, paste, paste each one. If you're wondering why I'm doing this manually without using my shortcuts. Some reason when it rains interferes with my keyboard because I have a wireless keyboard. I'm switching. Okay. So that was a nice simple layout. So I've got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then the weekend, and then Notes. Again, Monthly. Now, digital planners are very personal thing, so you might like to have a slightly different design. Just remember, this is your planner. You are free to design it to your preference. That one is completed. And in the next video, we will complete the to-do list layout 8. Layout 4 - To Do List: In the previous video, we created our Weekly Planner layout. And in this video we're going to make our to-do list. This can be kind of like your daily planner as well. So again, this is your planner. So you create an how you would like to do it. Let's come across to the Weekly the digital planner that we are working on. I'm just going to come down to the to-do list. So the first thing I'm gonna do is just change my header. Then it says To Do list, keeps sneaking to make it move it below the binder. So To Do list. Now, the to-do list is quite a simple one. We've just got lists with checkboxes here. For this one, we can just create basically a simple list with a page full of checkboxes. If you want to, you can do lines. You can do lots of different items. But what I'd like to do is I'd like to separate mine into sections. So I've just used the shortcut and I'm just creating my rounded boxes. This is going to be my top priority, my top priority box. So we're just going to have three items in that box. Then I'll just create a header. Top priorities. I'm just lifting line that all the way down the bottom. I don't know if he saw that will change the text color of the texts to teal. And I'll just drop it back to size nine slides. I have been using this for consistency top priority tasks. Then I'm going to want one for my normal tasks. So let's just check my other tasks and then Notes and scribbles. But of course, tasks and I'll make a little bit longer. Matches, shift them up a little bit. And then I will do another section for notes and scribbles. Scribbles. I'll just extend that box a little bit. Okay, so we've got the base layout for this and to-do list. I just want to add my checkboxes. Now we don't have to create our checkboxes again because we've got some that we had here. So let's just go ahead and select a couple of them. Then I'm just going to use Control C to copy them. And I'll come back down here, Control V just to move them. So I've got some checkboxes already. I'll duplicate those ones. Duplicate those ones. Just make my minor adjustments so that everything fits properly. Now I only want three checkboxes in my top priorities and tasks, a top priority tasks section. So I'll just resize that one. Like that. Maybe this one. Then that will allow me to then make my notes and scribbles section a little bit bigger. And then I'm happy with that. Yeah. So that is my to-do list page. Now, of course you can. You don't have to have your colored boxes here. If you like. Just a nice minimalist style design, then that's the way you can do it as well. It looks, still looks lovely. It's gorgeous. But as well, you might like to just have a page full of task, so you might not need nights and scribbles. You may want more for top priority tasks. So you create these planner the way you like it. But I'm happy with that layout. Now we can move on to our notes layout 9. Layout 5 - Notes: This video, we are ready to design the last page layout of our Digital Planner, which is the Notes layout. So I've got a couple of this, a few ways that you can do this. This is going to be a really, really quick simple layout. In my sample digital planner, I've just got a series of lines and I can write in. So I'm going to do a couple of examples of different layouts. Start with my knights and scribbles. Some scribbles. All right, so let's just locked those two. They're not going to move the wrong button. Just control Z to go backwards. Now when I wanted to do is lock them, knocked, delete them. So nice and scribbles. You can just leave these plagues blank if you like. Because you may like to just do random knights and scribbles like almost like a bullet journal style. You might like to use digital stickies and that sort of thing. Or you might like to also do, let's just bring up a rectangle where we are born, a rounding. Let's just change the size. You might like a dedicated box like that. Well, you might like to do some lines. So let's, I'll show you how to create some lines. If we use the L, which is the shortcut for a standard line, you can just extend the length of your line and if you want it to make sure that it is is completely vertical, hold down the Shift button, and that will ensure that it stays. Doesn't matter where you move your mouse, it's going to stay straight. She's very handy. Don't go ahead and create all of them lines just yet. Let's format the first line first. I'd like it to be in my teal color, and I'd also like it to be thin line. So line weight of one. You can do dotted lines if you like. It's entirely up to you. Now I'm happy with the first line. What I'm going to do is I'm going to duplicate it and then I'm going to position it. Session the first duplicate in the right spot. And then every time I hit Duplicate, every consecutive line will be perfectly spaced. As long as you get the first one right. And it will be perfectly spaced. Okay? Yeah. If you don't quite get that right and they're not perfectly spaced, It's not the end of the world. What we can do is we can click and drag. And this is why it's helpful that all of the other elements and lot, because if they weren't, I'll be selecting a whole bunch of other elements. So I'm just selecting my lines. So once you've selected all of them, if you go to Position range, but you can do is make sure that all of them are center or left aligned and then space them vertically evenly. And that will ensure that your lines are perfectly spaced and in line with each other. Okay, So that is a nice, simple layout just for your notes and scribbles again, you can have it blank if you like. You can even do dot grids if you like. It's entirely up to you. 10. Downloading your planner: All right, I'm so excited We've got to the end of our planner. So what we have now is we've got our cover page and then we've got our five inner layouts that we can use to help organize our life. Now, what I'd like to do now is test the tests the planner to make sure that all of the links I'm working in this video, we're going to do that. I'm also going to show you how to download your planner from Canvas so that you can move it to your tablet. Okay, so what we're going to do is let's download our planner. So once you are happy with your layout, you, everything is finalized and you are, you are perfectly happy with it. What we want to do then is we want to download it. So come up to the top right-hand button that says share. Tweak that. And you may want to download the file type, made sure that is either PDF Standard or PDF print. It doesn't matter which one it is. The difference between them is simply the amount of compression that the file goes through and therefore has an influence on the size. So PDF print has the least amount of compression, but it's also a larger file size. What you are going to need because you will be using this on a screen. Pdf Standard is going to be more than adequate for what you want to do. So just click PDF Standard. Now I want you to make sure that flattened PDF is not ticked. If it is ticked, it is going to remove all of your links. So just make sure that flattened PDF is not ticked and makes sure that you haven't gotten it. We haven't probably haven't written any notes throughout designing this, but you just want to make sure that is not included as well. By default, all of the pages will be selected, but just double-check to make sure. Then you can go ahead and download. And then it's going to download for you. And you'll just figure out where you want to save it somewhere you can remember, obviously, I'm just going to pop that on my desktop for now. Then we're going to open up just to make sure that our links are working. Okay, so I've just opened this up in my browser's PDF viewer. What you can say is I can see my design has saved beautifully. And as you can see, when I hover my mouse over the link, you can see that it turns, it turns into the hand, goes from the cursor to the hand, that indicates that there is a clickable link there. So let's go ahead and test all of the links. This one will take us to our monthly goals page, this one to our monthly planner, weekly planner to-do list, and then the note section. So all of the links are working perfectly. So I've done my test and I am very happy with my planner. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to upload your planet ink onto your tablet. Onto your, your tablet. I will be using a Samsung, but you might be using an iPad or something. And I'll show you how we can use our planet on our tablet 11. Using your planner: Alright, so we've created our planner and we've downloaded it as a PDF. Now I want to show you how you can import it and use it on your tablet. The tablet that I'm using today is a Samsung tablet. You might be using an iPad or something different. But basically you want to open up your, open up your annotation at which could be good notes. I'm using Samsung planner. So what we want to do is inside your annotation app, there will be a button somewhere that allows you to upload or import. Mine is right here. So if you're using the Samsung and you can't really see it very well. It is a little icon of a PDF where I'm going to click that and it's going to prompt me to upload my design. I've just saved it from my, I've just saved it from Canva. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to select the one I wanted to upload and I'm going to click Done. What you can see here now in my in my annotation app, you can see the planet that we have just designed. And I'll place it down because we can scroll through it. However, one thing that I wanted to show you is that are links. When we click our tabs, they take us through to the right page. That is one thing that you can do when you are testing. Then you are testing your annotation is whether you can scroll through them and whether you can click through each of the individual links as well. Now the other thing is you can annotate on those. So I'm just going to exit out of the view mode and I'm just going to start annotating. So what I'd like to do is shift my textbox. It's not going to behave itself. These are shift my textbox over here to Monday. Now if you're using an iPad, you won't need to actually do that because you can type directly in, but because I don't have palm recognition, I like to type down here. So what am I gonna do on Monday? I'm going to plan my week on Monday so that you can see that there. And then I'm going to what else do I wanna do on Monday? Maybe let's have a day off show. We Day off. Then as you can say, when we go back into read my Samsung planner, I can zoom in and focus on my Monday. Or I can go to my to-do list, I can start planning out my task there. I toss on Monday. I can do my business books Today, my business books there. And I can also annotate with, with my pen where once I've done this task, if I'm done, I can tick the box. All done 12. Your Class Project: There you have it. You have designed your very own digital planner for use in organising your tasks, your projects, your weeks, months, years. And now you know the technique that you need to use in order to create your own digital planner. So the next thing I would love to see the digital planners that you have created for your class project. I would love to see a screenshot of either your planner cover or some of the layouts on the inside. I would really so much joy to see the creations that you've made based on the class that I've held. You ever to upload a project where you can share some of the screenshots or some of the images that you have created of your planner. I would love to see them. Thank you so much for watching this Skillshare class. I know you've got a lot of courses that you can choose from. So it really means a lot to me that you have chosen mine, and I hope you got a lot out of this project. I've got a lot of other classes that you can watch on Skillshare. So feel free to follow me and browse some of the other classes that I've got. But until then, I will see you next time.