Create a Printable Planner With Adobe Illustrator

1. Class Introduction: Creating a printable planner might seem intimidating task to carry out, but it doesn't have to be. In this class. I'm going to show you step-by-step how to create both a simple and a more advanced version of a monthly planner using Adobe Illustrator. Hi, I'm cardia. I'm an artist and online teacher, and I'm based in Sicily, Italy. When we create the simple planner, you will learn how to create a grid in Adobe Illustrator. A trick to quickly align the text for the days of the week and how to add the smallest squares for the dates. And also to add drop shadows. When creating a more complex planner page, you will learn how to use the blend tool. How to round corners on a rectangle. How to create a posted note look-alike element for your planner page. How to create a wavy text in a few seconds, and how to create a squared paper effect. Finally, I will teach you how to add decorations and color on your planner page and how to create a color group from your decorative elements. By the end of this class, you will have made a personalized planner page and you will have led skills in the use of Adobe Illustrator that will be useful for the projects to this class is for intermediate students or adventurous beginners. But I've included some downloadable Illustrator files that you can use as a starting point for your tracker. From the simple one to the more complex ones. Okay, so if you're ready, let's get started. 2. Class Project: The project for this class is to create a planner page. You can create either a simple planner or a more advanced one. You can create a planner with decorations, a post-it note space for a to-do list or anything else you would like to use to organize your wound. To get your downloads, you will need a password and the password is be sure to share your project in the project section, you just have to click Create Project. And then upload a cover image at the title. And maybe add another image. And just hit Publish. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask here in the discussion section, I'm here for you. 3. What You Are Going To Learn: We're going to make Festival, this simple monthly spread. So I will show you how to do the grid and how do the little squares. And if you like how to add the drop shadow. Then after we do this, which is the simplest one, we can move on to more complicated layouts. And these actually they look complicated, but they're not that bad. If you know how to do this is actually quite simple. And I will show you how to add your declarations, how to add your text. I'm spaces for the goals and to-do list and so on. And then I can show you how to add something either like this, so little space to write your notes and ideas. And I show you also to do this sort of little post-it notes, which is quite cute. So we would do all of this. But first, we will start with the simplest one so you can see how everything works. And then we can move on from that. Okay, so let's start with this one in the next lesson. 4. Create a Simple Planner: To make the simple plan, I'm going to create a new document. So Create New. And I'm going to use A4. You can use letter sides if you prefer. I'm going to use the landscape and just leave everything else as it is and create. Alright, so we have our board here to create the planet. And we will need a rectangle. So you can either go to the icon here, rectangle tool, or you can press M on your keyboard. And I'm going to start from around here and make a rectangle. And I give it a thinner stroke. And then we want to, with the rectangle selected, we want to go to Object Path and split into grid. And we can put a preview here. So the rows are usually put five, and the columns will be seven for the seven days of the week. And, uh, okay, so that will give enough spaces for the days. And now we need to add the text here for the days of the week. So I'm going to go to either, you can click here on the Type tool or you can type T on the keyboard, and then click once and you can add the name of the day. Okay, so I start with Wednesday because while there is a reason why, because Wednesday is the day that takes the most space, is the widest text. And to do this, next thing that I want to do, we want to use the widest text. So I'm not just going crazy and start with Wednesday, the week. So one thing that we need to do is to check that this text is actually aligned center. So let me go. And I showed this in my other class to do the habit tracker. But I will explain it here as well just in case you haven't done that class. What you need to do, you want to align this text with a box because you could simply just use the alt key and Shift and then drag it to make a Copy and then Control D. So it's not too bad, but sometimes it wouldn't be aligned properly. So some of these are not aligned correctly. So to make sure that they do align correctly, I do this little trick here. So you click on the box, then click on the hold down the Shift key and click on the text. And then let go of the Shift key and click on the box again. And you will have this blue highlights here, this blue box. And then you go to Align, Horizontal, Align Center, and click it. And it will align it perfectly with your books. And actually, before you do this, if you want to change the font, I'm not going to change it, but if you want to change the font, you should do that now, because otherwise you will have to redo everything again. So now that we've done this, I'm going to click on one of the boxes and check the width of the box because they're not exactly square. So you copy this Control C, and we will need the number when we move this across. So select the text, right-click and transform and move. And in here we paste that number that we copied in the horizontal, then vertical is 0. Then we copied. And now we can do control D to repeat the days. And now we can change it to the actual days of the week. All right, so we have today is now and if you want, you can add a little line here to separate the days. So we go to either here, the icon, and you have to click it and press it for one or two seconds. And this will come up. And then you choose the segment tool. So we just go, let's do it a bit bigger and click and drag it up. And if you hold the Shift key, it will do a straight line. Okay, and now we can click and drag it and hold down the Alt key and the Shift key. And now we can do the control D to repeat the action. And we have this nice structure now. And the next thing we need to add is the little square. If you want to add this least squares for the day, you can just read today without the squares if you prefer. But if you want, I'm going to go to the rectangle tool or just click M on your keyboard, or rather press M on your keyboard. And if you hold down the Shift key, it would make a perfect square. And I will align it here. And of course you can put it, oops. You can put it on this side if you prefer. I quite like it on this side. And then what I do is I just click, hold down the Alt key and the Shift key and make a Copy. And then Control D to make copies on all across. And if you want to add the drop shadow, make sure is the square root as a filling. So as a fill of white. Because otherwise the drop shadow, we're not work like I did here. Okay? And then if you hold down the Shift key, you can select all of the little squares. And then with Alt key pressed and the shift, you click and drag and then Control D. And there we go. We have the spaces for the numbers now for the dates. And if you want to add the drop shadow, you select your square. You go to Effect, Stylize and drop shadow. And as you can see, it's already put something here. So you can play with the settings. You can make it less opaque or more opaque. You can move where the shadow is. So you can put it on this side or that side. And also if it's coming from the top, from the bottom. And I'll blend it is so you can make it really blurry or quite dark. And when you happy with it, you can just press Okay. And if you want to apply the drop shadow to all of them, you can just select all of the squares. I'm just going to select these ones for now. And again, effect, stylize, drop shadow. And it will keep the latest settings that you used. So we just say, okay, and you have a drop shadow on all of them. And this is basically the simple planner page, the simplest version that you can do. And the next one, we're going to do a little bit more complicated version. So, but it's, it's actually not difficult to do. So I will show you this in the next lesson. See you there. 5. Create An Advanced Planner: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to do this type of planner. So what we need to do is have our new document. So Create New. And I'm going to use again an A4 document. But again, you can use a different size if you like. Then I'm going to copy this and put it here to have it as a reference so you can see what I'm going to do. First thing we want to do is to make this type of element. And to do this, we go here on the left. There's the rectangle tool, the ellipse tool. And we press the rounded rectangle tool. And if you press the Shift key, you will have a sort of square. Like this. Maybe. Doesn't matter, decides we going to change it? But if I find that, if I do around this side, so around 40 maybe. Let's see, 37 millimeters, more or less. It gives a good spacing in-between. So hold down the Alt key and click and drag this and hold down the Shift key as well. And then we need to select both of them. So either select them like this or just click on one and then Shift key and click on the other. And we go to Object, Blend, Blend option. And we, sometimes, it usually comes up as a smooth color. We want the specified steps and we want five because we already have two. So we will have seven of these altogether. And press, Okay. And it looks like nothing happens, but we go to Object. So we have actually set the options and now we tell it to make the blend. And the next thing you want to do is to go to object and expand. So now we can ungroup it if we need to. And the next thing we need to do is to create another four lines. So hold down the Alt key and the Shift key, and we drag it down and then Control D. So we have our squares here for the calendar. And what we need to do is actually make it a little bit smaller. And we can make it a bit taller like this. Okay. We can always change it afterwards. Alright, so we need to add the days now. We need to have a text box and we can write Monday for sample. And I'm going to send it off centered already. And then this time I can't really use that trick that we used before. But I'm going to do all the different editing that I want to do. Change the font, decide on the sides. And then I'm going to copy it across. And if you have the smart guides on, which is the pink lines that you see here, it will help you when you are aligning. C will tell you where the center is when you're aligning the text. Or you can do control D. And then I think it's actually quite worked quite well because this one was aligned in the center. So you can do it this way. And then you can just change these to the actual names of the day. And I usually start with Monday, but I know some people prefer to start with a Sunday or Saturday. So this is the beauty of the planet when you make it yourself, you can do it however you like. Okay, so we have the squares for the days. Now we need to do the little circles there. If you want to add something to write the number, the date, you don't have to, of course. And I'm going to go to the Ellipse Tool and make a little circle. Maybe, let's say five millimeters is fine. I'm going to give it. A white fill. And we can put it somewhere around here. We need to give it a stroke as well. Kay? To find, tune it, you can just move it with the arrows. And that's how you do it. Maybe it could be a bit bigger, actually. I'm going to make it a little bit bigger. Something like that. Then what you can do is you can select all of them and copying them down. Just hold down the Shift key while you're selecting them. And then click and drag. And then Control D. And then you can check to see if he needs adjusting, but I think it's working out quite well. Okay. So we have the little circles for the numbers if you want to add them. And now we can add, for example, the month and the year. You can write it here. So for that, again, we need the text tool and we can write month. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to change this. And I have actually both this font from, I think it was Creative Market, but you can use any other font that is already available here with Illustrator. But I quite like this one. So I'm gonna make it a bit bigger. And then I can do is I can add a line. So you can write the month and give it a little bit of stroke. And then we can group this. Actually, I'm going to make a copy of this. And right in here. And make a copy of this as well. And then you can select the month and the line and Control G. And here again, takes the end line and control G. You can right-click and choose Group. And the next thing, we can add a space for your goals for the month. So to do this, we go to the rectangle tool. And we do a little rectangle like that. Let's make it bigger. And then I'm gonna give it a fill, like a light gray. And to make it with the rounded edges, you need to do is either press a on your keyboard or go to the direct selection tool. And then you click. If you see this little round dots here, you click there, you click and drag, and you make it. Depending on how much you drag it, you'll make it completely round there. And it does it on both sides. So I'm going to show you again. Click and drag. You can live below that or you can make it quite rounded. And then you just make a copy. So click and drag with the Alt and then Control D to make a copy. And you can write here. So it takes to go goals for the month and make it bigger. And for the to-do list, we just simply use the line tool. So click and drag and use the Shift key to make it completely straight and give it a little bit of a stroke. So we have this thin line here. And then use the alt key and the Shift key and click and drag. And then Control D to make more copies than do like that. And then here we can write to do list just to do or whatever you wish to write in there. And if you want to add the little dots there, the little circle, you go to the Ellipse tool. You can just click, press L on your keyboard. And this just a five millimeter. And of course we'd give it a white fill. And we've put it somewhere there. Oops. Try to stoke there and then hold down the Alt. A key and then click and drag and then Control D. So you have a little space where you put your check mark. And then if you want to do this little post-it note, you can simply go to the rectangle tool and make a square like that. Some little bit smaller. Then we add a color. So actually if we, if you press the I on your keyboard, you can give it. You can use a color that is already in euro working space. And then we need another rectangle for this bit here. So let's go closer and we add another rectangle. And this one we make it a bit darker or you can make it lighter if you prefer. If you double-click. Just show you if you go on these swatches here, you double-click on the fill. You can change that color, make it a little bit darker. Now we can group it control G. And we can add the drop shadow. So like we did before, we go to Effect, Stylize and drop shadow. I'm going to move it. Actually. Maybe we can move with this side and we can move it to the bottom. Okay. And we have a little posted there. And we can just make a copy of this and write notes or important nodes or whatever it is that you wish to add there. And there's one more thing I wanted to show you to do something like this. So if you can see this, text here is not straight, like it would normally be. So I write here. If I make it bigger, you can see that this is straight and this is kind of wavy. And to do this, it's quite simple. We need a shape. So I'm going to take the rectangle tool and do a rectangle like this. Then I'm going to make this a bit bigger. What we need to do is to make sure that this shape in the layers panel. So if you go, if you open the Layers panel, this shape needs to be above this text. So if it's the other way, round is not going to work. So the shape needs to be on top and the text needs to be below. To make these wavy, we go to effect, distort and transform and twist. And you can see, if you click on the preview, you will be able to see how it changes. Sometimes you have to click and unclick ones because otherwise it won't show you. Okay, so when you're happy with the shape, you click Okay. And then you go to Object, Expand Appearance. And now we select both of these. We go to object, envelope distort, make with top object, and you have a wavy text there. So let's make it a bit smaller. And then we can expand it a little bit like that. And of course you can use just the normal texts. You don't have to do this, but I thought it would be nice to show you. Okay. Oh, I put some circles there as well so you can just use this one. Make a copy of it, and then maybe make it a bit bigger. So you have somewhere there to check as well. So that's one option. And if you want to see how to do this other option, it's basically the same thing that we've been doing with a bigger grids. So with this grid here, we make a rectangle. Alright, and then give it a stroke. And then we go to Object Path and split into grid. And what I do is I put the preview on. And I will add some just crawling with a mouse. When you select one of these cells, you can scroll. And you will add more columns. So maybe something like that or maybe one more cake. So it gives you this effect over like a paper, like an exercise book paper. And if you want a thicker outline around it, you can do another rectangle. Just align it and then give it no fill but a stroke. And then we make the stroke a bit thicker. So you have that effect there. Okay, So this is the more advanced planner example. And then if you want, you can add some delay this. And I will show you how to do this in the next lesson. 6. Let's Add Some Decorations: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to add some delay, this, some decorations. And of course, if you want to save running, you can add your declarations in black and white or otherwise, you can add dislike colorful flowers or whatever it is that you like. To do that I have some elements already saved. If you do Control Shift and P, you can place, you can choose the image to place. So I'm going to choose this one. I'm going to put this tree and then we'll see and place. And then you can just click and drag and you will be able to add your image. Okay? And then what I'll do is I'll just put them somewhere. Maybe do them a little bit smaller. So somewhere like this. And I'm going to send them at the back. So it's Control Shift and the left bracket to send them at the back. And what I do is because at the moment they're quite strong in color, so you might not be able to see the text very well. So I'm going to select all of them and bring down the opacity a little bit, something like that. So the next thing we want to do is to move this text for the moment. Then we need to create a rectangle. I mean, if you want, you can leave it like this. And if you save this using the outward, it will cut where the roses cross the outward light. But if you want to see what it looks like, we can create a rectangle here. And basically this rectangle, it's aligned with the top of the outward. Then we would the rectangle selected. We do Control C and Control V for the back. So we have another rectangular the back. And the roses are sort of sandwiched between the rectangles. Then you select everything. So the two rectangles and the roses. And you right-click and you make clipping mask. And that way you will see exactly what it looks like when you print it. If you want to change this, you can double-click and you'll be able to move the roses and maybe even make it, make them bigger or smaller. And then double-click again outside. And we can add this. This looks like it's at the back, so Control Shift, right bracket to bring it at the front. This one as well. Then we can align them. And we have our decorated planner. If you want. Instead of this block, you can add something. So if this is, it's got colors already. You can add maybe something here that is colorful. So let's, let's see. I'm going to use my color palette because I liked the colors from here. And I'm going to use maybe pink, so it's too dark. And then if you want, you can use this panel here to make it more opaque and more pustule. So when you write here, you won't have problems and even printing it won't be too bad. Then again, you can color these as well. Maybe some code that looks nice with a pink, nice green. And you can do it again a bit later, like that. And you can add a fill to these as well. So for somebody's Saturday and Sunday can be, these are grouped, so I need to group them. So these daisy I can be a different color because it's the weekend. So we can give it a no, Let's see. Orangey color. And DSO days can be again a, another color. Or if you want, you can see double-click here, control C, double-click away and control V. And let's put the opacity as it was before, and then you can pick colors from here. So for example, for the notes, if you press I on your keyboard is the eyedropper tool. And you can add colors from there. And then if it's too bright, you can always bring the opacity down. So you can put a yellow, for example, and bring the opacity down. So you can use the colors from your elements to color this. And this is actually an image. So it won't let you do a color group. But if I show you quickly, we can image trace this. So if we use the 16 colors and it will image trace this. So now if we say expand, we can actually use this to make a color group, a new color group. There's probably going to be loads of colors, but you go to swatches, swatches panel, and you press this new color group, this little folder. You can give it a name there. And you say, okay, and as you can see, you get all these colors, which are from the rows. As I said, they won't work if it's a picture, but if you trace it like like I just did, then it will give you the option of using the colors. And then you can use these colors to color your elements. And at the moment is still 33% opacity. So it will give you this light colors and you can use that. I hope you have enjoyed this lesson and I really can't wait to see your planner pages. 7. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on completing the class. I enjoyed sharing my tips and tricks on how to create a printable planner. And I hope you have learned some new skills which will be useful to you in future. Your next step is to complete the project for this class and post a picture in the project section. I would really love to see what you create. Please remember to hit the Follow button here on Skillshare so that you can be notified straightaway when I post a new class. And you can also check my profile for more classes. And if you'd like to keep in touch, you can find me on Instagram at category anti-art. Or you can also check my website at casual anti-art dot com. Thanks again for taking the class and I'm looking forward to see you in my next class. Bye.