Even though so much of our life has switched to digital, keeping track of dates and events in a physical planner has never gone out of style. There’s just something about keeping a physical copy of your schedule or important events in a planner printing project that is undeniably appealing. Creating an attractive planner is a popular book to plan and self-publish for your own use or for commercial purposes.
The Flexibility of Planner Printing
There are very few organizational tools as versatile as planners. They can be crafted to be used in a specific year or for a school calendar making them just as beneficial to students and educators as they are to those in the business world.
Or, the target planner consumer might be someone who is utilizing the planner for a specific event, activity or time frame while blank, open-ended planners are also appealing as the ultimate in flexibility, allowing users to fully customize their planner to their own unique needs. If you are considering creating a planner, follow along with our simple steps that will walk you through coming up with your concept, crafting a winning design, and planner printing.
1. Choose the Planner Printing Type
Planners can be developed for many purposes so the first step in making your own is to decide how your planner will be used. You can make a specialized planner that will fit your user’s needs when you start off by deciding whom you are making it for and how they will want to use it.
- General Planners: These planners are appropriate for any age or purpose but the cover art, graphics, and overall design will appeal to a specific type of user.
- Professional Planners: Whether a user owns a small business or needs a planner to help them keep track of their appointments, zoom calls, or sales cycles, professional planners can be crafted with the businessperson in mind.
- School Planners: These are perfect for use by anyone in the educational field. Student planners can be made for lower-grade students all the way to planners designed with a college student in mind. Planners for teachers or professors can be created that educators will love, while parent planners are perfect for the busy family with school-age children and multiple schedules to juggle.
- Topic-Specific: Planners can be designed to help users with specific scheduling or planning needs. Fitness planners, wedding planners, and planners that are used to track and schedule diet or meals are all popular planner types that are needed by a targeted customer.
2. Select the Format for Planner Printing
Once you have decided on who will be using your planner and what its basic purpose will be, the next step is to decide how to format your planner printing project.
Planners that are structured in a monthly format will typically use a two-page spread to present a full month separated by daily or weekly pages that provide space for more detailed information. General, school, and professional planners all benefit from the convenience of this month-at-a-glance formatting while topic-specific planners may also be formatted with a focus on monthly pages.
Planners can be created with a focus on a weekly format, providing two-page spreads for each week that will give users plenty of space to work with for a busy professional work week in business or education. Some topic-specific books like meal/diet planners and fitness planners also work well with a weekly format.
Daily planners provide an even more focused approach to formatting. A single page or even a half page is dedicated to each calendar day, making these perfect for students, parents, or even small business owners whom all may have many tasks and activities to keep track of every day.
- Top Tip: Start Date vs Open Calendar Consider who will be using your book when you decide on adding specific dates to your planner. Planners used in a school setting may align with traditional fall and spring semesters while professional and general-use planners may opt to begin at the start of the calendar year.
Wedding, fitness, or other specialty planners may even opt to be structured for 18 months rather than a traditional 12 months, extending their use over a longer time frame. All planner printing projects can be developed with a specific year in mind or they can be formatted in a general month format, allowing users to customize the dates in their calendar so your planner is evergreen until a user personalizes it to match their own start date.
4. Select the Right Binding for Planner Printing
Another design decision you need to make is what type of binding to use for your planner printing. Each type of binding provides a different look and feel to a planner as well as gives you an opportunity to personalize and customize your planner for your target user.
Perfect Binding gives your planner a very professional finish by utilizing a glued spine that secures the pages of the book together. While Perfect bound books will not lay perfectly flat, planners made with this style are perfect for use in professional settings.
Plastic Coil Binding is ideal to use with heavy-use planners or those made for students with smaller hands because the plastic loops and hole punch design make it easy to flip the pages of a book. Plastic coil binding is also available in a range of colors, adding to its flexibility in creating a memorable book, but books made with this binding must allow extra margin space to make up for the coil and hole punches needed on each page with the plastic coils.
Saddle Stitch Binding utilizes heavy-duty staples to secure folded pages of a book. This type of binding works well with smaller-scale pocket planners or month-at-a-glance planners that are used more for reference than recording minute details.
Wire-O Binding is similar to plastic coil binding, but Wire-O uses sturdy wire to secure the book’s pages. This style of binding can appear very professional and the strong wire used in the coils and holes punched in the book’s margins may be designed in a few colors to match the look of your planner.
5. Set Your Planner Printing Project Apart
All planners should be structured with a cohesive look and feel throughout with coordinating color choices, graphic elements, fonts and design styles. But an appealing aspect of planner printing is how customizable they are.
And while basic planners without all the bells and whistles are popular and used by many people, planners can include thoughtful details that set them apart from others in the retail market. By upping the usability of a planner printing project, creators can broaden their appeal and increase their potential for sales.
- Educational planners can include a place to record schedules by semester or year as well as spots for teacher contact information. They could also include local or state holidays, school calendar information and plenty of note taking space.
- Fitness planners could provide dedicated space for workout or gym details as well as a place to put fitness goals and achievements.
- Food or diet planners may offer ample room for weekly meal planning, grocery lists, or even daily food tracking.
- General planners geared towards kids might include fun art or graphic details or space for doodling.
- Professional planners could offer space to keep client or customer details and professional goals as well as note space for meetings and other business communications.
6. Sell Your Planner Printing Project with an Attractive Cover
Part of the initial appeal of planners is how they look, and cover design plays a large role. Just like the cover of a novel, a planner’s cover lets potential users know what to expect from the rest of the book. Invest in a cover design expert’s help if needed to make sure that the cover of your planner catches the eye of your targeted customer. Bold graphics, beautiful photography, and well-chosen fonts can all add to the appeal of your planner.
7. Partner with a Printer
When you are ready for planner printing, be sure to work with a printer like Dazzle Printing to ensure that your final product will look just as amazing as you imagine it will. And Dazzle Printing’s low-quantity planner printing model means that you can order the number of planners you need right now and you can also re-order more later as demand for your planner grows.
A quality printer will offer a variety of paper and cover materials that will make your planner printing project shine as well as the chance to view a PDF or hard copy proof of your planner before you go to print so you can make sure that your book looks perfect. Dazzle Printing has helped countless creators with planner printing over the years, and they are ready to help you get started with your next planner project.
