How to Make a Digital Planner on Canva

Digital planners have revolutionized the way we organize our lives, marrying the convenience of digital access with the satisfying act of logging our plans and tasks. Canva, a graphic design platform, offers a user-friendly suite of tools to create custom digital planners tailored to your personal or professional needs.

Whether you're managing work tasks, outlining travel itineraries, or keeping track of family events and health appointments, a digital planner can help you stay on top of everything with ease.

Getting Started with Canva

Canva makes it simple to get started on creating your own digital planner. With a range of templates and design tools at your fingertips, you'll have the freedom to personalize every aspect of your planner.

Selecting a Planner Template

To kick off your digital planner design in Canva, you first need to choose a base to work from. Canva provides a wide array of free planner templates you can select from.

Whether you prefer a daily, weekly, or monthly layout, you've got options to find a template that suits your needs.

Customize Your Planner Layout

Once you've picked a template, it's time to make it yours. Customize your planner by adjusting the layout to match your routine and preferences.

You can split your tasks into specific to-do lists, set aside space for tracking upcoming events, or even allocate areas for notes and ideas.

This step is where your creative freedom shines—you can play with fonts, colors, and other elements to reflect your personal style.

Familiarize yourself with Design Tools

Canva isn't just a platform with static templates; it's a full-fledged design platform. Take the time to explore the various design tools it offers.

From essential graphic design elements to more advanced features available with a Canva Pro account, learning these tools can enhance your planner's functionality and aesthetics.

Incorporate unique icons, utilize diverse fonts, and experiment with color schemes—all within Canva's intuitive interface.

Designing Your Digital Planner

Creating your digital planner on Canva allows you to tailor every aspect of your planner to suit your unique needs and style.

From setting clear goals to selecting visual elements, each step is crucial to developing a planner that's both functional and visually appealing.

Establishing Objectives

Before you dive into the design, you should define what you want to accomplish with your digital planner.

Whether it's managing your daily tasks, keeping track of a monthly budget, or plotting out yearly goals, your objectives will guide the design choices you make, from the type of planner—daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly—to the sections and tabs you'll include.

Choosing the Right Size

Select a size that's compatible with your intended device, whether it's an iPad or a desktop. Canva provides various preset sizes, but you can also enter custom dimensions. For instance, a standard size for tablets is 768×1024 pixels.

Adding and Modifying Text

You'll want to use text to label sections, add titles, and input details. Canva offers a range of fonts to choose from, so pick ones that reflect your planner's personality while ensuring readability.

For your titles, consider a bold font; for the main text, a clear, easy-to-read font works best.

Working with Colors and Themes

The right color scheme and theme can set the mood for your planner. To change colors, click on an element and select a new hue from the color wheel or enter a hex code for a specific shade.

You may opt for a cohesive color palette that aligns with the theme of your planner—be it professional, personal, or educational.

Incorporating Planner Elements

Canva's library of elements includes shapes, lines, and stickers that you can use to create sections and separation in your planner. To add an element, simply search and select from the menu.

You can also find patterns, graphics, and illustrations to make each page stand out.

Enhancing with Visuals

Apart from static graphics, you can incorporate photos or even videos into your planner cover or sections for a dynamic look. When uploading visuals, make sure they complement the overall design and don't clutter your layout.

Organizing Planner Sections

Effective organization is essential for a functional planner. Create tabs and sections to differentiate between various types of content, such as a to-do list, calendar views, or notes pages.

You can arrange these sections in a way that aligns with how you plan to use your digital planner, ensuring easy navigation and efficiency.

Functional Features of a Digital Planner

To make your digital planner truly effective, you'll want to leverage Canva's features to create elements that aren't just visually appealing, but highly functional.

Adding interactive features and planning tools can elevate your planner from a simple digital notebook to a dynamic organizational system.

Creating Interactive Hyperlinks

You can turn any text or image in your digital planner into hyperlinks, which make navigation between pages effortless. To add a hyperlink:

1. Select the element you want to link.
2. Click on the link icon in the top right toolbar.
3. Enter the page number or URL and hit Enter. This is especially useful for creating an index that can take you to specific sections, like your grocery list or monthly calendar.

Adding Calendar and Date Functions

Incorporate a calendar into your planner pages to keep track of important dates. You can either:

• Create your own calendar using grid lines and text boxes.
• Use a pre-made calendar template and customize it.

Remember to add interactive hyperlinks to dates so you can click through to daily or weekly views.

Implementing To-Do Lists and Checklists

For task management, Canva allows you to create interactive to-do lists and checklists. Here's how:

• Utilize checkbox elements alongside tasks; readers can click to mark them complete.
• Duplicate these checklists across various planner pages for daily or weekly tasks.

Incorporating Habit Trackers and Lists

Habit trackers and various lists (like a grocery list) are key for maintaining routine and organization.

• Design a grid or series of check boxes to visually track your habits.
• For lists, create text boxes aligned with your tasks, and use the duplicate function to add pages as needed.

Finalizing and Exporting Your Planner

As you put the finishing touches on your digital planner on Canva, it’s crucial to make sure it functions seamlessly.

You’ll want to preview and test it, understand your saving and exporting options, and know how to share your final product.

Preview and Test Usability

Before you consider your planner complete, you need to thoroughly test its functionality. Click through each page to check the layout and ensure hyperlinks are working correctly. If anything is off, this is the time to make adjustments.

It's best to duplicate your planner design to preserve the original while testing. If you've incorporated interactive elements, such as tabs or buttons, test them to confirm they're responsive and link to the correct pages.

Save and Export Options

Once you're satisfied with your digital planner:

1. Click the Save button to keep your progress on the Canva website.
2. To export your planner, click on the ‘Download' button in the top right corner.
3. Select PDF as your export format if you intend to use the planner digitally or print it out.

Tip: Choose ‘PDF Print' to save with the highest quality if you're planning to print your planner.

Sharing Your Digital Planner

After downloading, you might want to share your digital planner with others. Canva provides several options to do so:

• Share a link: Canva generates a link that you can send to others, allowing them to view or edit the planner.
• Upload to Cloud Storage: You can also upload your downloaded PDF to cloud storage services for easy sharing.
• Email: Attach the planner PDF directly in an email to send it out.

Sharing through Canva allows you to manage permissions, making sure others can view or edit the planner as needed.

Using Canva for Commercial Purposes

With Canva, you have a range of tools at your fingertips to create personalized planners that can turn into a source of passive income. However, it's crucial to understand the licensing details and how to set up your products for sale properly.

Understanding Canva Pro License

To ensure your digital planners can be sold legally, you'll need to sign up for Canva Pro. This subscription gives you a commercial license permitting you to sell your creations.

With Canva Pro, you can make your planners as cute or as professional as you like; just be aware that there are restrictions on using standalone content like a single photo.

Your digital planner is considered a customized design and thus falls within the bounds of the commercial license; you're good to go as long as you don't use any assets unaltered on their own.

Here's what you should keep in mind about the Canva Pro license:

• Personal vs. Commercial: You can use designs for personal or commercial purposes; selling your personalized planners counts as commercial.
• Canva's Content: Not all content can be used for commercial purposes; check each asset's license.
• Restrictions: Do not sell unaltered Canva content directly, like a single stock photo.

Setting Up for Sale on Platforms

Once you've created your digital planners with customizable planner pages in Canva, you're ready to sell them on platforms like Etsy or Creative Market. Here's a step-by-step approach:

1. Presentation: Showcase your planners with high-quality images.
2. Description: Write clear, compelling product descriptions to highlight what's unique about your planners, such as being fully customizable.
3. Upload: Set up a seller account on your chosen platform, and upload your planners.
4. Pricing: Price your planners competitively, considering both your effort and the going rate for similar products.

Remember, your planner isn't just a product; it's an invitation to organization and creativity for your customers. Keep your listings attractive and up-to-date, and customer reviews will likely follow.