DIY Diary

I freely confess that I am an avid lover of stationery. I have more blank notebooks than is entirely sensible, and I am apparently incapable of sticking to one diary for an entire year. I tried to combat this tendency by buying the most glorious enormous pink Filofax, but even the beautiful leather binder can’t keep me faithful to one diary format.

I’ve tried the Time Management system, the week to view in columns, the week to view with notes, and am currently using a very ambitious page to view, which I’ve been keeping as a sort of a scrapbook.

Over the past year or two I’ve been thinking of making my own diary pages. I’ve looked at the customisable templates over at DIY Planner, thought about hacking a Moleskine, and oooohed over some beautiful planners at Etsy and Little Otsu.

Finally, today, I have bitten the bullet, dusted off my Typography degree, and designed my own planner, which works around the way that I organise my week.

I’ve left enough room down the middle to separate the two pages, and to punch holes so that I can fit them into my binder. I’m not going to print these pages double sided, I plan to use the blank sheets between each week as extra space for writing down notes and ideas.

Once I’ve used the pages for a few weeks, I’ll think about printing them onto nicer paper so that I can use a variety of pens without the ink bleeding through to the other side. I might even consider designing a cover, and putting it up on Lulu, so that other people can use it too. Or perhaps releasing the file as a PDF, so you can print out the pages and use them to make your own planner.