My trusty daily planner is always with me. It serves as my guide during work hours and as my brain-download when I have an idea. Being a bit right-brained, I need a day planner with big spaces – something I can doodle and sketch in as well as keep track of meetings, teleconferences, birthdays, and all that other important stuff. Most of the day planners that I thumb through at the store have a week on each page, so for a standard 5 x 8¼” planner this means you get about 2.5″ by 1.375″ writing space per day. Not good enough!

I’ve been designing and building my own daily planners for a few years now. I originally got the idea from a DIY design book that included a chapter on how to design and make your own bound blank notebooks. It’s a great way to save some money, recycle some paper, and fave fun designing something useful. It’s also a great on-hand example of your design skills to carry around.

This tutorial assumes that you have a basic working understanding of Adobe Photoshop, but the process doesn’t even actually require you to use Photoshop, so anybody should be able to make their own planner.

The Prep

The supply requirements are fairly simple. You’ll need paper, a used hardback book that you don’t mind disemboweling, glue (PVA Glue or a contact cement like PowerPoxy will work, or something similar), a needle and thread, a ruler and pencil, and a reliable printer with a good supply of ink. I also like to find a good online calendar with holidays to use as a guide. This one, for 2011, is fairly straight-forward and easy to reference.

This is a good chance to recycle some perfectly good materials that would normally end up in a landfill. I like to find old stock of letter-size notebook, graph or ledger paper to use. Of course, you can go with any size you want, as long as it’s all the same and you can find a way to feed it through a printer. You also might want to consider the weight. A heavier bond paper will be more durable and take your creative abuse a little more gracefully. You’ll be printing, and eventually writing, on both sides, so keep that in mind as you select your stock.

They way my planner is set up, one sheet will cover 4-5 days, so you’ll need around 75 sheets of paper. This will give you a little extra, in case of mistakes. You may be able to talk your local print shop or office supply store out of some paper if they just plan on tossing or recycling it. Again – great opportunity to divert needless waste and create something useful out of used materials.

The cover can be made from a book, or you can make the cover yourself. There are tons of useful tutorials out there on how to bind your own books. The DIY Bookbinding tutorial is quite useful. You can also, in most places, visit a print shop or a Kinko’s and there’s a good chance they provide some sort of book binding service. I’m not going to go into tremendous detail about bookbinding here because there is such a wealth of information out there and many different ways to do it. Suffice to say that you can really get creative here: I’ve seen book covers made out of wood, old vinyl records, sushi rolling mats, cardboard beer bottle six pack cartons, flattened tin cans, you name it.

For the purposes of this tutorial: I like to pick up a hard back from my local library’s give away bin with the intention of ripping it’s pages out. You can find a lot of personality in your local library cut-out bin. Old romance covers, interesting science manuals, etc. I love the worn look, but just make sure that it isn’t too bent out of shape and weak. If you love your planner like I love mine, it’s going to go through a lot in the next year.

It needs to be around 3/4 of an inch thick, or somewhere between 100 and 150 pages. Lots of hardbacks are already the right dimensions in regards to height and width, around 5.5 x 8.5 inches, and we’re going to be folding our letter-size paper in half, so that’s a good thing. Last year I chose to us H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History, and it has served me well.

The Layout

There’s a lot going on here logistically. We’re going to use half of one side of a sheet of paper to represent one day, two if it’s the weekend. This means that each full sheet of paper will have four or five days to cover. We’re also going to be making “sewn signatures” by folding four sheets of paper in half and then sewing them together down the spine. This comes later, but knowing now will help you visualize the layout process.

Working with sewn signatures presents a little bit of a puzzle to solve. We need to get the order of the dates correct, and since we’re working in sets of four folded pieces of paper, we need a way to visually map the dates and where they will be printed. At first, this may seem a simple task – and it will be once you conceptualize the pattern – but we are dealing with a bit of a basic algorithm here.

This series of diagrams (Fig. 1-4) shows how to map out the dates for each four page, sewn signature unit, starting with January 1st through 18th. Imagine that the left-hand column of rectangles represents a stack of four sheets of paper, face up. The right-hand column, then, is that same stack flipped over and facing down. At this point it also helps to visualize this by making a dummy: fold four pieces of paper in half together and hold it like you would a book. If you’re looking at the “cover,” then you’re looking at the bottom right page in Fig. 1, our starting point. More specifically, you’re looking at the right half of the back of that sheet of paper. To further complicate things, we have weekends. I’ve chosen to have Saturday and Sunday share a page, but it’s not necessary. The year we’re modeling happens to start on a Sunday (hurray for New Year’s falling on a Saturday!), so, as you can see, our starting point is the top half of the right half of the back of the bottom sheet of paper.

You still with me?!

Once you wrap your head around all that, it’s a simple task of planning out each sheet, front and back, before we print them off. Our first set of moves is shown in red in Fig. 2. Again, it helps to have a dummy to go off of. Even though it may seem complicated at first, the pattern is a simple “weaving” pattern. And the weekends sharing a page doesn’t really complicate the process all that much, it just means we have two dates to cover on a page every sixth page. It’s not a bad idea, throughout this process, to periodically check in with your online calendar to make sure that your dates are matching up to their respective days of the week. I would even suggest printing out Fig. 1 and using it to write in the dates each time you go through this…you’re going to do it about 20 times. Having a visual aid handy really makes things a lot easier. Keep in mind, if you use Fig. 1 as a template, that the weekends will change positions, since 3/8 is already as reduced as it’s going to get. In other words, the weekends can fall on any page.

The next set of moves, shown in blue in Fig. 3, basically follow the same “weave” pattern back down, but this time on the “inside” halves of the two columns. If you’ve been following along with your dummy set, this should all be making sense by now.

Making adjustments for the weekends along the way, we end up at long last back where we started, on the half-page right next to Jan. 1st at the bottom of the diagram. The diagram in Fig. 4 show’s the pattern in its entirety, weaving up the outside and then back down the inside. Wasn’t so tough, was it? When it’s time, we’ll be ready to start the process off all over again, replacing Jan. 1st with Jan. 19th and building out the next 18 or so dates.

Following the pattern presented in Fig. 1 through Fig. 4 is crucial to keeping the process, let alone the days, organized. It’s also quite important that you follow along with your online calendar, or whatever you’re using to map out the year, so that you know where the weekends fall. Don’t worry, after a few rounds you’ll have it down pat. For now though, rather than get ahead of ourselves, and since we have a set to start with, let’s take a break from all the planning and puzzle-solving and do a little designing! The graphic design side of this project, for my purposes, is very light. I just want the day, date, and holiday if applicable. I’m going to use Adobe Photoshop, but one could just as easily use any basic word processing software. Obviously, this is another area in which the scope of creativity is up to you. Have fun! Be inventive! Last time I checked, next year’s only going to happen once…

The Design

Let’s open a new file. Make it letter-size, landscape, and 300 resolution w/ a white background. We’re not designing vectors here: that should be a high enough resolution if we’re just displaying text. Next we’ll set up some guides. The most obvious guide we’ll need is one right down the middle at 5.5″, where the fold will be. We’ll also include one across the middle horizontally at 4.25″, for when there’s a weekend. I also like to set up a 0.25″ perimeter margin around each ¼ page.

At this point your screen should resemble the screen shot to the right. The rest is easy: pick a font that holds your interest (I might suggest one you want to get to know over the next 365/366 days) and begin placing the dates in the appropriate place on the page – whatever that means to you, as long as the dates correspond with your diagram. I like to set up four text layers right off the bat, as it’s inevitable that you’ll get weekends landing on both sides of your template. You just hide the layers when not being used. This is an ideal time to save your file as a .PSD, as you’ll just be switching the dates out continuously from here on.

I’m going with Pica, a serif font that has a retro typewriter fee, and I’m going with #555 for the hexidecimal, 64, 56, 55, 31 in CMYK. Double check to make sure that the “Sunday” text layers are hidden if you’re not using them. If everything’s in place, then we’re ready to print. Flip it over, change the text layers to match the corresponding top page on our diagram for the Back, and print again. Repeat, going down the line, for all four pages. Then stack them in the appropriate order (Jan. 8th, 9th and 10th should be face-up on top, Jan. 6th and 12th next, and so on) and set aside. Like I mentioned before, you’ll do this 20 more times, so stay organized! I like to stagger my stacks of four so that they’re easier to sort through and work with on the next step, which is creating the sewn signatures. Organization is key – if you let the slightest detail slip, it could throw off your dates and/or pages.

If you haven’t already reloaded your template with the next set of dates, do it. Print, rinse and repeat the entire process until you reach Dec. 31st. Then get out your favorite thimble, maybe put on the kettle and find a comfortable place to do some sewing!

The Stitch

Grab the very last foursome that you printed off, should be the one with Dec. 31st. Fold all four pages together in half – this is fairly easy to be accurate with if you have a straight edge to work with. Give it a good crease, and then grab your ruler and pencil.

There are a lot of different patterns to use here. Just pick a pattern that makes sense and is symetrical. I’ve marked the even inches on the outside of the spine, and the odd numbers on the inside.

The next step is to sew. If you’re a novice seamster or seamstress, don’t despair. This is sewing 101. You don’t need anything fancy here: no one’s gonna see the thread when we’re done. Something like polyester thread will work just fine, it’s cheap and fairly tough stuff.

Here’s where you should skip ahead to the section on binding if you already know what you’re doing.

I like to get a good amount of thread to start with, at least twice as much as the surface I’m covering, so 20-24″. Thread your needle so that there’s about 2/3 to 1/3 thread on either side, and make a small knot at the very end of the longer side. Start at the bottom-most mark and sew to the top, then double back, filling the gaps between thread on each side. When you get back to the knot, you can tied the remaining thread around it and then snip the loose ends. You’re now an expert paper tailor.

the Binding

Only 20 more to go! Crank those sewn signatures out and then give those hands a nice warm soak. Next were going to bind our planner. If you’re using a hardback, tear out the pages, leaving the cover and spine as intact as you possibly can.

Homemade book binding is yet another area where you can go with a multitude of techniques. Mine is simple: a generous, even amount of PVA glue applied to the inside of my hardback cover’s spine and a thin strip applied to my 21 sewn signature spines. PVA glue (polyvinyl acetate) is better known as “good ol’ white glue,” and it makes the most sense here because they work the best on porous surfaces, like paper. You could also use a contact cement or even Gorilla glue (sparingly!), if you don’t trust the resolve of PVA.

Arrange your sewn signatures in the correct order. Should be straight forward, just look at the dates on the “front cover” of each and arrange them chronologically. Apply a generous amount of glue to the inside of the hardback cover’s spine. You can use your finger to even out any excess spots – that’s another nice feature to working with PVA, it’s generally non-toxic. Then apply a thin strip of glue to each sewn signature and then place them, still in correct order, centered in the hardback cover.

Professional book binders use a special vice. I’m using my bookshelf. Whatever apparatus you use, you don’t want to squeeze the spine too tight or the glue will dry in a rigid way and your bind will be weak and possibly uneven as a result. Just a nice, snug spot between some heavier books to hold it in place will do. Be sure to clean up any excess glue. I don’t have to tell you what stray glue can do to your pages. It’s ideal to let the glue set overnight, or at least a couple of hours more than is recommended in the instructions.

Wake up in the morning and reach for your new 20xx daily planner! Now you have a place to plan out the rest of the amazing things you’ll accomplish next year. Job well done.