Building a Digital Planner for Goodnotes in Affinity Publisher V1

Class Description

Hi! I am Jen Lezan,  I run a creative studio (Bella+Sophia Creative) based out of the Midwest that focuses on Graphic Design, Surface Pattern Design and Illustration. I have a background working in the fashion industry and teaching in higher education. I specialize in creating surface pattern designs and other illustrated digital media for the fashion, product and stationary industries . You may know me from my previous classes here on skillshare which have focused on trend forecasting and developing trend reports. Aside from my work in fashion and graphic design, I really enjoy planning! In addition to paper planning, I have a fond appreciation for digital planning. Some of my top selling products are my digital planners and stickers sets in my Etsy shop. Which is why I am excited to share this next class with you. Building a digital planner in Affinity Publisher is not nearly as hard as you think. I wanted to share some tips, my knowledge and help you build a digital planner that you can customize to your needs. I also find that digital planners are less intimidating as you don’t feel so much pressure when creating spreads in them because you can always undo. Finally, digital planners are a bit more eco friendly than your traditional paper planners as you can reuse them over and over again. 

What the class is about

In this class, you will learn how to create a linked digital planner in Affinity Publisher. I really enjoy using Affinity publisher for creating planners and printable because it is so easy to create precise shapes, space them evenly, add vector effects to the shapes and link all of your pages to prepare them for your digital note taking app.  It’s also easy to add dates to the planner and keep the numbers and shapes properly aligned using the align tools. 

You can choose to create either a dated or an undated planner as your class project. I’ll outline options for both and we’ll go over the pros and cons of creating a dated vs. an undated planner. This course is a fantastic class to also get comfortable using Affinity Publisher - as you are going through the basic process of creating in the program and you get a tangible project that you can use after you are done. 

A few of the skills students will learn

You will learn how create your own digital planner in Affinity Publisher. We will start with the basics of understanding the tool bars and functions in the Affinity Publisher workspace, then we will start to build out our digital planner. You will learn how to design basic layouts, create pages, get an understanding of the layers function in the program, learn how to create tabs and how to link those tabs to pages in your layout. We will also go over how to use the shape tools, the line tool and how to use the the move and align functions. You will get a better understanding of the layer FX tools and how to add things like embossing and shadows to make items feel more 3-D. We will learn how to create basic buttons and icons and even how to create simple stickers (I’ll have a more in-depth course on this coming soon). Finally, we will go over how to export your file for use in note taking apps like Goodnotes and how to load it into the app on your iPad. We will go over some simple tasks in Goodnotes like how to write on your planner, how to add text, how to add your stickers and how to duplicate pages and spreads. 

You can use the planner you create in this class to offer as a free download if you are trying to build an email list, sell it on your website or a site like Etsy or Creative Market. To make things easier, I will be including the class project affinity publisher template that you can edit and get acquainted with before you start your own. I will also include a ODF  you can buy other styles of my planners there) or just use it yourself!

Supplies Needed for this Class 

All you need to take this class is your iPad, The Goodnotes app or any other note taking app and of course your laptop or computer with Affinity Publisher. I hope you enjoy the course, let’s get creating!

Who the class is geared toward or if any prior knowledge or experience is required

This class is geared towards beginners. You don’t need any prior experience using the Affinity Publisher software as I will be going over the basics to help you get comfortable using the software. 

Some very basic technical abilities will be needed as I will be showing you step by step how to use the procreate app on the iPad  and how to build your pattern in the Affinity Photo program on a desktop to create a raster based repeat pattern.