Intro
For the next few blog posts of mine, I figured it might be fun to give myself some design projects to work on over the summer to keep my creative juices flowing. For this first post in what I’m calling my Summer Design Series, I’ve been working on something relaxing, something that I’ve been doing since high school: bullet journaling and designing my own agenda book pages.
About Bullet Journaling
For those unfamiliar with bullet journaling, it’s a way of keeping track of lists, calendars, agendas, birthdays, health and wellness, goal tracking, and more! One of the key differences between bullet journaling and regular journaling is the bullet journal pages are built on using bulleted lists and dot grid pages, instead of complete sentences and lined paper. Bullet journaling also gives more flexibility to make a page layout a piece of art, depending on the type of list or page you want to set up. Using color is a must: the more, the better! It seems daunting, but it can be really relaxing once you get into a method of setting up your pages, lettering, and creating designs.
The Process and Final Products
During the summer before freshman year at Marywood, I bought a discbound dot grid journal with refill pages, so I could easily take pages out and in without ripping any paper (I personally bought the journal with the clear transparent cover so I could customize the cover design as well). I also bought some academic calendar insert pages, so I wouldn’t have to draw out each month’s calendar. The only pages I wound up drawing out were the individual weeks of the semester, which included a minimal header design with the range of dates of the week, and the highlighted days of the week with extra space underneath so I could write any homework assignments or reminders. Because I kept it simple with repeating that minimal page layout for every week, I was able to have a personalized bullet journal agenda book without stressing over creating over-the-top page designs. To the left, I’ve added a little cheat sheet of design ideas I created for myself when I was first starting with bullet journaling. The best part is, you can make it your own and create page layouts to your liking without being confined to pre-set pages in a regular agenda book or journal.
Here are some of the pages I’ve made for previous years, as well as some fun pages (like the top songs and mood tracker) for this coming school year! Hopefully I’ll stay motivated to fill out the mood tracker throughout the year, because once it’s filled up, it’ll be interesting to see how all of the colors look together!
