12 Month Yearly Overview Planner Page Layout in Affinity Publisher: Step-by-Step Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to design a 12 month Yearly Overview for your digital planner. It’s both functional and visually appealing and you’ll be able to easily follow along and create your own version.

In this guide, I'll show you how to manually create a two-page spread in Affinity Publisher, featuring 12 mini calendars and 12 notes blocks.

I’ll be using my Calendar Creation Kit, a set of assets I’ve developed to speed up the process, to create a fully customisable layout that requires no Data Merge.

Step 1: Setting Up the Document

To begin, let’s create a new document in Affinity Publisher.

• Select A4 for the page size
• Choose 2 pages and set the spread to start on the left-hand side with facing pages
• Since this is for digital output, set the colour mode to RGB
• Set the margins to 10mm all around
• No need for a bleed
  

Step 2: Adding Guides

Next, you’ll need to set up some guides to keep everything aligned:

• Go to View > Guides
• Set each page to have three columns with an 8.5mm gutter
  

These guides will help you position your mini calendars and notes blocks evenly.

Step 3: Inserting the Mini Calendars

Now it’s time to add the 12 mini calendars:

1. I used a custom set of Assets I’ve created called the Calendar Creation Kit
2. This kit includes pre-made calendar assets, making the process much quicker
3. However, since the calendars are just Affinity Publisher Tables you can create exactly the same output with simple Tables and adding the day numbers for each month
4. Drag and drop the first six months (January to June) onto the left-hand page
5. Now, drag and drop the remaining six months (July to December) onto the right-hand page
   

At this point, the calendars may look misaligned and oversized, but we’ll fix that in the next step.

Step 4: Scaling and Aligning the Calendars

Now let’s tidy up those calendars:

1. Select all 12 months in the Layers Panel
2. Use the Transform Objects Separately option from the toolbar. This allows you to scale each calendar individually
3. Set the width to 57.7mm and the height to 42mm. Now, all the calendars should be uniform in size
4. Use the alignment options to position the calendars:

• Align the first six months (January to June) to the left and space them vertically
• Do the same for the remaining six months (July to December), aligning them to the right
  

Step 5: Formatting the Calendars

To make your layout look polished, it’s time to format the calendars:

1. Select one of the calendar tables and zoom in
2. The formatting for these tables is controlled by Text Styles and Table Formats
3. In the Text Styles Panel, I created styles specifically for the Calendar Creation Kit. These include Day Headings, Days, and Month Headings
4. You can use these names or name your styles in a way that makes sense to you
5. First, apply the Global Colour called “days” to all the day headings and days
6. To format the month headings, change the text colour to white, and apply a background Fill Colour to the cells for better visibility.
7. Format the borders of the calendars by setting the Outside Border to 1pt in the base colour and the Inside Borders to 0.5pt
   

Step 6: Applying Table Formatting to All Calendars

Rather than formatting each calendar individually, you can apply the same formatting to all of them:

1. With the first calendar table selected, go to Window > Table Formats
2. Create a new Table Format from the selected calendar and name it "Mini Calendar"
3. Now, select all 12 calendars, and apply the newly created table format to ensure uniformity
   

Step 7: Creating the Notes Blocks

To complete your 12-month overview, let’s add the notes blocks:

1. Use the Table Tool to create a table with 3 columns and 5 rows.
2. Adjust the column widths:

• First column: 5mm
• Middle column: 113.5mm

3. Format the table, removing unnecessary borders and aligning it to fit beside the calendars
   

Step 8: Using Symbols for the Notes Blocks

To save time and make the notes blocks easy to update later:

1. Convert the first notes block into a Symbol by switching to the Designer Persona using StudioLink
2. Once created, switch back to the Publisher Persona and duplicate the symbol to create 12 notes blocks (6 on each page)
   

Step 9: Adding a Decorative Element

To give the design a unique touch, I’m adding a push pin graphic:

1. Go to File > Place and insert your push pin graphic
2. Scale and position it in the top right corner of one of the notes blocks
3. Since we’re using symbols, the push pin will automatically appear in all the other notes blocks
4. To make it blend with the layout, apply a Luminosity Blend Mode to the graphic
   

Step 10: Final Touches with Global Colours

Finally, let’s add a cohesive colour scheme to the entire layout:

1. Go to the Global Colour settings and adjust the Base colour to something that fits your design (e.g. a shade of green)
2. This will automatically update the colour across the entire spread, ensuring everything is perfectly coordinated
   

Conclusion

And there you have it - your complete 12-month overview layout, ready for use in a digital planner! By using Affinity Publisher’s powerful tools like Text Styles, Table Formats, and Symbols, you can create highly customizable layouts quickly and easily.

If you enjoyed this tutorial and want more tips and tricks, be sure to check out my free training at ElaineGiles.com/VIP. Don’t forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you never miss a new tutorial.

If you have any specific tutorial requests, feel free to reach out - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading and watching, and see you next time!

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