Behind the Scenes of Designing a Planner

I can’t believe the Lynx Point Planner will be launching in just 8 weeks! Today I wanted to give you a behind the scenes tour of my creative process in bringing this new planner to life.

Every new thing starts with inspiration and an idea. I was a busy professional woman who wanted a planner that was straightforward to use, had enough space to write things down, and didn’t have lots of superfluous pages. I also wanted a better system for seeing my month and weekly views without spending lots of time flipping back and forth. Additionally I was looking for high quality and for it to look nice on my desk.

I created the first prototype in 2020. It was designed in Canva, printed on my desktop printer, assembled with hardboard and a ring binding from Amazon and held together with tap. Each year after I adjusted the design, size, etc.  Around 2025, I saw an add for Print School by Polly Payne. Polly has over a decade of experience in the stationery industry and turned out to be a great guide and mentor in the process of making a prototype into something manufactured. I signed up and it streamlined the process of getting my prototypes out of DIY and into professional production.

I had the prototype but I decided to take it completely apart and make sure it was exactly how it should be. I started out with a wall of post its. Next sketches of variations of pages. It became obvious that my perfectionistic self wouldn’t be making deadlines for a 2026 planner so we pushed the launch by a year and started working on final designs for a 2027 edition.

Finally I created actual layouts and pages in indesign. Next it was time to print drafts. There were a lot of choices to make. narrowing down choices - paper color, fonts, sizes of writing spaces, paper thickness, what makes sense where. Once the at home versions were as close as I could get to what I wanted it was time to get professionally printed samples.

I was in touch with several printers. The first responses I received were that this design was impossible to print.  It was too difficult to put together. It hadn’t been done elsewhere. It was too hard to understand. They didn’t have confidence it would work long term. Etc. Fortunately I was able to convince one printing house to try. The results were very good but not perfect. So we went to a second round of printing. Meanwhile I’d gotten another printer to make a sample also. I ultimately placed the mass order with the first printer as her quality was very good and she was willing to believe in this product.

I’m so excited to share this planner with you all! I’ll be revealing the collection on Thursday September 17. If you can’t wait that long to see it, consider joining the 2027 launch team! You’ll get an awesome discount, front row seats to the launch process, great prizes and a private reveal in advance! Applications go live August 15 and there will be more information right here so stay tuned!