PSA: Stop drawing your monthly calendar first in a new journal setup

I watched three videos last week where people started their monthly spread by drawing the full 31-day grid first. That is BACKWARDS. You need to check your journal's page layout first because some pages have slightly different margins. I ruined two pages in my A5 Leuchtturm before I realized the right side margin was thicker and threw off my whole grid. Has anyone else wasted a spread by assuming everything was perfectly centered?

3 comments

3 Comments

ryan_carr5922d ago

Exactly. I learned this the hard way too. I always sketch the page border first with a light pencil line, then map out where the margins actually fall before I commit with ink. The Leuchtturm is notorious for that thicker right side margin, and some batches have it worse than others. My trick now is to use a ruler to measure the top left corner and see if the page is actually square, then I mark my starting point a quarter inch in from the actual edge so I've got wiggle room. The other thing people miss is that the grid pattern on the page itself might not be perfectly centered either, so your boxes will look weird if you follow the existing lines too close to the binding. Pencil is not cheating, it's just being smart with your time and paper.

wyatt_green22d ago

My buddy Kevin tried this exact thing last week with a new Scribbles That Matter notebook he got for Christmas. He spent twenty minutes measuring out this perfect 31 day grid only to realize the bottom margin was way bigger than he thought. His last row of dates ended up like half an inch off the page edge and he had to cram the 30th and 31st into boxes that were basically slivers. He was so mad he just closed the notebook and hasn't opened it since. I told him to test the margins with a pencil first before going in with a pen, but he said that felt like cheating.

seth_green8522d ago

Tell Kevin I ruined a whole Leuchtturm once by forgetting to account for the bleed-through of a glitter gel pen on a Sunday.