I will start off with “What Software Do I Use?”. To make my planners and graphics I use Affinity by Serif. Affinity Designer which is a vector graphic design tool, Affinity Publisher for page layout and Affinity Photo for photo editing. All three of these programs integrate very well with each other and other devices and have greatly increased my workflow. I chose the universal license so I could move between iPad IOS and Windows. There is a slight learning curve, but does not take too long to figure out where the tools are within the software or the apps. Use the link above and have peek at their website and see what the programs can do for you. One other note, my wallet thanked me… 🙂
There is one free app that comes on all Apple devices and that is Keynote – this app is quite simple to use and creates digital planners intuitively, with one draw back – the exported PDF file size can get quite large when used from an iPad. On a Mac there is an option to reduce the file size, unfortunately, not available on the iPad. That being said there are options to reduce the PDF file size if necessary. Adobe does offer a free PDF compression tool online at this link: https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/compress-pdf.html
Note Taking Apps IOS
In order to use our planners any PDF annotation app will work. There are many apps on the market right now both for iPad and Android and it can certainly be a challange to pick the app that works best for you, here are some examples: Goodnotes, Zoomnotes, Xodo, Noteability, Noteshelf. Noteful to name a few.
I use Goodnotes 6, Zoomnotes and Noteful for IOS. I chose these three apps in particular so I could test my planners in different environments as these three apps have different user interfaces and offer different tools for your planning. I suggest trying the free versions of any app before you settle on one in particular as they each have their own idiosyncracies. I have found Goodnotes, Noteful and Zoomnotes to be quite intuitive with Noteful being more user friendly and by far my favourite so far. All of my planners are fully tested in all three apps prior to placement in my store.
All I can say is, give it a go! The possibilities are endless! If you would like to add to the conversation, please leave a comment below.