Making of Kid Planners

Have you seen our newest release? We sat down with our founder, Trisha Zemp, to discuss the creation of Golden Coil’s Kid Planners. Trisha played a major role in designing these genius planners and we wanted to share a little more behind the thought and design process.

WHY KID PLANNERS?

Michelle and I had the idea a long time ago and one of our initial employees also suggested it. There aren’t a ton of kid planners in the market, so we thought it would be a fun idea. We bought all the paper and got things started with our printer, but then it started to take too much time, so we put it on pause. Then as COVID hit, we realized this was a place in the market that would help us serve parents who really need help with their kids and any semblance of scheduling right now. When you’re doing homeschool or virtual learning, your schedule isn’t handed to you like it is when you walk into school. We wanted to help these kids and their moms who are treading water trying to keep their families running and managing school for their kids. We realized it was something that could really help, so we jumped on it and got them produced as quickly as possible.

WHAT FEATURES WERE MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU?

When designing these planners, we wanted to make sure the planners were undated because kids need to have fluidity in what they do. Kids may not need to be using it week to week or they may only need the planner during a school semester. We also felt like keeping the planners undated would help kids be more intentional and aware of time when working in their planners.

We also wanted the planners to be useful to a wide range of ages, so the habit tracking section became a vital feature for younger kids. We felt it would be an important feature to help them feel encouraged and rewarded. Plus, the stickers are SO cute! They’re one extra incentive to accomplish things.

It was also important to us to include plenty of blank space throughout the planner so that kids had a place to express creativity or to just have a place to do what they wanted. Each page features a blank section and there are also blank pages at the back. We hope kids will use these areas to sketch, write a journal, or just express themselves!

WHAT WAS THE DESIGN PROCESS LIKE?

We had a lot of fun designing kid planners! We wanted them to feel at home with parents’ planners, so we made sure to create a color palette by pulling from some of our current linen cover colors. You can spot Marigold, Mist, Harbour, Strawberry, Midnight, and Seafoam throughout the four different designs. We added a few tweaked colors as well to add a more youthful feel.

We drew a lot of inspiration for the designs from kids and childhood. Messes, creativity, wonder—that sort of thing. Our four designs mimic things like tangled string, striped pjs, confetti, and kid scribbles.

Once we had the color palette finalized, I sat down with my iPad and started experimenting with patterns in Procreate. I created a lot of drafts so we had a lot to work with. We pared down from there and then fine tuned to get to our final designs. I had so much fun making them!

This video shows some behind the scenes of making the kid planner designs in Procreate. We hope you enjoy it!

How will your kids be using Kid Planners? Or will you be buying some for yourself? :)