How To Make A Digital Planner Cover

Are you looking for free digital planner covers? In this tutorial I’ll show you how to make a digital planner cover for GoodNotes, Noteshelf or Notability.

If you have digital planners, or digital notebooks and use apps such as Notability, Noteshelf or GoodNotes, you can change the covers on your documents. This is a great way to make your digital notebook stand out in your library or make your planner fit a fun new theme or style.

All of these note-taking apps offer a range of pre-made covers that you can use for free. You can also buy new ones online, like these over on my Etsy store. However, you might want to create your own customized cover for your digital journal or notebook.

If that is the case then this is tutorial on how to make a planner cover is for you!

In this step-by-step post I’ll show you how you can make cute GoodNotes Covers or Custom Notebook Covers for any note-taking app you may be using.

And all of it for free.

So let’s learn how to make a digital notebook cover!

We may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more information go to Disclaimer & Disclosure.

Create Custom Digital Covers For GoodNotes, Noteshelf OR NOTABILITY

To create your digital notebook covers we will be using a free site called Canva.

Canva is a site for creating graphic designs and the best bit is that it is very easy to use. You can have a free account or upgrade to a pro account but for what we will use today a free account is enough.

We’ll use Canva to create our cover images. Next, we will download it to our computer or device and then upload it to our note-taking app.

In this digital cover tutorial, I am creating the graphic on a computer but there is also a Canva app that you can use to do the same on an iPad or Android tablet.

How To Create Covers For Digital Planner Or Digital Notebook

Here’s how to make your own digital covers:

1. Create a Custom Design in Canva

If you’re new to Canva just create an account for free.

On the homepage, you get access to a variety of templates to choose from and a tab to learn how to use the app. The app is very user-friendly so even if you’re new you’ll be able to explore the interface in no time at all.

To create a custom design you have to click up on the top right corner.

Choose to insert Custom dimensions.

I am going to create a Canva design that is the size of an 11-inch iPad screen. Even if your device is not this size I believe this proportion still will be good to use for other devices, regardless of the app you choose.

So the custom Canva design will be 1668 x 2388 pixels.

2. Choose A Photo in canva

When the design opens with your custom size you’ll see that Canva already provides you with lots of templates that you can use. Most of these are for free.

If you like something you just need to click and it’ll resize everything. Then just have to change the text and you are done.

But for this tutorial, I am going to show you how to create a cover from scratch.

I want to create a leather look cover.

To begin I will search on the top bar for ‘leather’. The app will show you both free and pro choices ( these are only available to use if you choose to purchase a subscription).

I normally try to find free images but if none of these appeal to me I will search for a free image on Unsplash. ( I will share how to do this further along in the post)

Find a free image that you like and click to add it to your design.

Now you can resize the image to cover the entire cover area.

You have now created your cover background.

3. add text to your cover

Now to add text simply go to the Text tab at the left side of the screen.

Here Canva also offers plenty of pre-made templates.

Find something that you like and click to add it to your design.

You may find that you need to ungroup the text items and delete any irrelevant text boxes.

You can now change the text to whatever you want.

Here can also resize, change the color and add effects to the text if you want to.

Once you’re happy with the cover you can simply download the image as PNG, JPEG or PDF.

To do this click ‘Download‘ at the top right of the screen and select the file type you want to download.

4. Find free images on unsplash (optional)

In case you don’t find an image that you like for free in Canva you can use Unsplash.

Unsplash is a site with millions of images that you can use for free. The licenses cover both personal and commercial use. Be sure to check the license of the individual image before using it for your cover.

You can search for something you want or simply scroll the site for inspiration.

Once you find something you like click on the arrow to download the image.

Now you can drag and drop this image to Canva and use it as background for the cover as shown previously in this tutorial. There is also an upload tab on the left of your Canva screen if drag and drop is not an option.

You can create several different notebook pages just by changing the background image and text of your template.

You may also like: How To Make Digital Stickers

5. Add your cover to noteshelf, goodNotes or notability

When you’re done creating your Digital Cover you just need to import your brand new notebook covers to the app of your choice.

Click on the app name to find tutorials on how to add covers to documents in Noteshelf, GoodNotes and Notability.

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Want to learn how to make your own Digital Planner? It’s super easy, even if you are a beginner. Find out more below.

more Digital Planning tutorials:

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Make A Digital Planner Cover