Shay | Stationery Designer

The prettiest planner I ever designed didn't sell.

Shay | Stationery Designer — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:12:21 GMT

I need to tell you something that took me way too long to figure out.

A beautiful planner does not automatically sell. I know. You’d think that’s obvious. But I spent years believing that if the design was good enough, the sales would follow. They don’t.

How I Use AI to Manage My Client Pipeline

Shay | Stationery Designer — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:25:29 GMT

I’ve run a custom planner, journal, and stationery design studio for the last 9 years. A typical week for me looks like designing digital and physical planners for brands, doing custom branding and illustration, creating sticker packs and mockups, and working with my unlimited monthly design membership clients who need ongoing design work.

When you run a service-based design business like mine, every project moves through specific phases — onboarding, discovery, strategy, design, and wrap-up. Each phase takes a certain amount of time, and the client has their own deadlines within that. Keeping track of all of it across multiple projects used to mean flipping between my calendar, my project tracker, and a calculator, trying to figure out when I could realistically take on someone new.

That’s where AI changed everything for me.

I have a dedicated AI chat thread — just for scheduling. I’ve fed it my exact project timeline: every phase, every duration, every rule I follow. When a potential client reaches out and asks “when can we start?”, I go to that thread, tell it what services they’re interested in, and within seconds I have two possible start dates, a full phase-by-phase breakdown with exact dates, and the projected wrap-up date

This means that I can reply to inquiries the same day I receive them. And that speed is half the reason why I’m able to turn so many inquiries into paying clients.

My Project Phases (and How Long Each One Takes)

In my Planner Design Services Mastery course, I teach an entire module on building your project timeline.

Here’s a simplified version of mine with the exact averages I’ve dialed in over years of client work:

Why One Product Isn't Enough (And How to Build a Real Stationery Brand)

Shay | Stationery Designer — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:16:42 GMT

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what separates a product from a brand.

A product is one thing. A planner, a journal, a single notebook. Someone buys it, uses it, and maybe comes back next year for a new one. It may work for some, but it’s not a brand.

Spotted: The Story Behind the Cherry on Top Collection

Shay | Stationery Designer — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:26:10 GMT

If you read the blog post, you got the polished version — the brands, the data, the finished collection. This is the behind-the-scenes version. How I actually went from scrolling past a Louis Vuitton campaign to a full cherry stationery collection in weeks.

Why I Won't Start a Planner Project Without Mapping out page-by-page

Shay | Stationery Designer — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:20:11 GMT

Every planner starts the same way—with ideas.

You have a vision for the cover, a list of page ideas scribbled in your notes app, and inspiration boards full of layouts you can’t wait to create. It’s exciting... until it’s time to actually build the planner.

How I Use AI to Spot Trends Before They Hit Stationery

Shay | Stationery Designer — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 04:15:03 GMT

I almost designed a lavender collection for July.

It would have been pretty. It would have sold okay. But it would have been background noise — just another pastel planner set in a sea of pastel planner sets. Instead, I designed cherries. And that collection outsold everything I released in Q1.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about trend research in the stationery world: by the time you see it on Pinterest boards labeled “2026 planner inspo,” the trend is already peaking. The designers who win are the ones who catch it while it’s still in fashion and home decor — before it trickles down into paper goods.

I used to do this the old-fashioned way. I’d spend my Saturday mornings scrolling through Vogue Runway, checking what Anthropologie was putting in their windows, browsing Target’s home section online, and keeping a running list in my Notes app. It worked, but it took 6-8 hours every time I wanted to validate whether a trend had potential or wasn’t going to stick around very long.

Then I started using Claude, and now that 6-8 hours is just 15 minutes.

Let me show you exactly how I validated the cherry trend — the one that became my Spotted series on the blog and directly shaped what I designed for The Hub this quarter.

The Prompt

Here’s the exact prompt I use when I notice something bubbling up and want to know if it’s real:

What Actually Happens on a First Call with a Planner Designer

Shay | Stationery Designer — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 04:38:58 GMT

I want to pull back the curtain on something that seems to stress people out way more than it should: the first call with a planner designer.

I’ve done hundreds of these calls. And I can tell you that the single biggest fear founders have walking in is that they’ll sound unprepared or won’t have the right answers to their potential designer’s questions.

The Design Service I Wish I Could've Offered Years Ago

Shay | Stationery Designer — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:42:28 GMT

For the first few years of running The Pink Ink®, my business model was straightforward: a client would reach out with a project, I’d quote it, we’d work together for 8 to 12 weeks, I’d deliver the final files, and we’d part ways.

Except it was never actually done.

The Part of Digital Planner Design Nobody Sees

Shay | Stationery Designer — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 07:09:50 GMT

When someone scrolls past a digital planner listing on Etsy or a brand’s website, they see a polished product.

Beautiful tabs.

Clean layouts.

A seamless tap-through experience.

What they don’t see is the work that made it feel that ef…

Spotted: The Real Story Behind the Ciao Bella Collection

Shay | Stationery Designer — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:18:01 GMT

If you read the blog post, you got the polished version — the brands, the data, the finished collection, all neatly packaged. But this is the special behind-the-scenes version for Substack subscribers. I’m going to unpack what it actually looks like when a random Tuesday mall trip turns into a 26-product collection in just a few weeks

I was at the mall on a completely normal day. Not researching. Not in work mode. Just running errands. And then I started noticing the same designs everywhere. Lemons on dresses. Lemon prints on handbags. Italian tile patterns on home décor. Olive branches, ceramic textures, that very specific Mediterranean palette showing up across completely different stores.

So I pulled out my phone and started taking notes.

That’s the part people don’t always see about this kind of work. After years of designing for my own shop, creating for Hub members and building collections through the Unlimited Design Membership, your brain doesn’t really switch off. A walk through the mall stops being “just a walk” and turns into market research in no time at all.

When I got home, I opened Pinterest. Not to look at what is trending now – but what is gaining. Rising search terms. New boards popping up around Mediterranean aesthetics. Sicilian lemon everything. Then I started pulling brand data. Venus had a full Ciao Bella collection live. D&G had just dropped their SS26 Sicilian Street line. H&M Home was covered in lemon and olive prints. Kenny Flowers built an entire Amalfi lemon range. This was not a hunch anymore – it was confirmed.

But then it really got real for us stationery business owners. I found that Papier – one of the biggest names in premium planners – had already launched a full Italian Summer planner line for 2026. When a stationery brand that size builds an entire product range around an aesthetic, the consumer demand is real. It told me that if I move fast, my Hub members can have a competing collection in their shops while this trend is still building

Here’s what I didn’t share in the blog: how fast I moved. Mall trip to starting illustrations?

That happened in the same week. Three days drawing. Lemons, lobsters, citrus slices, Italian ceramic patterns, Mediterranean florals. All original artwork. This is what I mean when I say I bring illustration, design, and trend research to the table. It’s not three separate people. It’s one designer who can take a trend signal, validate it with real brand data, and turn it into a finished product collection in weeks (or sometimes days).

Then I built planners, journals, stickers, notebooks, covers, inserts, and workbooks. This added up to 26+ products for The Hub’s June drop. My members are customizing and listing these templates while the trend is still fresh. They didn’t have to track what Venus or D&G or Papier were doing. They didn’t have to illustrate anything. And more than anything, they didn’t have to spend their time designing a single template.

This is what The Hub does – trend-relevant collections every month so you can focus on selling instead of creating from scratch. Join the community here.

And for the stationery brands I work with directly on the Unlimited Design Membership side? They get this same process – trend research, brand data validation, original illustration, product design – but tailored to their specific brand and audience. Production-ready files every 2-3 business days. It’s like having an in-house designer, trend researcher, and illustrator rolled into one. I do for their brand what D&G’s team does for theirs – just focused entirely on stationery.

Interested? Click here to learn more about working with me.

Tune in every month to see what trend I’ve spotted, the brands and data behind it, and how it becomes a collection.

Welcome to Spotted. Read the full blog post here.

★ Thanks for reading :) I design custom planners, journals, and stationery for brands ready to stop DIY-ing and start scaling. Browse my services or grab my free Before You Hire a Stationery Designer checklist. Follow me on Instagram and see more on the blog.

Why I Stopped Saying Yes to Everything (And Why Specialization Changed My Business)

Shay | Stationery Designer — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:00:53 GMT

There was a time early in my career when I said yes to every design project that came my way. Logos, websites, business cards, social media templates, brochures — if someone needed it designed, I was in. I thought being willing to design anything made me more hireable. More versatile. More valuable.

But… it didn’t exactly work out that way.

When you do everything, you compete with everyone. Instead of my work deciding who wanted to work with me, my price did. In the end, I was working harder than ever and feeling like I wasn’t building anything meaningful.

The shift happened when I started getting planner projects.

A few clients found me and the work clicked in a way nothing else had. I understood the product at a deeper level. I could see problems before they happened. I knew why a binding choice would affect the entire layout. I could advise on page counts and pricing and production timelines because I’d been through it before.

That’s when I realized: specialization isn’t about doing less. It’s about going deeper.

When I committed to planner and stationery design full-time, everything changed. My clients stopped seeing me as “a designer” and started seeing me as their product design partner. They trusted my recommendations because they knew I’d done this dozens of times. They referred me to other brands in the space because I spoke their language. The work got better because I was refining the same craft instead of spreading myself thin across ten different disciplines.

I think about this every time I talk to a stationery brand that’s realizing how different planner design really is from traditional graphic design.

Planner products come with their own set of considerations that only become obvious through experience — things like repeated layouts, binding requirements, production limitations, pricing strategy, and long-term usability.

A planner specialist understands how all of those moving pieces work together so the final product doesn’t just look beautiful online, but also feels polished, functional, and enjoyable in your customer’s hands.

These aren’t things you learn in design school. They’re things you learn from building planners, launching them, getting feedback, refining, and doing it all again. Experience is the teacher.

The same principle applies to every creative field. The photographer who specializes in food photography sees light differently than a wedding photographer. The copywriter who focuses on email marketing writes differently than one who does brand taglines.

Depth creates mastery, and mastery creates trust.

If you’re a brand owner looking for a planner designer, look for someone who has done this specific work before. Ask about their process. Ask what questions they’ll ask you before they start designing. A specialist will have thoughtful answers.

I put together a full blog post breaking down the difference between graphic designers and specialized planner and stationery designers, read it here →

The $17,730 Launch That Taught Me More About Stationery Sellers Than 9 Years of Client Work

Shay | Stationery Designer — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:23:56 GMT

In 2020, I sold 90 digital planner kits in 30 days. The numbers are public now: ~$17,730 in revenue, no Etsy, no paid ads.

But that’s not the part of the story I want to tell.

The part I want to tell is the part I almost missed at the time. Every time a stationery seller bought the kit, they wrote me a version of the same message: “I just couldn’t make my products look like they belonged together. Yours do.”

That sentence

“my products didn’t look like they belonged together”

is the most important thing I learned in nine years of designing stationery. Sellers don’t actually struggle with design fundamentals. They struggle with cohesion. They have ten products, and the ten products feel like they were made by ten different people. Their shop looks like a flea market when they want it to feel like a brand.

The kit solved cohesion in a box.

Each edition was a family — a horizontal planner that matched a vertical planner that matched a notebook that matched a sticker pack. Sellers who bought one edition could launch their entire shop around it the next day.

That’s the real lesson and it’s why I retired the kit.

Cohesion isn’t a one-time download.

It’s an ongoing process. As a seller’s brand grows, their products keep needing to feel like one family. That’s not a kit. That’s a relationship with a designer.

So today I have three ways I help stationery sellers stay cohesive at every stage:

The Hub Membership for sellers who want the kit experience, modernised and ongoing.
Custom Planner Design Service for sellers ready for a bespoke flagship line.
Unlimited Monthly Design Subscription for established brands who need an in-house designer on retainer, growing their product family every month.

The launch story behind all three is the same: stationery sellers need a cohesive product line that feels like one brand.

That’s it. That’s the whole game.

Read the full launch breakdown on the blog →

— Shay

The Difference Between Expensive and Worth It

Shay | Stationery Designer — Wed, 20 May 2026 06:26:09 GMT

Last week I shared real pricing for custom planner design, and the response I got most wasn’t “that’s too much” or “that’s reasonable.” It was: “but is it worth it?”

I love that question. Because it means you’re not just thinking about cost — you’re thinking about value. And those are two very different things.

Here’s the honest answer: it depends on what you’re building.

If you’re still testing an idea and aren’t sure if the concept is going to sell, then investing $5,000+ in professional design probably isn’t the move yet. Build a simple version yourself. Validate the demand. Prove that people want it. Then invest in making it great.

But if you’re past that stage? If you already have an audience, a brand, and a product idea your customers have been asking for? Then let me tell you what I’ve seen happen.

The brands I work with don’t just get a finished planner. They get 30+ hours of focused work — 5–10 hours of strategy and research before I even open a design program, 20–25 hours of actual page design and refinement, and another 3–4 hours of production prep so everything works the moment it hits your printer or your shop.

That’s what you’re investing in. It’s not just a product that looks good. It’s one that’s ready to sell from the minute you launch. Customers are willing to pay more for something that feels premium. Reviews improve. Word-of-mouth kicks in. Reorders happen because the product actually works, not just looks nice.

Let me put some real numbers on it:

Say you invest $6,000 in design and your production cost is $5 per unit. You sell your planner for $35. At 300 units, you’ve made $9,000 after production. At 500 units, $15,000. The design investment isn’t the risk at that point — it’s a fraction of the return.

And that’s just one product, one run!

What most people don’t think about is what happens after the first launch. A year later, you need the next edition. Maybe you want to add a journal, or stickers, or packaging. If you hire project-by-project every time, you’re re-explaining your vision, rebuilding the relationship, starting from scratch.

That’s why a lot of my clients end up on retainer. It’s faster, more consistent, and the product gets better every round. I already know their brand, their audience, what worked last time and what to improve. We just keep building.

My clients invest in the process and the end result. Every single one will tell you the same thing: the product didn’t just get finished. It sold.

That’s the shift. You stop thinking about what design costs and start thinking about what your product is capable of earning.

I wrote a full breakdown of the ROI, what’s included, and which stage of business makes the most sense to invest.

Read the full post →

And if you’re still in the research phase — my free checklist helps you get organized so your first designer call is productive, not overwhelming. Grab it here →

— Shay

I made thousands selling planners I designed in Keynote.

Shay | Stationery Designer — Thu, 14 May 2026 05:38:45 GMT

I designed my first planners in Keynote.

Yes, Keynote. The presentation app. I made them, I sold them, and they paid my bills for years. I’m not embarrassed about it. It was creative and it taught me more about planner design than any course ever could.

Pretty pages aren’t the hard part.

Shay | Stationery Designer — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:19:50 GMT

I want to let you in on something that might surprise you: when you hire me to design a planner, the actual page design doesn’t start for weeks.

And that’s actually a good thing.

There’s a whole world of work that needs to happen first.…

I charged $300 for my first planner design. Here’s what I’d tell you now.

Shay | Stationery Designer — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 05:39:12 GMT

When I designed my very first planner, I charged $300.

I didn’t have a process. I didn’t have a discovery call or a strategy presentation or a page map. I had Keynote, a lot of enthusiasm, and absolutely no idea what this kind of work was actually worth.