Are you looking to surprise your clients with a stunning sustainable gift? Or maybe you want nice branded stationary to shine on your office tables? In both cases a personalized MOYU notebook is a great option, but none of this could happen without a properly designed cover.
Whether it’s as simple as having your logo on a colorful background or a detailed illustration that makes your notebook steal the scene at company meetings, you have to set your file properly to get the most out of your printed MOYU.
As MOYU’s designer, I’ve seen many mistakes being made and I thought of collecting them to create this article to guide you and help you create your masterpiece flawlessly.
Hold your horses designer! We know you want to jump to sketching, but you first need the right canvas. Lucky for you, we have already created specific templates that you can download on ‘Personalize your MOYU’ page right below the notebook size of your choice.
For the sake of this example, since the templates work in a very similar way, I’ll just show you the A5 hardcover notebook (also known as our bestseller 😉).
To open the file you’ll need either illustrator or another software that supports vector graphics. If you don’t have a paid Adobe license, you can use Inkscape or Affinity which is open source and free.
Once you download the template, open the Illustrator (.ai) file and read the welcome message. Then turn it off in the layers panel.
At this point, this is what you should see:
The file is already set in terms of measurements, but there is still something you need to keep in mind while designing:
⚠️ The green dashed line is the safe area, be sure to keep everything important inside it like your logo, text and relevant parts of your design.
⚠️ The orange dots are the spiral holes, so make sure to cover this area to give continuity to your design, but don’t put anything relevant here as it’s where the spiral holes fall.
⚠️ The red line is the bleed, so make sure to extend your design to this area or it will become white and there’s a chance your notebook will show a thin white line on its borders after the final cut (you don’t want that, trust me).
⚠️ Don’t delete the exporting instructions. If all those elements bother you while designing, you can simply turn it off and turn it on again when you’re done in the layer panel. Keep them at hand so you'll always know how to export correctly.
⚠️ Always include linked files. If you're using images and want to share an editable file with us, please make sure to include the linked files, the fonts and all we need to open it. As an alternative, you can always embed images and outline the text.
Our notebook covers are 100% customizable: you can decide to use our inside pages or design your own from scratch.
Whatever you choose though, keep the following precautions in mind:
⚠️ Never remove (or move) the pen holder, you can go crazy with everything else, but that is a fixed height and it’s important that whoever receives the notebook sticks the pen holder in the right spot.
⚠️ Keep at least one MOYU logo. You have two, one on the inside and one on the back cover. Make sure that at least one is present in your final design.
⚠️ Think of what you remove! As I said, you can go crazy with it but keep in mind that everything you delete is lost information. Will people understand how to use the notebook if there are no instructions? This is an innovative product for most people so make sure to communicate what it is and how it works if you choose to remove all info.
Once you’re done designing your cover, make sure to follow the steps in the Instructions layer. Remember, the one you probably turned off while designing.
You’ll find the instructions in English, German or French so you can’t go wrong with it but if you still have questions, you can reach out to me at chiara@moyu.rocks or Bruna at bruna@moyu.rocks and we’ll help you.
⚠️ Make sure the bleed is there. when you get to exporting, please make sure you exported correctly with at least 3mm of bleed.
Sketch and get creative, you have a whole blank cover to fill with your artwork!
If you’re looking for some inspiration, you can check out our Wall of Fame, where you’ll find the B2B covers that we liked the most so far, or the Wall of Wishful Thinking, the space where we dream of MOYU covers we’d love to produce for companies that we like and we would like to call our clients one day. Or take a look at Wall of Artists for more inspiration.
Now go and have fun on our stone paper canvas and we hope your masterpiece will end up on our Wall of Fame too!
