Make a Cover Page for a Notebook

Keeping track of all your notes for school can get confusing if you’re disorganized. Luckily, creating a custom cover page for the front of your notebook will make separating your work easier, and it’s a fun and inexpensive project you can do to add some personality to your school materials. With just a few basic art supplies or a simple computer photo editor, you can create a notebook cover page that says “you” and makes doing your homework a little more interesting.

Steps

Designing Your Cover Page

  1. Pick out a notebook. Choose a notebook that you plan to use for a certain subject. Notebooks come in many different types: there are spiral bound notebooks, composition books, legal pads and 3-ring binders. As long as your notebook has plenty of blank paper and a place to design a cover, it should work.[1]
    • You can decorate the first page of a notebook to use as your cover page or draw directly onto the outside of the notebook. If you decide to decorate the first page, it may be helpful to color-coordinate your notebooks so that you know which subject goes with each color.
    • Designing your cover page on a computer will be easiest if you use a 3-ring binder since the printed cover page can slip directly into the front of the binder.
  2. Gather your decorating materials. What will you be using to design your notebook cover page? Get your hands on some markers, paint pens, stickers, glitter—anything you can use to add a splash of style to the blank page. Start thinking about how you might go about designing your notebook. You might come up with a theme based on the subject, or make use of features that reflect your favorite sports team or musical artist. Your possibilities are limited only by how creative you're willing to get.[2]
    • Make sure you're also stocked on notebook paper if you're using a 3-ring binder so you'll be ready to go once your cover page is done.
  3. Put down the class subject. Your name and the class subject should be the most noticeable things on your cover page. Somewhere near the top center of the cover page, find a place where the name of the class will go. Think about how you might later decorate the space around the class subject. Don’t write the subject too large since you’ll be adding other information to the cover page.
  4. Find a place for your name. Your name can go anywhere you like on the cover page but should be big or bold enough to be easily seen. One good place for it to go is beneath the class subject, or just above it. You could also put your name in one of the upper corners. Depending on how you decide to design your cover page, you have almost unlimited options.
  5. Add any other relevant information. If it helps you stay mentally organized, save some space to write down the name of the class’s teacher, as well as your homeroom teacher, grade level, suite or other class division and locker number. In addition to being organized, this information will help your notebook find its way back to you should you lose it.[3]
    • Listing your homeroom teacher or locker number will help other students return a lost notebook.

Decorating by Hand

  1. Take advantage of your space. Once you’ve put down all the information you need for your cover page, you should still have plenty of space to work with. Use this space to doodle, color, write slogans or inside jokes or include any other design element you want. The cover page will be your own, so you should use it to reflect whatever style and interests you want.[4]
    • Use drawings and pictures that fit with the subject of your notebook to give your studies a visual element. If you're designing a notebook for your chemistry class, for instance, sketch a few beakers and flasks or a microscope to go along with the chemistry motif.
    • As long as it’s not against the rules, you could even write down formulas or other useful tips on your notebook cover to help you remember them. Putting the Pythagorean theorem on a math notebook, for instance, will aid you in learning the theorem so that it’s instantly recognizable to you.
  2. Get colorful. Use markers, colored pencils and even crayons to add a splash of color to your cover page. This will make it really eye-catching so that it’s not just another dull black-and-white notebook page. Add embellishments to the class subject line or to your name. Once you’ve added some color, your cover page will pop and it will be much more fun to look at.[5]
    • Use your own supplies, or see about borrowing them from your school’s art class.
  3. Stick on extras. You’re not just limited to whatever art supplies you have access to at school or find lying around your house. Give your cover page a new dimension by tacking on stickers, adhesive borders and even cutout paper designs or printed pictures: slap your school crest or mascot on the cover if you want to show your school spirit, or display stickers of your favorite band to let others know that you're a music fan. This will give you more depth than just drawing everything by hand and will give your cover design a cool, crafty look.[6]
    • Use foam craft letters for a cool new way to display your name on your notebook.
  4. Jazz it up. Go one step further and try using supplies like glitter, ribbon and paint to really dazzle with your cover page. These items will allow you to create an amazing, one-of-a-kind cover page that wouldn’t be possible with traditional pen-and-ink designs. There’s really no limit to what you can do if you get creative enough: if you can imagine it, you can make it.
    • Be careful while gluing decorations onto your notebook and make sure you only use as much as you need. Otherwise the glue can bleed through and make the paper soggy, or you might even accidentally glue pages together.[7]

Editing on a Computer

  1. Use a photo editor or word processor to design a cover page. If you’d rather not go the handmade route and prefer the clean simplicity of a computer design, you can use a simple editing program to create your notebook cover page. Programs like Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop or the online editor Pixlr are perfect for this sort of project, although an even simpler program like Microsoft Paint will also do the trick. A photo editor will allow you to produce a more precise design by lining up text, giving you the freedom to choose fonts and adding professional borders. You can even import pictures to use as part of the design.[8][9][10]
    • Word processors make it easy to format text the way you want it and add pictures to go with it, while one advantage of photo editing programs is that they give you greater control over how to alter pictures and let you drag, layer and angle bits of text for better customization.
    • You don't have to limit yourself to just one method—try designing a cover page with the necessary basic information on your computer, then printing it out and finish decorating it by hand.
  2. Type your name, subject and other information. Put down all the information you need for your cover page: your name, the notebook’s subject, teacher, grade and homeroom. With a editing program you’ll have the freedom to choose the way you want your text to look and where exactly you want it positioned on the page. Decide how you want to lay out the information on your cover page. You could list it all down the left hand side to save the middle of the page for pictures, or center it and arrange pictures around it.
  3. Include pictures. Use the “import” or “paste from” option in the editing program to use pictures from the internet as part of your cover page. Pictures can be shrunk or enlarged to better fit the page, or their individual properties can be adjusted. Find pictures or clip art related to the subject you’re studying, or get funky and decorate your notebook with pics of your favorite sport or celebrity. It’s all up to you![11][12]
    • Don’t use photos that are graphic or offensive. Remember, your notebook is part of your scholastic materials.
  4. Take advantage of the text editor. Instead of just using the text bar to type your name and class information, make use of the word processor's text capabilities, like choosing different fonts and colors, as part of your design. Spell out a couple of lines of song lyrics, or maybe highlight a favorite quotation to keep you motivated to study. Typed text doesn't have to be boring. Play around with text features and see if you can come up with fun new ways to add a few words to your cover.[13]
    • Fonts like Impact, Comic Sans and Wingdings come preloaded on most word processors programs and are more playful than ordinary professional fonts.[14]
    • If you enjoy writing creatively, challenge yourself by coming up with a personalized slogan to act as an introduction for what you'll find in your notebook.
  5. Print your cover page. Once you’ve come up with a design you like, print it and use it for the new cover of your notebook. If you use a 3-ring binder, you can slide the printed page right into the plastic cover and you’re done! If you use a different type of notebook, you’ll have to attach the cover page to your notebook by using tape, glue or staples.[15]
    • Taping or stapling around the edge of the cover page will hold it in place and allow it to be changed out at a later time with little difficulty, while glue will hold better but is messier to work with and isn’t easily removed.
    • Be careful: watch your fingers while you’re stapling.

Tips

  • Look up notebook cover templates or ask your friends to get ideas about how to decorate your cover page.
  • Have a parent or teacher help you use a word processor or photo editor to design your cover page if you’re not sure how.
  • If you have to do a project for art class, you might be able to kill two birds with one stone by choosing to make a notebook cover page as your project.

Warnings

  • If you use pictures to decorate your notebook, make sure they’re appropriate to be seen at your school.
  • Markers bleed, so don't use them unless you have a notebook with a cardboard cover.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://www.jetpens.com/blog/notebooks-explained/pt/647
  2. ↑ http://www.joann.com/kids-teachers/kids-art-supplies/
  3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjgKTS8Eu_Q
  4. ↑ http://aboutfamilycrafts.com/18-ways-to-decorate-your-notebooks/
  5. ↑ http://www.wendypiersall.com/how-to-color/
  6. ↑ http://www.freekidscrafts.com/paper-crafts/cut-and-paste-crafts/
  7. ↑ http://www.michaels.com/shop/crafts-and-hobbies/809188650
  8. ↑ https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-visually-compelling-documents-in-Word-2010-5028b228-048c-4867-ba4a-2169e06f1f16
  9. ↑ http://lifehacker.com/5753459/learn-the-basics-of-photoshop-in-under-25-minutes
  10. ↑ https://pixlr.com/
  11. ↑ https://images.google.com/
  12. ↑ http://classroomclipart.com/
  13. ↑ http://www.instantshift.com/2012/04/12/study-of-font-styles-and-best-uses-for-each/
  14. ↑ http://help.fontshop.com/hc/en-us/articles/202693845-How-do-I-install-my-fonts-
  15. ↑ https://whuffling.com/2012/02/09/collage-tutorial-the-gospel-of-glue/

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