Great Moments by Design – iCal Printing
For anyone who has spent a good bit of time looking for the ‘perfect’ GTD binder/planner, this edition of Great Moments by Design may be for you.
I’ve wasted way too much time trying to find a planner that fit my exact specifications. I’m in a better place now, having reconciled myself to the fact that such a planner does not exist. But during my searching I looked into the whole do it yourself planner genre (check out this cool site if this interests you). I liked this concept – you create your own planner once and simply refill with various types of printed out templates when needed.
I never did order any of these products, but I did make my own planner. And I was happily surprised when I discovered the perfect templates were already available on my Mac. In iCal.
Printing
Designing printing functionality for applications seems a tricky business. Listen to any software developer for long and it appears that most of them do not look forward to this aspect of their particular application. Maybe that’s why so many apps do such a poor job of it. But not iCal. The good folks at Apple have got this right. Here is a screen of how the print screen looks:
There are some great default options here that make this a good option for a printed template. You can print daily, weekly or monthly views. You can also print out a certain period of time.
And if you are looking for a blank template, that can be done as well. Under the Calendars section I simply unchecked all of my calendars that have actual entries. I also created a blank ‘Print’ calendar that I leave checked. Now I have a blank printable template.
The best part I found was the daily view. It has a break down of the hours of the day on the left and blank space on the right. This is perfect for me – I like a space for hard events (calendar items) and space for general notes or brainstorming. I’ll also usually jot down a couple of my big rocks at the beginning of each day. This template meets all my need easily.
I think it’s also important to note that the printed pages look great. Many apps have a nice print preview, but the actual physical page just looks bad. Not here.
This is another example of application design that shows the developer(s) put in the extra effort to ensure end user enjoyment.
