Designing Vívela365: A Peek Inside the Introductory Section

One of the things I'm most excited about with Vívela365 is the intentionality behind every single page. The past two weeks have been a lot of work on the design: a companion that can understand you the way that you need and want. This isn't just a planner where you jot down meetings and to-do lists. It's a tool designed to help you live your year with purpose, balance, and self-awareness. Today, I want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the introductory section and what each page is all about.

Before diving into the months, Vívela365 takes you through a guided journey of reflection, vision, habits, and commitment. Here's how it unfolds:

This is the central symbol of the agenda. A symbol of wholeness and completeness.

Annual Pages

My Starting Point Everything begins with the present. Before dreaming about the future, this page invites you to pause and ask yourself: Who am I today? It's a space to reflect on your values, your strengths, and your identity right now, before the year begins.

My Vision Once you're grounded in who you are, it's time to dream. This page guides you through a series of reflection questions centered around one powerful question: Who do I want to become? This isn't about goals yet. It's about painting a picture of the person you're growing into.

Vision Board Words become images here. These two pages give you space to bring your vision to life visually, photos, quotes, words, anything that represents the life you're building. One page is organized by life areas to guide you, and the other is completely open for you to use freely.

My Habits — Reflection Real change lives in the everyday. Before writing down habits, this page asks the deeper questions: What would a day in the life of the person you want to become actually look like? What habits would she or he have in the morning, under stress, on weekends? The goal is to think deeply before committing.

My Habits — Projection This is where reflection becomes action. You define up to three habits for the morning, afternoon, and evening that will support your transformation throughout the year. You also mark the most important habit of each block, your non-negotiable for the day.

My Annual Goals With your vision clear and your habits defined, it's time to commit. These two pages guide you through setting one SMART goal per life area: specific, measurable, and with a deadline. Each goal also includes a first concrete step and a plan of action to make it real and achievable.

Books of the Year Reading is one of the most powerful ways to grow. This page invites you to challenge yourself to read one book per month and gives you space to track your reading throughout the year. Twelve months, twelve books, twelve opportunities to expand your mind.

Finances Financial stability is part of a balanced life, and Vívela365 doesn't ignore it. This simple but powerful page asks three questions: How much do you want to save this year? How much do you need to set aside each month to get there? And most importantly, why does this matter to you?

Exploration This page is unlike any other in the agenda. There are no goals here, no commitments, no pressure. Just curiosity. It's a space to write down everything you want to explore this year: new hobbies, skills you've always wanted to try, experiences that excite you for no particular reason. The only rule? It has to spark something in you.

Vívela With These 10 Principles Before stepping into the year month by month, Vívela365 leaves you with 10 guiding principles for a life in balance. Think of them less as rules and more as gentle reminders you can return to whenever you need to reconnect with what truly matters.

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Designing Vívela365: The Visual Process Behind the Pages

Creating an agenda from scratch is no small feat. It's one thing to have a vision in your head, and a completely different thing to translate that vision into something tangible, functional, and beautiful. Today I want to pull back the curtain and share what the visual design process for Vívela365 has really looked like, challenges included.

The Tools Behind the Design

For the layout of the agenda I've been working in Adobe InDesign, which has been the perfect tool for building each page with precision and intention. For the icons you'll find throughout the pages I've been creating them from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. Every little detail has been intentional, because Vívela365 deserves that level of care.

The Real Challenge: What Goes In and What Stays Out

Honestly, one of the biggest challenges hasn't been purely visual. It's been deciding which information is truly essential and how to organize it in a way that feels intuitive and easy to follow. I want every person who opens this agenda to feel guided, not overwhelmed. That balance is harder to achieve than it looks, and it has pushed me to be very intentional about every single element on every single page.

Making A5 Work

Designing for A5 is a unique challenge. It's not a tiny format, but it's small enough that organization and spacing become critical. Fitting meaningful content into each page without making it feel crowded has required a lot of iteration. One of the decisions I made along the way was adjusting the font color to create higher contrast between the text and the background. Readability matters deeply to me, especially in a smaller format where your eyes are already working a little harder. Every adjustment has been made with the user experience in mind.

Imposter Syndrome Is Real

I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't mention this. There have been moments, especially when I haven't taken breaks, where I look at my work and all I can see is what's wrong. It doesn't look clean enough, it doesn't look professional enough, it doesn't look like what I imagined. But here's what I've learned: stepping away is part of the process. After a good break I come back with fresh eyes and a much better perspective. The work hasn't changed, but my ability to see it clearly has. If you're creating something and imposter syndrome is knocking at your door, take the break. It's not a sign of weakness, it's part of doing creative work well.

The Hardest Page So Far

Without a doubt, the Annual Goals page has been the most challenging to design visually. Not just because of the layout, but because the questions within each section matter so much. I wanted to make sure that every prompt was there for a reason, guiding the user through a process that actually leads to meaningful, achievable goals. Getting the content and the design to work together on that page took the most time, but I'm proud of where it landed.

What's Keeping Me Going

At the end of the day, every decision I make in this design process comes back to the person who will hold this agenda in their hands. I want them to open it and feel like it was made for them, like someone thought deeply about their experience before they even picked up their pen. That purpose is what keeps me going when the process gets hard.

Vívela365 is more than an agenda. It's an invitation to a deeper relationship with yourself. One day, one page, one intention at a time.