An art graduate’s answer to life after college.

Passion Planner began with one person and a sheet of paper. According to the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper, in a profile published on 15 November 2016, Angelia Trinidad graduated from UCLA in 2012 after switching from a premed route to art, where she studied sculpture. SUCCESS magazine, in a September 2015 profile, describes her degree as a bachelor’s degree in art. Colorlines, in a December 2014 interview, describes Trinidad as a Filipina-American whose parents moved from the Philippines to San Diego.

The company tells the origin story in its own words. Passion Planner says that when Trinidad faced uncertainty after graduating from college in 2012, she decided to make a tool to help her regain control: a paper planner that would help her focus on what matters. Trinidad told the Daily Bruin that after graduation it felt like going from a hundred miles an hour to five, and that planners had always helped her organise her thoughts during the most hectic parts of her life.

The first draft was literally on paper. The Daily Bruin reported that Trinidad started by writing down everything she wanted the planner to include, then worked early each morning on its design and on the future structure of the company. Eight weeks later, the paper said, she had found a manufacturer, pooled her own funds and shot a video for Kickstarter. Trinidad told the paper that some friends had suggested an app instead, but that she wanted something tangible that people could write in and cross things out of.

The launch date comes from the company. Passion Planner says the first Passion Planner launched on Kickstarter in October 2013. Trinidad, quoted by SUCCESS, described that first campaign as being for Passion Planner 2014.

Two Kickstarter campaigns and a San Diego start-up.

A second campaign followed a year later. Passion Planner says that a year after its first launch, the Passion Planner Compact was funded on Kickstarter, and SUCCESS describes the second campaign as being for the 2015 edition. Colorlines, writing on 11 December 2014, reported that Trinidad had closed her second Kickstarter campaign the previous week. The company’s press page lists a Crowdfund Insider item dated 25 November 2014 that called Trinidad a “San Diego entrepreneur”, and a talk she gave at a local, independently produced TEDx event, dated 21 November 2014, under the title “The Power to Plan Your Passion.”

The company was built by a small group of friends. The Daily Bruin reported that Trinidad brought in her childhood friend Chelsea Wong at the end of 2013 to help launch the business, and that her former sorority sister Jacklyn Lee, also a 2012 UCLA graduate, helped to found it. Lee told the paper that she moved to San Diego, that the team first worked out of Trinidad’s parents’ garage, and that they moved into a warehouse two months later. In the same 2016 article the Daily Bruin described Passion Planner as a San Diego-based business.

The product’s shape was defined early. SUCCESS described Passion Planner in 2015 as an all-in-one weekly appointment calendar, journal, goal-setting guide, to-do list and gratitude log. Trinidad told the magazine that the planner asks users for their long-term and short-term goals, breaks those goals into actionable steps within set time frames, and that “each day has 30-minute increments.” She named Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek among her influences, and said she hoped to release limited editions designed by artists.

The Daily Bruin gave a similar description of the pages a year later. It said the planner’s white pages are divided into sections, including an hour-by-hour schedule and spaces to list long-term goals, and that Trinidad wanted users to think about what they want to accomplish and what they look forward to before breaking those goals into smaller projects.

Design and documentation.

Planner and calendar brands sell something unusual: a product that is built around a single year and is replaced when that year runs out. A dated planner has to be designed, printed and on the shelf before the months it covers begin, and the same name may appear on a wall calendar, a desk pad, a pocket diary and an academic-year book that starts in summer rather than January.

The identity of a planner brand is often carried less by a logo than by a layout, a cover and a format people return to each year, because the company behind the name may have changed owners, licensed its covers to outside artists or moved its printing a long way from where it began. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its pages are printed and bound.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Paper planners, a community and a giving programme.

The range today goes beyond the original dated book. Passion Planner’s own website sells paper planners alongside digital planners, journals and accessories, and the site is offered in English, Spanish and French. The company also offers free downloads and workshops through its site, and refers to its community of users as the #PashFam.

Giving is part of how the company presents itself. Passion Planner says it created a Community Empowerment Program through which it donates planners and part of its proceeds to nonprofit organisations, and says those partners range from groups raising mental-health awareness to organisations providing education for underserved young people. In 2015 Trinidad had told SUCCESS that she hoped to set up a get-one-give-one programme for the planners.

The brand’s language stays close to its founder’s story. The company’s “Our Story” page frames the planner around structure for plans, blank pages for creativity and room for reflection, and it keeps Trinidad’s 2012 graduation and the October 2013 Kickstarter launch at the centre of how it describes itself.

For a design guide, Passion Planner shows how a planner can be identified less by a cover than by a page structure — goals first, then the week — and by a founder story told in the company’s own voice. Compare Hobonichi and Leuchtturm1917. For this guide we use roadmap rust, marigold and planner cream with a warm serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Passion Planner’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.