Creative Guided Journal PDF Design

Project Brief: "Who Am I Now?" Guided Journal

I'm putting together a free downloadable guide for midlife women navigating identity and transition, and I'd like your help turning my content outline into a beautifully branded, press-ready PDF. This is the first in a planned series of themed guides, so you'll be designing a flexible system — not a one-off piece. The framing sections (welcome, process overview, and closing invitation) should function as a reusable wrapper that I can adapt for future guides; the prompt pages in the middle are where each theme will change.

Audience and purpose
This guide is a free lead magnet for midlife women in identity transition — women in service professions who are burned out, questioning who they are, and ready for something quieter and more honest than a productivity system. The tone should feel like a trusted friend handing you something that actually helps.

Brand identity
This guide must work within my existing brand. Please use:
- Brand colors: rusty orange #bf6a33 (dominant), sage green #a8b494, soft yellow #ffe494, cool gray #abb6b6
- Typefaces: Cormorant Garamond and Jost (already licensed)

Visual direction
The overall aesthetic should feel warm, handcrafted, and organic — grounded rather than whimsical. Think natural textures, unhurried layouts, and illustrations that feel like they were made with care rather than generated. I want the design to feel creative and distinctly personal, not minimalist or traditionally corporate. Original or licensed illustrations that reinforce each section's theme are welcome; please, no clip art or generic stock imagery.

Content and layout notes
I will supply all written content in a Word or Google Doc. The guide is not a workbook — the reader uses it alongside her own paper journal, so there is no writing space on the prompt pages.
Each prompt spread contains four elements in this order: a brief framing paragraph (in italics) that creates a connection point to the theme; a photo prompt; a journal prompt; and a word harvest cue. The word harvest cue is identical across all five prompt pages by design — it instructs the reader through the two-pass circling method and directs her to add words to the master list at the back of the guide.
The sixth prompt (Reflect) has no photo prompt. It works only from the word list the reader has already built.
The guide also includes framing pages at the front and back — a welcome section, a process overview, and a closing What's Next section — which function as a reusable wrapper adaptable for future themed guides in this series.

Primary use: digital download
This guide will live primarily as a digital PDF download. Please optimize for screen-first (RGB, optimized for web delivery). If a print-ready version is straightforward to produce alongside it, I'd welcome that as a secondary deliverable, but screen quality is the priority.
Deliverables
Screen-optimized PDF (RGB, under 20 MB without image degradation)
Print-ready PDF (CMYK, 300 dpi with bleed) — secondary deliverable
Editable Canva source file, organized and clearly labeled so I can adapt it for future guides in this series
All linked illustration assets in organized folders
Font list and licensing confirmation

Additional requests c
- Consistent brand language from cover to final page, with the framing sections clearly designed as an adaptable system
- Two rounds of revisions included after the first full draft

If this sounds like your wheelhouse, I'd love to see a recent journal or book design project you're proud of, and hear how you'd approach marrying visuals with reflective, personal prompts.
**I'm uploading a recent workbook I created, but don't like the structure so I want to create a guide. I want it to look professional and more like a guide than image heavy "magazine" layout.