Vocab Lesson 7: the Flatplan

When you work on a design project with more than a few pages, you quickly realize you need a plan to figure out what content should go on each page. If you've ever sketched out a few boxes to help you do that, then congratulations! You've created a flatplan!


A flatplan is basically a map of the publication being worked on. It's generally a grid of boxes representing each page of the issue. It is used to plan where the editorial content and ads go, and in doing so, it assigns page numbers to each page. In addition to being called a flatplan, it can also be referred to as the map, ladder, or page diagram. (Does your editor or staff call it something else? Tell us in the comments section below!)

The flatplan allows you to see the entire magazine in a glance so you can figure out the best placement of each page. Each box in the grid usually contains an abbreviation or brief description of what content is on that page: a feature story, a department page, an ad, etc. If there are inserts or special items such as gatefolds, these are also noted on the flatplan.

Originally flatplans were drawn out on paper, and as editorial pages moved around or changed and ads were received or cancelled, the drawn-out boxes were corrected and/or redrawn or moved around physically. More recently, this is done digitally. Most major publications use a pagination system that can be easily updated through various software, but you can also create your own flatplan using templates in your page layout program or even in Excel. There's also a few new online systems such as BlinkPlan that are more affordable for smaller publications (the image above is a BlinkPlan example).