Recognize that all journals in a certain sense qualify as personalized journals. Journals take the form of a series of very personal thoughts and reflections. No journal can ever be anything except unique; not even two journals written by the same person. Add additional personalization to the journal writing itself by using creative journaling techniques, such as writing unsent letters or a dialogue with an important event in your life.
Personalize your journals more formally starting out with simple techniques. Keep separate volumes for one or more particular areas of interest such as goals, dreams or project ideas. Inscribe your name in the front cover. Add a contents listing to the inside of the cover or on the first few pages of a completed journal volume. Use such simple techniques either separately or in conjunction with each other.
Determine the type of journal or journals you want to work with. Personalizing your journal, in the sense of engraving or monogramming of initials, or personalized decorations, will depend on a variety of factors. These factors can include whether you keep one journal for all your journal writing or a series of separate journals for different purposes. The medium, such as a blank book versus a spiral notebook also will influence your opportunities for personalization.
Purchase a personalized journal from a vendor that sells one, and have your name engraved in the journal volume or volumes you will use. Consider, alternatively, personalizing your journal volumes through creativity. Write your name in the front cover in calligraphy-style script, glue in family photographs or pictures cut from magazines such as a picture that illustrates your dream home or sketch scenes of interest that you describe in your journal entries. Paste other meaningful objects, such as pressed flowers from a funeral or dried autumn foliage, either into the front cover or on a page opposite an entry associated with that object.
Personalize a series of journals kept for different purposes during the same interval by creating a common decorative theme that connects the different volumes to each other. Write your name in different color inks in the same calligraphy style of script inside the cover of different journals, for example. Create a scrollwork design that you can inscribe on each volume of a journal series as another way of creating a personalized journal.