Whether you are investing in calendar printing for your business,
or if it is for a community or organization, there are a couple of things you need to prepare before you design or you print calendars. Being prepared with your materials and data makes the calendar printing process faster and easier for you and the printer.
Therefore, to help you out in calendar printing below are the things you need to prepare for calendar design and printing.
1. Your images – First and foremost are the images. What calendar is not complete with its images right? Always have your 12 main images ready, January to December. If you have images for the cover and other supporting pages, you need to gather them early as well.
Be sure to collect high-resolution images so that the printers will not have any trouble in them. Images are important especially in marketing calendars since it is the primary part of the calendar where the marketing message is placed.
2. Calendar content – Second of course is the main calendar’s content. It might be obvious, but a calendar’s content is the actual dates of the year arranged in their respective 12 months and 52 weeks. Of course, each year is different in this aspect so you must know when a calendar year starts, and if it is a leap year or not.
Also included in the content itself are the holiday dates for your country and local community. Do not forget that. If you are creating a marketing calendar, you might also add some business dates such as markdown sales and holiday giveaways.
3. Design layout – Once you know the dates and holidays, it is time to layout your calendar. This is based usually on the layout designer’s specifications. If you were, the designer then this would involve how the calendar content looks, its fonts, the size and how the calendar looks overall. Be sure that you keep to a coherent theme throughout the year and only vary slightly depending on the season.
4. Dimensions and folds – When doing the layout, do not forget to set the proper dimensions of the designs for printing. Also, try to mark where the folds for the calendar are if there are any. This will be helpful for the designer so that he or she can visualize how the actual printed calendar will look like.
5. Supporting details – Lastly you might want to add some extra supporting content once the layout for the calendar is finished. You might want to have your company’s full contact details in the back of the calendar, along with a logo and a few marketing pages.
In addition, the calendar printing company may also want to advertise its services by putting its mark on the calendar. This can give that calendar design, that professional finish that distinguishes it from the rest.
After all this is prepared, it will be time to pass the project to the printer. These steps should make the whole printing process easier, and you will minimize the printer’s questions for your designs considerably. Happy printing!
