Making a Calendar

[Tronhard]

I made a calendar some years ago for my family and friends to endure. I am now thinking of doing so again, but being in NZ at the moment I wonder if anyone has recommendations for a good service the is not outrageously expensive (esp considering postage) but yields good printing options and results.

I am considering one photo per month, with the opposing page (or back of the next sheet) having the dates table.
I might add that I will need to be able to put dates for in for the UK, Canada and NZ.

Thanks in anticipation...

[ST1]

I’ve used a couple of national (UK) suppliers for calendars. Both of which had online templates/designs covering size, layout and orientation. I have also had calendars printed by a local commercial printer. For the local printed versions I used an Excel based template for the date table. From memory I had to add bank holidays to each of the months.
I’ve probably still got the excel template on my computer I could load it to my DropBox and send you a link to it if you want. Be aware though that the template includes Macros which you would have to run.


Sent from somewhere in Gods County using Tapatalk

[Geoff F]

What quantities? How big will be the photos?

I produce my own calendar every year in very limited quantities which I print with my inkjet printer on matte paper to allow for people to write in the spaces. This is A4 size with each month's photo occupying half of the space.

Also I put together a 'professional calendar' for the local History Society from my photos of the area plus old images from the past 100 years. We get a local printer to make 500 copies which costs about £2.50 each and we sell for £5. However, we manage to get sponsorship from local business by giving them a little bit of advertising space within the calendar layout which pays for the printing. These are folded to A4 and open out to A3 when hung on a wall.

There are many text creating programmes which have a calendar design option that makes the whole process rather simple and allows for the automatic additions of public holidays etc. Personal dates such as family birthdays etc can easily be added as extra text layers.

I use Serif Page Plus but I am sure other people will be able to recommend alternative software.

This link should show the history society calendar. Because of the necessity to produce calendars in advance we will begin work on designing the 2019 calendar later this week, using images which I photographed in 2017.

http://salcombehistorysociety.co.uk/shop/2018-calendar/

[Tronhard]

Hi Geoff and thanks for your questions:

I can see printing about 20 calendars, using roughly A4 or A3 size paper, more likely the former as big calendars are hard to find places to hang and the images will each fill one page.

I had no problem when I was in Canada: lots of places in there and the USA do cheap calendar productions, but once they have to be shipped across the Pacific the price goes up considerably. I was looking for a supplier in the Asia /Pacific region really. Obviously I have used the templates supplied by the printing companies and I'm fine with that.

[pnodrog]

I have recently had some photo blocks 20cm x 15cm done by Kroma. The online software was easy but cumbersome but the product was cheap, delivered promptly and the quality above my rather low expectations.

They offer A4 calendars at just over $13 (NZ) but the only option for date range seems to be Jan 18 to Dec 18. https://kroma.co.nz/product/calendars/wall-calendars At that price I would give them a try myself if I could change the date range.

[Tronhard]

Thanks for the advice on a local source, althouvh I have to say that's a rather odd date range!

[rpcrowe]

I use createphotocalendars.com

The quality of the printing is excellent and I can order these in limited quantities.

Actually, with my dog rescue calendars, I just have people order the calendars from the company who prints them and mails them out and gives us a cut of the profit. That way I never have to worry about having a couple of unsold calendars which would eat into my profits.

[Tronhard]

Thanks Richard:

I shall look into that and the other reference from Paul

I use createphotocalendars.com

The quality of the printing is excellent and I can order these in limited quantities.

Actually, with my dog rescue calendars, I just have people order the calendars from the company who prints them and mails them out and gives us a cut of the profit. That way I never have to worry about having a couple of unsold calendars which would eat into my profits.

[Ken MT]

You could use MS word. It has calendar templates, and you can insert images. I have an A4 printer, but I am sure that you can use an A3 printer. The images probably need to be landscape to fit in withthe format

[Tronhard]

You could use MS word. It has calendar templates, and you can insert images. I have an A4 printer, but I am sure that you can use an A3 printer. The images probably need to be landscape to fit in withthe format

Hi Ken

Your suggestion is an excellent one and under other circumstances I would be happy to use Word - I trained Word for decades and actually worked on the development team for the 95 version of MS Office, however I am looking for a solution that includes printing, binding etc as I currently don't have a printer - I gave my 120v one to my friends back in Canada just before I left. Depending upon what my users want I may even go for the spiral-bound stand-up design, so I am looking for templates that are easy to populate.

The nice thing is that it is early days yet. I have photos for December and January, and I want to have one photo for each month this year that shows what we have been experiencing, being currently rather immobile February is my immediate challenge. I was thinking of the Lantern Festival but just realized that is actually in March. I shall find something, somewhere...