Calendar 2009

**juergen** · 10 October 2008, 10:48 AM

Good morning,

this year I wanted to try to create a wall calendar to be printed in DIN A1 size for my customers. So I fired up my favourite graphics app and started to create lots of boxes, numbers and a few images.

As I am not a designer I would be happy for any hints on what can be improved, especially my choice of colors. The main color them is from my website and logo.

The audience is mainly high level IT folks in the banking/insurance industry. The calendar will be printed on paper where you can paint on with a whiteboard marker and clean it if wanted.

What is missing at the bottom currently is the public holidays which will take some space.
As I was unable to embed the fonts due to license restriction, I created a pdf and exported text as shapes. If somebody is interested, I can attach the .xar file too but have no idea what will be displayed when there is a lack of the used font.

Thanks in advance for every feedback,
Juergen

Edit: So far I am unable to create a .pdf that is smaller than 550kb. For this reason I embedded an exported image until I resolve that.
Edit2: .xar file is 550kb, too big. zipped .xar file is 511kb, too big ... Any idea how to make it smaller ?

**raynerj1** · 11 October 2008, 05:48 AM

Ummm... Upload the .xar to your server and provide a link? Then you can track who and when downloaded the .xar if you have a decent stats program.

**handrawn** · 11 October 2008, 09:48 AM

there is a 500KB limit on zip - but I didn't think there was one on .xar, its not quoted as such in the dialog , but its a while since I uploaded one above 1MB [last year probably]

**juergen** · 11 October 2008, 06:15 PM

ok, here we go.
Here is the .xar file of the 2009 calendar.
All critics and suggestions welcome how I can improve this.

Juergen

**Jimi King** · 12 October 2008, 12:20 AM

I personally think it's very stylish Juergen.

From my own experience I think that people are interested in as much space as possible to write in the boxes so my advice would be to minimise any unused space around the outside and resize the calendar frame to go as near to the edges as you can.

I also think that although the design is great you could make it a little more transparent. People need for their notes and scribbles to be as readable as possible. It may also help to have the public holidays in faded text as people may want to write in those boxes too.

The more usable the calendar is, the more popular it will be.

**handrawn** · 12 October 2008, 10:02 AM

agree with Jimi here

I calculate the box area that is writable to be about 34mm by 11mm [1.33in by 0.43in] - not a lot, but it depends what it is for

the design I like - simple and unobtrusive

**juergen** · 12 October 2008, 05:04 PM

Thanks for your ideas.
I enlarged the calendar and changed the way calendar weeks and holidays are displayed.
Anything you would improve on this version ?

Thanks,
Juergen

P.S. When I try to export the document as pdf for commercial printing with text to curve and crop marks, the pdf creation just abends and I have to close Xara ...

**WolfMoonHP** · 13 October 2008, 03:50 PM

Juergen...

I thought your first version was very attractive. But the revised one is even better. You may say you are not a designer, but this is simple beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
===
Will

**Jimi King** · 13 October 2008, 03:56 PM

Yep, looks good to me. I'm not getting all of the background text coming through on mine, but that may be because I don't have all the fonts you used.