what is the best calendar ever

December 3, 2004 6:54 AM

It's coming up to the end of the year, the traditional time for getting a new calendar. How do you use your calendar, what do you look for in one and why? What's the best calendar ever? [mi]

I'm going all home crafty this year for present giving and I'm trying to design a useful calendar to give to friends and family. I would ask them, but that may give the game away so I'm asking here. I know the things I do and don't like and what I use them for;

Month per page calendars are good because there's a lot of space to write on each day, but bad because I don't notice it's someone's birthday on the 2nd of next month until I turn the page, at which point it's too late.

Wall planners are good because you can see the whole year, but not much writing space for each day and they take up more room, and I don't particularly like the look of them.

I tend to keep planting, seeding growing, picking and general gardening notes on mine, otherwise I'll forget when I'm supposed to put the potatoes in (I'm a useless gardener). But other people I know just seem to use them as pretty pictures that change each month with no notes made on them at all.

I'm toying with showing the whole year as a ring, with space to write notes inside and out. But then my friends see me as eccentric so they may hate that. So what should a universally useful a calendar to do and how would you use it? Or has everyone gone electronic?

posted by ModestyBCatt to shopping (11 comments total)

What a nice idea. I too love the idea of making Christmas presents. Can you share a little more about how the calenders will look (are they to hang on a wall or be propped on a desk, for example), the size, and what materials you're using to make them? Are they all paper? Are you printing them from your computer, or hand lettering, painting, etc.

I made a wall calender last year and used a clear overlay for each page, the kind you can erase. It was fantastic - the actual calendar pages stayed nice and clean (and you could see them) and I used the overlay to jot and keep notes on. I especially liked it because I could erase appt times and change dates and things on it without messing up the regular pages. I kept planting times on it too. Then at the end of every month, I transferred the important notes to the actual calender, which I kept to refer to this year. I got the clear overlay plastic at a local office supply store.

About the birthday thing - on each month's page, you could have a comment on a certain day (the same day each month for consistency) - say, the 20th of the month - a comment that said something to the effect of "check next month's calendar for birthdays and special events today".
posted by iconomy at 7:08 AM on December 3, 2004

Ugh. I really can spell calendar. Sometimes.
posted by iconomy at 7:09 AM on December 3, 2004

I like calendars that were at least looked at by a real designer at some point. So many calendars that are out there have hideous mismatched type and ugly designs. Big pretty photos are good too. The National Geographic calendars usually meet these goals, and have bonus photos on each month as well.

(But in reality, I don't buy a calendar until February, because I won't pay $12-$15 for one.)
posted by smackfu at 7:10 AM on December 3, 2004

I print my own calendar pages from an Excel file I worked up. (Just change one date, and it automatically generates the calendar page for a whole month.) The one particular feature I like about it, which can be hard to find in commercial calendars, is that for the "little" boxes showing past/future months, it has the last month and the next two months.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:28 AM on December 3, 2004

What I look for in a calendar - cheap and easy! I've used this for the past three years - just print the page for the month, thumbtack it to the wall, throw it away at the end.
posted by tizzie at 8:19 AM on December 3, 2004

I don't know how you could make it but I am a recent convert to a calendar i can now not ever see living without. It hangs from my cube wall and has 4 full sized months stacked on top of each other. The second month is current and white. The previous month and the following two are gray. In the current month, it has a slidey bar where you can move around a little red square to denote the current day. All the pages are perforated - so at the end of every month I remove a page from each.
My husband works for a company with a bunch of European suppliers - this was a give-away last year from the Ate brake company. I'm really hoping to get another - I don't know that I've seen anything like this for sale here.
posted by Wolfie at 8:19 AM on December 3, 2004

The best calendar I ever had was a very detailed weather calendar for the Twin Cities in the mid-nineties. It had sunrise, sunset, record and average temps, etc etc for each day. I haven't found anything that cool since.
posted by mookieproof at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2004

I oce saw a deskop "Pi digit of the day" calendar. Great for a friend who is a math grad student, or for a family friend coworker as a gag gift.
posted by blindcarboncopy at 9:56 AM on December 3, 2004

Oh, and I'm not sure whether this touches on your question, but as far as best pictures on a calendar, I absolutely love the "Colors of Chemistry" calendar that Chemical Abstracts Service puts out every year. Absolutely stunning photos, along with a bit of explanation of the chemistry behind some of the colors in the photo. (This month: why female cardinals are brown, but male cardinals are bright red.) They give them out for free to their customers, but unfortunately, as far as I know, they're not available to the general public.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:05 AM on December 3, 2004

Humm, I like idea of having a preview of the months coming up that's been mentioned a couple of time, that would solve the missing birthdays problem. "Colors of Chemistry" sounds great too, maybe some really good super magnification pictures would be kind of fun, any ideas (I'll google too) on where to find some public domain ones?

iconomy: Well I figured design, rather than make. I'm sure people are going to shout at me but my options are/were, use the standard Calendar item on Cafepress if I was just going the pictures route. But then they don't have the mini previews of following months that I like the sound of, so I may have to rethink that if I go that route.

The other was to use the large poster item for a wall planner type calendar, for my "year as a ring" idea. Which is more freeform.

Either way once I had them I was going to hand tweek them for each friend/family member. Some of my friends are Pagan, so I was going to add solstice, equiniox and full/new moon times and festival with pagan names. But other just wouldn't understand, so they just get the festivals with traditional names. So that's where some more sticking, glueing and coloured pens comes in.

That's why I'm also interested in other things people like to have on calendars, sports events, astrological events, astronomical events and so on.
posted by ModestyBCatt at 11:19 AM on December 3, 2004

For those who had their interest piqued by the Colors of Chemistry Calendar refs, try calling the number here. I just gave them my name and address, and the nice lady said that I'm on their list to get one when they're ready. Sounds like a great gift for my husband's retired Chemistry teacher grandmother. (first post)
posted by Pattie at 4:27 PM on December 3, 2004