It's Calendar Season!

Yes, that's right, the calendar submission season is upon us again.
Most of our artists' Calendars are submitted and sold late in the year between September and Christmas.

If you are planning to design and submit a Calendar, you are strongly advised to make use of the following tips and tricks.
Designing for a spiral-bound calendar can be a tricky task, but with the following information you should be good to go.


Technical Specifications:

From FAQ #132: What are the minimum image sizes for each product?

- Product size: 11x8.5 inches (=28x22cm)
- Aspect ratio: 1.29:1 (landscape format)
- Recommended source image dimensions: 1650x1275 pixels
- Excellent source image dimensions: 3300x2550 pixels

From FAQ #298: What is a bleed edge and how do I use it when preparing my artwork for printing?

Calendars require 1/4th of an inch bleed edge per side, 3/8th of an inch on the bottom.
The bleed edge should be considered to exist inside the image itself. If you wish to add a border to your image, that is acceptable, but not required.
In the case of calendars, the 3/8th of an inch on the bottom are reserved for the spiral binding. You are encouraged to make use of the full format very well, as long as elements such as text (such as copyrights, signatures, titles, etc.) or any other important parts of the image are not located too close to the print edge and in the spiral binding area.

From FAQ #576: Where can I find templates to help me size my images correctly for prints?

If the above information is too technical and complicated for you, please download our 'Product Templates' PSD or JPG packs which contain calendar templates with the mentioned design spec outlines.


Design and Layout:

Our calendars consist of 14 pages: 1 front cover, 1 back cover and a page for each month, making that 12 pages. You, the artist, provides the artistic images for these pages, and our print lab prints the calendar elements on the back of these pages, which contain the years, months dates and days just like any ordinary calendar. Holidays are not marked in our calendars. You are free to incorporate the year and month names in your page designs, but it is not necessary that you do that. The design of the front and back cover is entirely up to your desire, keeping the technical specs mentioned further above in mind.

Product shots:



_{(Feel free to share your calendar product shots here if you have any in your gallery or scraps)}


Submission

When submitting Calendars, do not submit them to the Designs & Interfaces gallery, unless the core artwork itself would belong to that gallery or if your Calendar is a compilation of images from various mediums.
There are two reasons to that: 1) Designs & Interfaces is currently not available in Shop browse, and (2 calendars should be submitted to the section the contained artwork would belong to.
It's safe to assume barely anyone would think of browsing Designs & Interfaces when looking for an animal photography or dark art photomanipulation themed Calendar, for example.


General:

Browse Shop: Calendars

If you need ideas and inspiration for calendar designs, simply browse our deviantART Shop's Calendar product category.
Here are some very recent examples of neatly designed 2007 calendars. Click 'Add to Cart' to have a look at their individual page previews!



Expect a full 2007 Calendars feature news item soon!