Design tips for creating the perfect 2020 calendar
With Christmas fast approaching it’s the perfect time to start thinking about what presents to buy for your family and friends. Best to avoid the rush this year, eh? And the same goes for your business colleagues, associates and clients. By ensuring you’ve got your business gifts ready early, you can tick that job off your list for another year.
Whether you are buying for friends or family or work associates, a calendar is a fantastic and versatile option to send as a gift. At Kaizen Print, we provide bespoke and brandable high-quality Wall Calendars, Year Planners and Tent Calendars that are ideal as a personal or corporate gift. We also have an expert in-house design team who can provide guidance or design your calendar for you, depending on your requirements. Here’s our top design tips for creating the perfect 2020 calendar.
Know your audience
Now there are a few obvious observations to make here. If you work in a particularly formal or professional environment, then it’s likely that you’ll need to tailor your calendar to be appropriate for this kind of audience. A crude or crass calendar may be the right choice for your uncle, but it’s probably not going to go down too well if you send it to your client. This being said, ultimately, it comes down to the relationship you have with your client and the type of industry you work in. If you feel that there is room to push the envelope a bit more then, by all means, go ahead. You want to get the balance right between being professional and creating a calendar that gets you attention.
Choose a suitable calendar type
Going back to our point about knowing your audience, you’ll want to choose a calendar that they will appreciate and that makes sense for what they do – be it in general in their job, or as a specific job role.
Year Planners
Year planners are a great choice as a gift as they are suitable for most working environments. With a year planner your recipient can see the whole year laid out in front of them and can, therefore, have a clear visual plan of attack for each coming week and month.
Wall calendars
Wall calendars are an excellent choice as they enable you more opportunity to get creative with the images and photography that you include in the calendar. Wall calendars are ideal if you have a close relationship with your clients.
Desktop Tent Calendars
If you know that wall space in your recipient’s workplace is likely to be at a premium, then you might want to opt for the smaller and more discreet desktop tent calendar. By occupying space on your recipient’s desk, you are also on view to that specific person all year round.
Stick to your brand guidelines
Once you’ve got a good idea of the theme, messaging, layout, and what you are trying to achieve with your calendar, it’s time to consider how best to design your calendar. As with all corporate branding projects, it is imperative that you stick to your brand guidelines. By ensuring that you are always adhering to your brand guidelines, you will increase brand awareness and also improve your relationship with your target audience. Ultimately, a strong brand will be perceived in a better light than a weak or unprofessional looking brand.
Keep it simple
As with most branding projects, it’s best to try and keep things simple. Come up with a few great ideas, motifs, messages, or slogans, whittle them down, and then run with your best one. Use appropriate images and photographs to work alongside what you have to say and use them sparingly. You will see the best results with your calendar if you don’t try and say too much.
Format your calendar professionally
Attention to detail is imperative when it comes to your calendar design. Make sure that every section is measured evenly, that you are consistent with the way that you use fonts, images and colours, and that each section of your calendar is formatted correctly. You may have followed all the previous steps, but if the detail when it comes to your formatting isn’t on point, then the whole calendar project can fall down because of it.
Don’t DIY it
If you are unsure about how to move forward with your calendar design, or you don’t have a designer in your team, then it’s best to seek help from the professionals. After all, your calendar isn’t just a little throwaway gift, it is a reflection of you and your brand that you hope will be used and viewed daily. There is more at stake here than merely a token gesture of thanks to your customers, how your brand is perceived is closely connected to how professional your corporate gifts look.
At Kaizen Print, our expert design and print team have worked on numerous calendars for our clients, and we know exactly how to create the perfect calendar. For more information you can visit our calendars and planners page, or get in touch via our contact form or by calling 02890022474.
