Branding with customised calendars is a popular marketing strategy that always impacts sales revenue. A calendar is a must-have at corporate offices to remind you about venues, meetings, to-do lists, and many more. Following today's 8 Steps to Design a Professional Print Desktop Calendar; you can create attractive and unique calendars that everyone will love.

 

Let's not waste any time and get into the details.

 

Things to Consider for Designing and Printing Desktop Calendar 

Before I explain the process of printing a calendar, I would like to enlighten you about some of the crucial aspects you need to pay attention to. Carefully read the following matters from designing to printing a calendar. 

 

The format and size are important to make a right-sized desktop calendar that is the right size. Here, you need to incorporate the user's perspective, convenience, design sense, and budget. Your choice of photos will also depend on the format and size of the calendar. To design your own calendar you need to measure the desk space you have allocated for your calendar. This way you will have more freedom to work with in terms of size and theme.

 

To ensure the outcome of the calendar is exactly like the design, you cannot compromise with the printer. The right and best quality printer will ensure the most clear, vibrant, and attractive calendar. 

 

Be careful about the paper choice. Certainly, you need to be on budget while creating such a custom calendar. However, when choosing the calendar paper, you should go for glossy or semi-glossy paper. The most popular paper is matte king, which is thick and brings an aesthetic appearance. 

 

Finally, binding is what puts the entire calendar together. There are various ways you can bind a calendar depending on the number of pages and appearance. If you want a professional-looking calendar, you can choose spiral binding. Other ways of binding calendars are stapled. All of these binding processes come at a reasonable price.  

 

Steps to Design a Professional Print Desktop Calendar 

 

For the professional quality printed desktop calendar, here are the things you need to gather first. 

 

Software 

 

First of all, you need to create a design for the calendar. In case you are wondering how to design calendar, for this job, you would need software. There are a lot of software available out there. You can use software from Adobe, such as Illustrator and InDesign, or from Microsoft, like Word, publisher, etc. CorelDraw and Mac pages are also popular calendar design software. If you are a newbie and don't want to take the hassle, you can use any templates that are available on online calendar design websites. You may also get lucky and find a free calendar design that suits your preferences by conducting a thorough online search.

 

Paper 

 

A good quality paper is a must for calendar print. For this, you can use a standard size 4X6" paper in gloss, semi-gloss, or matte king. 

 

Inkjet photo printer 

 

The design you have created will come to life with the right printer. Hence, it would help if you got the best quality inkjet photo printer. You can either buy it for yourself or get the printing done by a professional printing service online. 

 

Cutting and packaging 

 

To trim the calendar to the right size, you can get a paper trimmer. Then, to make the calendar more attractive, choose unique packaging to give to your fellow partners, employees, and consumers. 

 

Step 1: Choose the calendar style 

 

You must have noticed the wide versatility of the desktop calendar style. It can be in landscape or portrait style. There is diversity in size, too. While choosing the style, consider the user's convenience, unique appearance, and space convenience. Desk calendars are more functional and more popular among all other types of calendars. 

 

Step 2: Size matters 

 

Imagine you have kept a calendar on your desk. Every time you change, the page ends up collapsing on the desk. To avoid such issues with your desk calender design, be mindful of the size and user-friendliness. Consider how to flip the pages easily and what orientation would be more convenient for the user. Then, according to the size, make sure the design is compatible with it. The job will be much easier if you get a professional designer to design it or download a template. 

 

Step 3: Only choose high-resolution pictures 

 

A calendar will promote your brand throughout the year. Hence, you need to be careful about choosing photos, especially when it comes to quality. To design a calendar, you can select photos based on a theme that complements your brand and logo. So, while deciding pictures, make sure the quality is at 300 dpi. The outcome of the pictures will be crisp and clear. 

 

Step 4: Use the right font 

 

The size of the font is crucial. As you are creating a desktop calendar, the size of it is already small. Hence, you need to choose a font that looks professional and compatible with the entire layout and other elements. While doing so, select a font that is clear, readable, and easy to understand. Here, refrain from using fancy fonts. The more professional-looking fonts are Eurotypo, Hatftype, Fontmachine, etc. 

 

Step 5: Highlight important dates 

 

The dates are as important as the design. While you create the calendar, make sure the days and dates are accurate. Then, highlight the important dates like festivals, holidays, sales, national holidays, celebrations, etc. 

 

Step 6: Keep a place for notes 

 

To stand out and create a unique design for the calendar, you can add a space for taking notes on each page. As it's going to be on the desk, the user may need to mark important dates along with dates as a reminder. Either choose a layout accordingly or have your own design created by a professional.  

 

Step 7: Smart choice of colours 

 

To ensure your calendar design ideas come out flawless, the entire calendar must look cohesive and put together. If you are creating a calendar for professional purposes, then the colours you choose must look suitable to corporate culture. The colours you select must be compatible with your brand logo and theme. Generally, professional calendars are designed with warm and cool tones. Depending on the theme, some of the popular colours are red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, etc. Besides it's better to find a calendar design template to match your color theme to get an initial idea of how you design will look in real.

 

Step 8: Get ready for printing 

 

When you are done with the design, size, format, and orientation, it's time to print. The most preferred printing technique for calendars is offset. It's budget-friendly and suitable for reproduction. While you intend to print the calendar, make sure to use vectors for text pictures and save the files in PDFs. The picture quality must be 300 dpi. Don't forget to set the bleeding, safety zone, and trimming area. 

 

Personalisation Tips to Design a Professional Print Desktop Calendar

 

Calendars are designed for professional purposes mostly. However, some users design them for their home or give them as a present to the loved one. The best calendar design is one that pleases its user. There are many ways you can design a desk calendar. If you are wondering which theme to go for, here are a few ideas I would like to share. 

Design with tour images 

 

One popular way to create a personalised calendar is by using travel photos. You can design it with images of the place you have visited or any place you would like to visit. 

 

Milestone photos 

 

Some parents cherish parenthood; hence, they take photos of their newborn every month. You can put those images together and create your own calendar to enjoy parenthood. 

 

Business

 

For business purposes, you can choose photos that represent or relate to your business. You will find many themes as such. For instance, if you have a shipping business, you can choose photos of the largest ships in the world, oceans, freight images, air freight, etc. 

Check out my blog on Calendar Printing Tips for more in-depth tips and design analysis. 

Design a Professional Print Desktop Calendar: Final Thought 

 

Here, I end the complete steps to design a professional print desktop calendar. The tips and important aspects will work as a guide for you to create an exclusive desktop calendar for the coming year. And in case you think designing a calendar is too much to do, you can avail of our calendar printing services. Because there is always a comfy solution!