CALENDAR ROUNDUP 2012
AND LO, Y’ALL: my favorite design roundup sites have sorely disappointed me when it comes to the calendar game. it’s december 7th and this year i’ve vowed to have a calendar on my wall before february - which would shamefully be a first! i realized that if design*sponge was not going to help me, it might be time to help myself.
so! i went trolling the internet for illustrators, designers, papercutters and other assorted dreamers whose work i thought i might want on my walls for an entire year. i don’t like perpetual calendars: part of the thrill of a new month is switching that calendar page, and that’s a joy i wanted to preserve.
i found a lot of awesome stuff, although not all of it was 100% my style… and then i thought, why not share it? so without further ado, these are my dirty dozen. (if nothing else, you could get one of each and only display your very favorite month? adwoa is all about providing you with options.
Kitchen Calendar $21.95
good old anthropologie. despite the fact that i’m much more likely to identify with these guys than the brand itself, they are pretty reliable for a certain dreamy, easily ridiculed type of quality decor.
Pintame El Dia Wall Calendar $20
adorable concept, luxurious size, decent price point, gorgeous illustration style. so what’s the problem?? library nerd strikes again - i don’t like the books she chose. and as much as i would like to believe better of myself, i refuse to spend all of june shooting dagger eyes at lolita. life is just too short.
Heiko Windisch - Animals and Vehicles $15
not my style, but i like his attention to detail. this is a great calendar for a man-cave trying to take it up a notch; the black and white will show up nicely in the reflected basement light of that computer screen!
Karolin Schnoor Wall Calendar 2012 - $15
(but didn’t she just say she didn’t like perpetual calendars??) it is true. i did say those things. however, if i WERE going to get one, this would be it. it encourages focusing on the small things, which is kind of sweet.
Blanca Gomez - Cosas Minimas Calendar $25
i really do like this calendar; it is among my top three favorites on the whole list. however, it is very hard to find a calendar that is both well designed and satisfyingly large.
in 2011 i went for design over size, and have therefore passed the time from april (told you i was always late with these things: and this year i had to ship it to italy to boot) until now with a gorgeous calendar that is smaller than a sheet of printer paper folded in half. i was hope hope hoping to break that trend in 2012… but it appears that all i can really do is fold the paper in half the other way. drat!
Laura George - Amazing Adventures Ahead $25
i have no idea why on earth a designer would take such terribly lit pictures of her own work for inclusion on her etsy site. seriously, they defy rational thought - especially because the calendar itself is SO SO SO cute and special. there ARE amazing things ahead! although you may have to purchase the calendar in order to see them clearly, because laura is clearly not trying to do you any favors online.
this is tiny, not letterpress, and overly stylized… but it’s also really charming in its way. if it were more in line with the style of the rest of my house, i might consider it further.
Quilt Pattern Letterpress Calendar (Coil or Fabric Binding) $30
VERY cute (good eye, cassandra!) but i wish it were larger. also, the font is verging on the cutesy: side eye for that.
i found this calendar reeeeeally overwhelming. and kind of felt like if i got it, i would spend the last few days of each month dreading the new assault on my eyes. i don’t really like heavy colors or too much pattern in a calendar - it tends to clash with both my house and my clothes, and just makes it visually hard for me to find information.
JHill - Places I Have Never Been 2012 $24
(the above is why i am unfortunately not going to be buying jhill’s places i have never been calendar, even though she is lovely and i think the calendar is really pretty! it’s just too much pattern on my walls.)
WITH THAT SAID, i think that both the jhill piece and the nikki mcclure do a lovely job of working with a theme across an entire year and engaging the imagination. if you’re on the lookout for a stimulating calendar, you couldn’t do better than one of these two.
Brendan Monroe - Mini Calendar $12
okay, so THIS guy made a 2011 calendar i’m still sad i didn’t get, over a year later. it was so gorgeous, so letterpress, so swedish, so PERFECT that i spent all of december searching frantically for a replacement, ultimately settling (a bit sadly) on my current lovely three square design runner up.
so naturally this year, he was the first source to which i turned when i noticed that all i could find on my favorite design blogs were tea towels with all 12 months printed amid frolicking squirrels. how dejected was i to find that this year’s calendar had a totally different palette and feel - and had been printed on a color xeroxing machine. womp womp: next.
i was so ready to buy this calendar. i loved the idea, it was letterpress, the colors were perfect. but who the hell puts two months on a single page? it struck me as jarring and odd - like only six months of the year were worthy of the bother of turning a page. as the most expensive on this list i would expect it to offer the most value, and unfortunately this design meant i couldn’t justify the cost.
New Belgium Brewing Letterpress Coaster Calendar $18.95
i don’t usually drink a lot of beer. nor do i usually have a desk calendar. but this thing is so stinking cute that i’m about to start doing both in 2012. adorable!
so that’s my roundup! ended up going long and giving you a baker’s dozen - which is only fortuitous. after all, if by next december i still haven’t found the perfect calendar for 2013…
