Custom Calendar Design Tips
There’s a reason so many organizations are dedicated to printing custom calendars every year. Calendars are one of the few print products that lives with someone year-round. If it’s designed right, it’s a brand awareness tool that doesn’t feel like an ad! Every element of custom calendar design works together to create something that’s nice to look at and easy to use throughout the year. The challenge is deciding what information to include without overcrowding the overall layout.
A few thoughtful design decisions can make a big difference. Whether you’re designing as a photographer to showcase your work, a nonprofit raising money, or a business promoting your service the goal is the same. Here are some tips to help you create a beautiful functional calendar.
Why Print a Calendar?
The thing about calendars that differs from other print products and makes it so valuable is the year-round visibility. There is not another product that keeps you connected and in the mind of your customer every day. With 12 months of images and 12 grid pages, it can seem like a lot of time to dedicate to planning and designing. But, if you’re unsure on the content to share, it doesn’t need to be overthought, just connect it with your business type. If you’re a school, use it to keep families up to date and connected the academic year with deadlines, share event schedules for sports teams that double up as keepsakes, share scriptures and event dates for churches, feature seasonal menus or share recipes or special events.
When a calendar is planned intentionally, it starts being something your audience looks forward to every year.
Who Should Print a Custom Calendar?
Custom calendars work for almost everyone across different industries:
- Photographers
- Nonprofits
- Small Businesses
- Graphic designers
- Artists
- Museums
- Real estate agents
- Schools and universities
- Sports teams and leagues
- Churches
- Restaurants
- Contractors
- Any service based industry
Calendar Layout Design
Custom calendar design starts with the layout first. Before you think about photos or colors, you need to decide what kind of calendar you’re designing and how it’s going to be used.
Wall Calendar vs Desk Calendar
The two most common calendars you’ll find are wall calendars and desk calendars. Wall calendars are probably what you think when you picture a custom calendar as they are the most popular. They’re meant to be hung up and seen, which makes them the go-to for brand visibility. Most wall calendars are saddle stitched or spiral bound with a drill hole at the top for hanging, or some people just hang them up on their fridge.
Desk calendars are smaller and stand up with a pop-up stand and wire-o binding. You’ll find them in small spaces like offices where someone needs their schedule right in front of them. They’re ideal for businesses that want something sitting on someone’s desk every single day.
How Many Months?
Twelve months is the calendar standard, but a 16-month option is available too, which is great if you want your calendar to start mid-year or cover an academic year. Some businesses even double up, it just depends on how many you need and what makes sense for your audience, so think about whether you want your calendar to live in a home or a business setting.
From there, think about your layout type:
Monthly calendars are the most common format and work for almost every use case. Each month has its own section which gives you 12 opportunities for a new image, different promotion, or highlight something new about your business or organization.
Weekly calendars aren’t as common for print. They’re better suited for planners and desk pads where someone needs space to schedule out their days. Schools order these most often, typically as booklets.
Yearly calendars are on one page and are best for when year overviews are needed like campaign or project planning. A lot of businesses use them to get their departments organized and planned for the quarter. These are typically ordered as posters.
Designing a Calendar Grid
The calendar grid is where people are actually going to interact with your calendar every day, so it needs to be easy to read and use. White space is your best friend here, a lot of people make the mistake of trying to fill every inch of it, and it ends up being hard to use.
The space below or around the grid is a great place to add extra content. Depending on your audience, you can add:
- Monthly promotions or sponsor ads
- Helpful tips or facts related to your industry
- Notes about your business
Additional information about the image you chose for that month
Photographers do this really well and add a caption on the image itself about where the picture was taken. Below the grid they add details on the story of how they got it or the location itself. The more intentional and useful the content is, the more likely people are to keep it up. Start with one of PrintingCenterUSA’s free calendar templates to get your grid set up before you start designing around it. We offer 4 different grid styles with space for extra content.
Think beyond federal holidays when adding dates. Here’s what works by audience type:
- Schools: term start and end dates, exam weeks and breaks
- Businesses: seasonal promotions and product launches you know about in advance
- Nonprofits: fundraising events, donation deadlines and reminders
Leave room for notes too. Add a small notes section just below the grid to give people room to jot down whatever, without trying to fit it all into a date box. Don’t make the font on the date numbers too small. It’s easy to stop referencing something if it takes a lot of time to read it. Ultimately, just make sure your design elements never compete with the dates themselves.
How to Choose a Theme for Your Custom Calendar
Your theme is what ties your entire calendar together. Once you have a theme, everything else fits in naturally.
Consider who you have had in since starting this- business or personal. A corporate audience is going to want something simple and professional. A family calendar is personal and detailed. A photographer’s calendar should let the images do the talking without a lot of competing design elements getting in the way.
Some of the most common themes we see are
- Wildlife
- Floral
- Landscape
- Doodles
- Animals
- Hobbies
- Comics
- Employee showcase
- Art
- Pets
- First responders
- Travel
- Inspirational Quotes
- Food and recipe
Whatever direction you go, just keep it consistent. Carry the same colors, fonts, and theme across all 12 months.
How to Choose Photos for Your Custom Calendar
The theme you choose will guide your images. If your theme correlates directly with your business, collecting photos will be easier. If your theme doesn’t correlate with your business, that’s okay too. Your employees and stock photos are your best resources. If your theme is animal-based, think about getting employee photos of their pets. If your theme is recipe-based, collect them from people you know. If you need original photography and don’t have a photographer on hand, ask your employees, chances are someone knows one.
No matter what direction you go, images carry the calendar so it’s crucial you have high-resolution images. Anything under 300 DPI is going to look blurry or pixelated in print, and nothing kills a calendar faster than bad photo quality. Here are some sites to find images from:
- Unsplash: Free and paid
- Pixabay: Free and paid
- Flickr: Free and paid (If you are using your calendar for promotional purposes, be sure to choose “All Creative Commons” under the “Any License” dropdown.)
- Adobe Stock: Paid
- Shutterstock: Free and paid
If you are a photographer, you have the advantage of showcasing your own work. Since you’re shooting year-round, the first thing to figure out is your focus, one particular trip or a subject you keep coming back to. From there, give yourself more time than you think you need to go through your images and narrow it down. Picking only 12 photos that represent your best work from the year is harder than it sounds. You’ll need to balance pretty photos and photos that work together as a collection.
Calendar Color Schemes, Fonts and Typography
Your color scheme and fonts should follow your theme, once you have that locked in, this part is pretty straightforward.
For colors, stick to 2-3 throughout the whole calendar. Too many colors across 12 months starts to look busy. If you’re a business, start with your brand colors. If you’re a photographer or artist, pull colors from your images or logo and let them lead.
For fonts use the same one for headers and month names and another one for dates and any extra text.
How to Include Promotions in Your Calendar
A calendar is one of the best promotional tools because it lives naturally alongside your audience that’s using it every day.
When you think about your cover, your logo, website, and contact information should be on there. From there, think about what you can weave into each month:
- Seasonal promotions
- Product features
- Discount codes
- QR codes that link to something useful
Each month is its own opportunity. If you want to take it further, that section underneath the grid can just be rotating call to actions month to month.
Custom Calendar Templates and Design Tools
You don’t need to start from scratch! There are a ton of tools out there that make designing a custom calendar a lot more manageable, here are the ones worth knowing about.
Design Software:
- Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator: Best for experienced designers who want full control over every detail
- Canva: The easiest starting point if you’re newer to design with a low learning curve.
Fonts:
- Google Fonts: Free and integrates with pretty much every design tool out there
- Adobe Fonts: Included with Creative Cloud
Templates:
- Envato Elements: Great for premium calendar templates that are easy to customize
PrintingCenterUSA FREE resources.
- Free Adobe Calendar Templates: Pre-sized and print-ready so you can jump straight into designing
- Free Canva Calendar Template: If you want something more customizable and easy to work with
- Calendar Printing: Ready to print when you are
Frequently Asked Questions About Custom Calendar Design
How do I design a calendar?
Start with your format — wall or desk, and how many months. From there, choose your theme, pull your images, and build your layout around the grid. Make sure your dates are legible, your images are high resolution, and your design is consistent across all 12 months. If you’re starting from scratch, PrintingCenterUSA’s free calendar templates are a good place to begin.
How do I make my own calendar?
You can design your own calendar using Adobe InDesign, Canva, or any design software that supports print-ready files. PrintingCenterUSA’s free templates are pre-sized and print-ready so you can jump straight into designing. Once your file is ready, upload it directly to PrintingCenterUSA and choose your paper, binding, and quantity.
How do I choose the right layout for a photo calendar?
It depends on how much space you want to give your images. A full bleed photo layout lets the image take up the entire top half or more of the page, which works well for photographers. A smaller image with a larger grid works better for businesses that want more room for dates, notes and promotional content.
How do I make a professional calendar?
High resolution images, a consistent color palette, clean fonts, and a cohesive theme across all 12 months are what separate a professional calendar from one that looks thrown together. Print quality matters too — coated paper stock and a quality binding make a big difference in how the final product looks and holds up.
What should I put on a custom calendar?
Think about what your audience would actually find useful every single day. Beyond your logo and contact information, the best calendars include content that gives people a reason to look at the page beyond just checking the date. Industry tips, fun facts, recipes, quotes, event countdowns, seasonal reminders — whatever fits your brand and keeps people engaged month to month.
What size should a custom calendar be?
The most common wall calendar size is 11×17, which gives you enough room for a full image on top and a clean grid below. Desk calendars are typically 5.5×8.5 or 4.25×5.5. Your size choice should match where it’s going to live — a calendar that’s too small for a wall gets ignored, and one that’s too big for a desk is just in the way.
How many photos do I need for a custom calendar?
At minimum, 12 — one per month. Some layouts use additional photos within the grid itself or on a cover page, so having a few extras to choose from is always a good idea. For photographers especially, having a pool of 20-30 images to pull from makes narrowing it down to 12 a lot easier.
When should I order my custom calendar?
Earlier than you think. Most people underestimate how long the design process takes, especially when you factor in image selection, layout decisions and any back and forth on approvals. If your calendar is a gift or a promotional mailer going out in January, you want to have your files ready by November at the latest.
What file format do I need to submit for calendar printing?
PrintingCenterUSA accepts print-ready PDF files at 300 DPI with bleed included. If you’re designing in Canva, export as a PDF print file. If you’re in InDesign, export with bleed and crop marks.
Your Custom Calendar Starts Here
Custom calendar design gets easier every year. You start to know your audience and before you know it, your calendar is something your audience looks forward to. The sooner you start, the more time you have to get it right. PrintingCenterUSA has everything you need to make it happen.
PrintingCenterUSA has been printing custom calendars for over 50 years. Start with 10 calendars or go up 10,000, and get the same premium quality every time. Expect your calendars in just 3 to 4 business days from proof approval. With PrintingCenterUSA’s free templates and online design tool, we make custom calendar layout designs easy from start to print.
Our team is always a call away. Get an instant quote or call us at 800-995-1555 for trusted, reliable printing.
