Calendar Printing 101

Calendar printing is one of the smartest ways to make sure your business or brand is seen by dozens, hundreds or thousands of people each and every day. That's why many businesses give away free wall calendars to customers. When you consider how many people see your ad every day to the cost of calendar printing, it is one of the least expensive ways to advertise your company. The following is your guide to Calendar Printing 101:

Colors

As with all professionally printed materials, make sure the colors on your computer screen match the actual ink colors that will be used when designing your calendars. Invest in a good printed color swatch chart to see what specific CMYK values will look like on paper. Another good way to make sure your colors match is to have your graphic design program and computer screen calibrated.

Layout

The layout of your calendar is critical to its function. Get a calendar template from your calendar printing company so your design matches up with the bleed lines, cutlines and safety lines. Also, make sure you're designing your calendar to fit the printed size, and that you design for a drilled nail hole if the printed calendar will have one.

Paper

If you want your business to be viewed by your customers every day of the year, you will need a calendar that can withstand the stress of hanging from a nail for 365 days straight. Go with a robust 100-pound gloss cover stock with aqueous coating for maximum stability. The paper on the inside of your calendar should be easy to write on such as a 70-pound to 100-pound text stock in gloss or matte.

Binding

Before you design your calendar, decide whether it will be bound with a saddle-stitch or Wire-O. Saddle-stitch refers to folding your calendar and stapling the closed end to keep the pages together. A Wire-O will require the paper to be cut, drilled and bound with a ring of wire.

Get a proof

Always get a hard copy proof of your calendar before you have the entire job printed. This will help you catch any errors or last-minute typos. Even if your printing company offers electronic proofs, if you're concerned about your company's image it's worth the extra money to make sure your calendars look exactly as intended. Imagine printing 10,000 calendars with the wrong website URL, which means you would have to get the entire batch reprinted, otherwise thousands of people would see your calendar but nobody would see your website! Calendars have added value, so they're prime real estate for getting your business viewed by thousands of people every single day. Plan your calendar printing right, and you'll end up with inexpensive ad space on the walls of thousands of targeted prospects for years to come.