Some of you have been around a very long time and remember the first Wondermark calendar (above), offered lo these many years ago!
Others of you have picked up a calendar in one or more of the intervening years; or perhaps never at all!
Well, for ALL OF YOU, here is a photo-filled history of the Wondermark calendar, featuring thrills, spills, and some BEHIND THE SCENES on how the process has evolved over the years.
The notion of a loose-leaf desk calendar, in which a stack of individual cards rest in an easel, is one I’m surprised we don’t see more often. I stole the concept from a calendar a co-worker had on her desk, back when I worked at an advertising agency…
Each calendar page required three different prints from the Gocco (black ink on left side, black on right side, and gold title).
Making a calendar in a limited edition makes it special, but also in a practical sense it saves you from having unsold inventory that grows progressively more useless as the year marches on. I made 100 copies of this first calendar and managed to sell them all, thanks in part surely to the slick, persuasive video I linked above.
I continued in this manner the following year, careful to seek out and use artwork I hadn’t already used in Wondermark, and composing dark little stories in verse for each month.
Read the whole thing right over here!