There are many reasons to create a calendar. You may be working on a fundraising project for your . Perhaps you want to showcase your photography and sell the calendars to make a little money.  So where do you begin?

1. Choose Your Audience

Are you selling you  to the general public? Are you giving them as gifts to your best customers or the parents of your school? Once you have determined who your audience is, you can start to choose the types of pictures you want to include in your calendar. 

For example, The Highway 1 Project is an organization dedicated to raising money to improve Highway 1 in California and to protect parks along the Pacific Coastline. Their calendar features gorgeous scenic pictures. This entices people to purchase the calendars and it reminds them throughout the year that they supported a good cause.

2. Are You Going to Include Advertisements & Sponsors?

This will be a factor when you are designing you calendar because you will need to include space for the "thank-you" page and for advertisements throughout the grids. To learn more about calendar fundraising, click here to download our free calendar fundraising guide.

The image to the right shows how the Knoxville Ice Bears Booster Club placed sponsor logos throughout their calendar on different dates in the monthly grids.

3. Choose Your Photos

One great way to choose photos for your calendar is to first choose a theme. There are many themes to choose form, here are just a few to give you an idea:

• Picture or collage of photos on the top of each month - for example, September in a school fundraising calendar could say, "Welcome Back to School" and show a photo of the football team.
• Places or things that relate to your cause or organization.
• Pictures of peoples' favorite animals.
• Photos from previous events or trips.

The possibilities are endless! Just remember, your pictures need to be high resolution for them to print looking clear. If your images aren't at 300DPI (dots per inch), there is a chance that your images will appear pixelated when your project prints.

4. Time to Design!

After you have chosen your pictures it's time to start designing! You can design the calendar many different ways. Most calendars have one large, full-size image on the top half and the calendar grid on the bottom half. I have also seen calendars that have a collage of images or a single image with a nice background around it. The sky is the limit!

If you already have pictures and a project in mind it's time to get down to work and actually start designing. You can design a custom calendar using programs like Photoshop, InDesign or Illustrator. If you don't want to start from scratch, check out our  to get you started. Using a pre-designed template will ensure that you have the correct size and will save you some time!

We also offer a free calendar online design tool. I love this tool because it makes it incredibly easy to put a calendar together. Just upload your pictures, drag and drop them into place and voila! A finished calendar design.

Remember - 

To start designing a calendar you must first choose your audience. Decide what kind of pictures will appeal to them the most and design your calendar with your audience in mind.

When the time comes to put the calendar together either design online or use our  in a design software like Adobe Photoshop, InDesign or Illustrator.

If you are starting a calendar project and would like to speak with an expert, feel free to give us a call at .

When David Freitag’s Dinosaur Coprolite 2019 Calendar came across my desk, I was immediately interested and had to call him to get more information on these dinosaur nugget calendars. David created his Coprolite Calendar because he didn’t have a calendar at the time. What he did have were hundreds of photos that were taken for his eBay Rock Store, which he started 5 years ago.

David’s Backstory

David used to gold mine for over 15 years in Wyoming out in the desert. He wrote the story, “Wyoming’s Billion Dollar Nugget,” which was published by the California Mining Journal many years ago. “After we reclaimed our gold mining site, I was tired of gold and wanted to hunt fossils again,” says Freitag. In doing so, he found huge deposits of Dinosaur Coprolite along with Dinosaur Gizzard Stones and other dinosaur relics.

“After some time went by, I was sitting in my easy chair one night, just about to drift off, when I heard Rick from Pawn Stars on the TV. He said, ‘You know, in the 25 years since I’ve been a pawn broker, about the only thing I haven’t seen come across the counter is dinosaur poop.’” “Well,” thought Freitag, “I have 3 pallets out back with some of the finest dinosaur poo you can buy.” After doing a web search and contacting the show, 5 months later he was in Las Vegas filming his sale of Coprolite on Pawn Stars. Rick bought the piece featured on the 2019 calendar’s cover for $1,100! Shortly after being featured on the show, David heard a Jade collection was for sale and bought 6 pickup trucks full of the gemstone. He then began his rock store on eBay and it has grown very nicely.

Choosing the Print Shop

“I chose PrintingCenterUSA over the others because your front page says that you have been in business for 40 years. That sold me.” says David. He liked the price we offer over other online printing companies, as they are more reasonable prices. “The quality is great and I can say nothing but good things about your products.”

David now sells his calendars on his eBay Rock Store. He has since bought 3 more Jade Collections and is now the largest seller of Wyoming Nephrite / Jade on eBay worldwide! Freitag says, “I have had great interest in geology and rocks for over 40 years. Why will I keep doing it? Because Wyoming Rocks!”

Is your grade, junior high or high school thinking about printing custom yearbooks? PrintingCenterUSA is here to help with all your education printing needs. Whether you choose to upload your own design files or utilize our free templates, we make online yearbook printing easy and will deliver them to you quickly and at a reasonable price! Below are 4 reasons we think yearbook printing is important for any educational institution.

1. They Are a Great Public Relations Tool

Yearbook printing can be a great PR tool because they show off the personality of the school. If you’re looking to use your yearbook as a public relations tool, include the highlights of the opportunities offered, such as courses, clubs, athletics and facilities. This helps sell the community to potential businesses, students, and/or faculty. You can also include sponsors from local businesses and family members to help add a little profit to your bottom line.

2. The Educational Experience

Designing school yearbooks can be a great learning experience for students interested in photography, journalism, graphic design, typography, and marketing. Educate your students by having them go out and take photos at sporting events, pep rallies, fundraisers, plays, and more! They can also interview fellow students to have quotes to go along with their pictures. From there, they can use those images and quotes to design their yearbook, which helps to expand their creative knowledge.

3. Serves as a Memory Book for Students

Class yearbooks are a wonderful way to tell the story of the school year. Include pictures, memorable quotes, projects or events that took place that year to help the memories live on forever. Later in life, when students look back at their yearbook, they will get to remember everyone who made an impact in their life.

4. They Are a Piece of History

What better way to capture a piece of history than with school yearbook printing? They help to capture events, dates, scores, trends, news, facts and figures. They include accurate records of grades, names of students, faculty and staff. Show off the participants of sports teams, band, cheer, choir, clubs, and more! You may also want to add in information such as enrollments, sports statistics, events and news.

Affordable yearbook printing can help set your school apart while also serving as a keepsake for the students to look back on. Running late on your yearbooks? Order your last minute yearbooks online now! Help keep your students’ younger years alive for years to come by printing an online yearbook today!

There are many ways businesses go about marketing their brand and printed materials are a great way to gain exposure. In this day and age, digital marketing seems to be taking over but printed marketing pieces are still a critical part of any marketing plan. Below we explain how some products we offer can play a key part in marketing your business.

1. Flyers & Brochures

Whether your advertising your business, an upcoming event, a new product, or just want to let your customers know you're thinking about them, brochures and flyers are a definite must! If you’re promoting an event or product and don’t need all that much information on the marketing piece, flyers are ideal. Place your important information and an eye-catching image or graphic on your flyer to draw potential customers in.

While flyers are ideal for marketing pieces with minimal information, brochures are perfect for more informative pieces about your business, products, services and more. A quality printed brochure can tell the compelling story of your organization with pertinent graphics that will draw potential customers to your store, event or website.

2. Postcards

If your business is trying to reach a wide audience without breaking your marketing budget, printing postcards can be an effective promotional platform. Postcards have relatively low production costs and are generally viewed positively by consumers. They can be put into customer’s shopping bags at checkout, handed out at conventions, placed on counter tops or in lobbies, and mailed to people on your mailing list. We even have mailing services that will send your postcards directly to the people on your mailing list, which decreases your postage costs and increases your deliverability rate! 

3. Business Cards

As you may know, business cards are extremely important for any business or business owner. Keep some on you at all times and you can pass them out to potential clients or sponsors you meet anywhere. Your business cards can also double as a loyalty program – for example, if they buy 10 cups of coffee, they get 1 free. This type of card is ideal for any boutique, coffee shop, or small business. By rewarding your loyal customers, it raises the chances of them coming back for more.

4. Posters

Whether your promoting new products or a grand opening, posters are an important part of marketing your business. Pairing large-format posters with a bold design and placing them in your window or on a standing poster board on the sidewalk can draw attention to your store, making strangers more likely to step inside.

5. Custom Envelopes & Letterheads

If you tend to mail a lot of invoices or letters to customers, custom letterhead and envelope printing is something you should take advantage of. By personalizing your letterhead and envelope (by adding your logo, business name or a striking design), it gives your business some level of credibility and professionalism, making customers more likely to continue business with you.

Now that we’ve covered the most important print marketing materials for your business, we hope that you head over to our website to get started on your next marketing project. We have free blank template downloads that can be used in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and a PDF for other programs. If you need your items printed quickly, there are quick turnaround times available. If you are a small business owner or have a big event coming up, you should consider all of the services we have to offer in order to meet your marketing goals.