It is now the start of 02020Q4. Each year as the months close-out we prep for the next 52 weeks. Part of that process is to print a large A0 annual calendar.
This will be our 5th year of creating our annual wall calendar and each year it gets tweaked and improved slightly.
We started by designing the calendar by hand. After a lot of moving lines and numbers around, we wrote code to generate the calendar posters instead.
The code is a small PHP script that outputs SVG. This means you can take the output as is and print it or open it in your favourite vector editor and salt-to-taste.
Using code to output the calendar’s lines and numbers saves a lot of time and effort. The code computes what day the year starts on, leap years, if it is a 52 or 53 week year, etc. We also added in a list of fixed day events, birthdays, holidays, deadlines and more. Since this code, we can add movable holidays, like Easter, and they will be placed on the correct day.
All the code is on GitHub if you want to adapt it yourself. We created a PDF for 02021. It lists all the Old Icelandic Holidays. In the PHP code you can add your own holidays, birthdays or special events to the list.
A-Series Paper
The A-series of paper sizes is a work of beauty. A0 is the largest paper-size and is exactly 1 square meter. The series uses a 1:√2 ratio of height to width. It isn’t quite the golden ratio’s 1:1.618, but instead 1:1.414.
The sizes also ‘nest’ inside each other perfectly. If you take two A1 sheets turned sideways, they are the same area as one A0. Two A2 sheets are equivalent to one A1, all the way down in size.
This annual calendar is designed for A0, but it scales down to an A1. It can keep going smaller and smaller, but at some point the space for each day is too small to be useful.
In places where wall space might be scarce, A1 is a perfectly fine size to print and still be usable. For those of you non-metrics readers, you can ‘print-to-fit’ or see about adjusting the code for your local poster sizes.
Most people don’t have an A1 printer handy. We printed ours at a local printing company and it was less than $3 a sheet. It is a tiny price to pay for an annual overview.
Feel free to rip, remix and print.
Download: 02021 Misseristal A0 PDF