Infodesign challenge
The (Date-Ink Maximizing) Dream
A better design to fit a year calendar comfortably within a business card.
It all started because my 48-year-old mom, blessed her, can’t read small type very well. She has trouble using little calendar cards because the day numerals are so small and last time she complained I paused and empathized with her travail. The problem, it was suddenly obvious, was not only the marketing debris that encroaches upon every poor card but rather the quite wasteful scheme we use for representing a year — the same table with the same thirty-something numbers over and over.
Dream Constraints
Take a fancy flight, don’t assume anything, not even numbers, as long as you keep these things in mind:
- The bigger the type size (or meaningful features) the better.
- The smaller the design the better. The original goal was for it to fit comfortably (you can use both sides of the paper) within 86 by 54 millimeters (3.370 by 2.125 in) of paper (your standard business card WP) but something slightly bigger could be just as useful. We are going for useful. (Thanks Dave Pawson!)
- Immediately understandable (or pretty darn close).
- Should span an entire year.
- On any given “date” of the year, be able to easily tell what its name, its month, and its month number is.
- Instant: The less steps you need to know before knowing a date’s data the better.
- Contextual: You should be able to easily “walk” from a date to another one close by, thereby counting the days between them. People do this all the time.
- Markable: You should be able to easily mark (circle, cross, check) holidays and special dates.
A Note
Yes, I know mom could carry some sort of foldable large-type calendar, 12 calendar cards with a month each, or simply start wearing her prescribed glasses (nigh impossible), but that’s off the point right now. Let that true story be our convenient pretext for innovation.
Also note that though the idea arose out of accessibility concerns, everyone would benefit with it, just as we all grip the helping handles in hotel bathtubs.
Getting The Inspiration Thing Going
I think the best existing metaphor for what we would like to accomplish here are modern statistical innovations like the boxplot WP or the stem-and-leaf plot WP — proof that novel, almost magical displays of breathtaking elegance are just around the corner. IBM’s thread arcs is a recent example.
Another good metaphor might be the Roman number system WP vs. the Hindu-Arabic one WP. For some five thousand millennia the best humanity could produce in its oldest art, reckoning, was the crude, procrustean Roman system — so primitive that it made even multiplication specialists’ labor. Then in a flight of fancy some unknown Hindu stumbled upon the (graphical!) principle of position — it was as far-reaching a discovery as can be imagined, allowing for the development of simple, clear-cut arithmetical rules that became the cornerstone for algebra, itself the cornerstone of modern mathematics. (If the topic interests you, do read Tobias Dantzig’s classic account, Number AM)
More down-to-earth, the "calendar : and clock pedias are obvious and essential starting points — history is as good a source of what could be as it is of what has been. Information Aesthetics’ Creative Calendar Design showcase should get your creative designs flowing, and so should a quick search through the site for clocks. Tokyoflash has some interesting interfaces for telling time.
Also, dad showed me an old planner of his that had something called a perpetual calendar WP: a 5-page calendar that tells you what day it was between 1821 to 2080. Here’s a scanning of it. Perhaps it could help to find useful patterns in the Gregorian calendar WP.
Finally, don’t let constraints paralyze you. Don’t think a proposal has to be “perfect” or “right” to submit it, the tiniest improvement could turn out to be crucial.
The reason we have more efficient technologies is that we learned from doing it wrong the first time. Progress is continual refinement. It’s not about the goal, it’s about the process. The point is not to do it “the right way”. The point is to do it.
Technicalities
Anyone can submit a proposal. A proposal consists of a picture mock up. To submit a proposal comment this post with your name and a link to your mockup (we’ll put the picture up here in the post in the Submissions section). Submit as many proposals as you wish. Submit in parallel to the Information Aesthetics post on the challenge for extra promotion to your work.
Though you submit proposals through the comments that doesn’t mean your comments need limit to proposals. Not at all. Please share ideas, point to inspirational sources, suggest evaluation criteria, ask, answer, pick your favorites, praise, mock, and critique proposals. Warning, mini calendar making is highly addictive!
I’ll consider today, Monday January 22, 2007, the challenge’s start date. It will be open for a month (we have to give the unconscious time to do its magic), closing Tuesday February 22, 2007. My biotech friend Zamantha, my mom, and me will be the judges. I’ll announce the winner Monday February 26, 2007 — my birthday — here in this post.
The challenge will still end by Feb. 22, 2007, but since I’m participating I don’t know who should be the judge or whether there’ll be a judge at all — or even a “winner”. Perhaps we should call this a cooperation instead of a competition?
The judge has spoken (congrats to Adam Sporka!) but the challenge ain’t over friends. Please keep the submissions flowing! Take our breath away with an evolutionary/revolutionary design!
Reward
The journey. Of course. ;)
Just imagine if your design works. It would make for an unbeatable showcase to scream your mindboggling information design talent to the world everywhere you go: by definition, it’d be universally useful, universally impressive, portable, and easy to explain (even to your mother!). It would be (literally) the perfect presentation card. People would use your creation many times every year and mutter praise to your name every single time. The eternal gratitude of the presbyope WP kind would be yours (and with most people over 40 afflicted to some degree, that’s a substantial percent of the global population). Even more far-reachingly, people who use your calendar would mentally represent and understand the year through your design — you would have created a new metaphor for time. Just think about that.
(Plus! It’s still early in the year, The year’s almost over, what better gift for friends and family than a 2007 2008 pocket calendar of your own making?))
Submissions
Number linked to the submission’s permalink. Author’s name and picture linked to the comment in which the author presented their submission, where you can usually found links to bigger and different pictures of the calendar together with explanation and background.
#1
designer: Joe Lanman
#2
designer: Jan-Willem Doornenbal
#3
designer: Joe Lanman, building on Jan-Willem’s design
#4
designer: Ben Stevens
#5
designer: Joe Lanman
#6
designer: Luis Pabon
#7
designer: Eliazar Parra, building upon all the previous proposals
#8
designer: James P. Wack
#8
designer: James P. Wack
#9
designer: Jan-Willem Doornenbal
#10
designer: Adam J Sporka
#11
designer: Eliazar Parra, further remixing Luis Pabon’s calendar
via Adam Sporka’s redesign
#12
designer: Eliazar Parra
#13
designer: Leonardo Pablo Diez
#15
designer: Lester Nelson
#16
designer: Adam Sporka
#17
designer: Aaron Kuehn
#18
designer: Michael Shelley
#19
designer: Drew Keller
#20
designer: Eliazar Parra Cardenas
#21
designer: Iaian Anderson
#22
designer: Michael Shelley
#24
designer: Paul Kobayashi
#28
designer: Eliazar Parra
#29
designer: Gavin Barraclough
91 Comments
Hum, that’s a real challenge: “small but readable”, but I’ll try, my father can’t read tiny stuff either so it’ll be useful.
I hope to have some time to do it.seeya
PD: sorry for my bad english, mi español es igual de malo :(any body may try! dead line?
Who’s up for the challenge, I am, it’s on.
Sounds like a good challenge. What is the deadline?
Why does your mother need all this info on 1 card versus 12 different sheets of paper with each month?
What is the prize?Thanks,
R.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/tags/calendar/
My idea is a double sided ‘flexible’ calendar. The user can fill in the days of the week for the current month, with next month on the reverse side. True you can only see two months at a time, but I think that’s usable for most situations. The disposable nature also encourages reminder markings.The only problem with writing it yourself, is that you then have to reference another printed calendar to fill in the dates for each month, right?
That’s true – but only once a month.
Maybe, your mother could try this:
http://www.ekitchengadgets.com…
It’s a challenging assignment. I thought I’d take care that as few as possible parts of information should be there. No redundancy! It lead me to http://www.mededeler.nl/pdf/kleinjaar.gif (or http://www.mededeler.nl/pdf/kleinjaar.pdf if you prefer). It should definetely be less fatiguing for the eyes, but the more so for the brain. This can be considered an advantage as well (prevention of dementia). Hope you like it, Jan-Willem
PS calendar is in Dutch, but can be translated on request.[info AT mededeler IN nl]
Wow – that’s an excellent solution to the brief!
I know it would add redundant data, and you’d lose the nice pattern,but maybe it would be slightly easier to use if there were a column for each month separately, in order – Jan -> Dec?Hi friends and welcome again! I’ve tried to answer all the previous questions in the post rewrite. Hope that it helps and gets more people participating in this search. Thanks to Jan-Willem and Joe Lanman for such interesting (and prompt) proposals!
We await your submissions!Please don’t constrain it by the card size.
The limitation is what mum can read in terms of font size,
font itself and contrast. Done that way, its like me
saying I know what the customer needs, and to hell with what
they say.
She is the highest design authority.
regards,another one who can’t read 8pt anymore.
also at www.rnib.org.uk
I developed Jan-Willem’s design to include sequential months:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/366972076/Oo, this seems like fun and a great challenge. I’ll try to come up with something nice. Any inputs as to what font size your mom can read?
http://www.benstevens.co.uk/images/CalCard_01.gif
Here’s my attempt at your calendar card challenge… kinda looks like a bunch of people waiting to get on a bus! (The No.2007 perhaps?)There’s a number of outstanding issues with the design, esp. how to determine day of the week for each date (I’ve tried to address this by highlighting Mondays with a white dot). Type may still be too small as well.
Comments welcome.Thanks Joe for your compliments and your redesign. It gives more redundancy and you need less brains, but it is definitely more clear. I also liked your other design though, which very well answers the constraint ‘markable’.
I also liked Ben’s playful design, but found confusing that the letters in the first column suggest that all dates on the same row are the same day. Maybe every day should have it’s own colour?
Nice design ben! I agree with you and Jan though that the days of the week are confusing. Why not make the dates always descend from the top? That way the day labels would work, and you could drop the white Mondays. I know you lose the nice snakes but..
ps. you could put 6 months on each side and make the text much bigger
Number 3 :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/367425390/Here is an infodesign proposal that makes use of a “folding” dimension in order to share a common grid of numbers among different month headers:
http://www.luispabon.com/entropia/index.php?entry=entry070123-145900Regards.
Hello again. I have updated the former post including a slight variant whixh might be more useful. It is built with two separate and sliding pieces.
Best regards.Thought I’d start with (belated) answers.
dave.pawson: You convinced me. Size constraints loosened. Thanks!Moses Ting: I ran this test with my mother and found out a 9 to 10 point Arial was good enough. Of course bigger is better but at least that was readable enough. Some pocket calendars can get ridiculously low—5 points and even less. The test is a simple calendar mockup repeated in 13 different point sizes. Perhaps if we could run it by several other people and find out their preferences we could get a more general estimate. Oh and do join us!
Ben Stevens: Like Jan-Willem and Joe before me, I also enjoyed your snaky, colorful design but I too found the first column very misleading (I hadn’t realized I was tricked until I read Jan’s comment). What I liked most were the sequence-hinting snakes (how did you do them?), what I liked least was that with the compression suddenly all the number repetition was all the more glaring! ;)Joe Lanman: Thanks a lot for that translation and redesign of Jan’s calendar. I got to really appreciate Jan’s cleverness and it served as a starting point for my own calendar experiments. (More below.) Also, your first calendar suggestion seems like the Hipster-PDAWP answer to over-infodesigned calendars! :)
Jan-Willem Doornenbal: Frankly, it took me a long while to fully grok your calendar. Joe’s redesign and translation helped a lot, but it wasn’t until I rediscovered your calendar than I understood what you were after. I really admire the brevity and elegance that is achieved but on the other hand I think it’s achieved at the price of usability. Month ordering seems like too high a price. What have you thought lately to try to fix that? Or do you think it a problem at all?Luis Pabon: I wrote a comment in your blog already but let me say it here again: wow.
//////////////////////////So now let me tell you guys that I’m submitting a proposal myself and with it of course I’m changing the rules a little. Basically, I’m not sure if this should still be a competition. Never entirely liked the idea in the beginning, not liking it particularly now. I would much rather have a cooperation. Still, I promised you all guys a competition so I want your opinion first. Perhaps, if there’s interest in a contest, we could get the infosthetics guys to be our judges? At any rate, I think the deadline might still be a good idea to focus attention and so I’m keeping it unchanged (hope you’ve all been thinking hard about the problem, right?).
I wrote a post for my proposal, a detailed explanation and critique on its Flickr photopage, and an entire, painstakingly described Flickr photoset chronicling all the prototypes that lead to it, but to make the long story short I just want to tell you that it was never my intention at the beginning to participate in the challenge. The reason I made a public challenge at all was that I was hopelessly clueless. It was only trough all the great proposals already posted that the creative juices started flowing. My hope in posting my proposal now (together with its source file) is that other people get inspired with minor tweaks here and there, and that together we can create something truly breathtaking.Thanks and do keep the prototypes coming!
(btw, remember that you can subscribe to the comments on this post with this link )Really great design,
I love:
- color differentiates months and links beautifully to the month end dates.
- 6 month split and vertical orientation make it easy to readNot so sure:
- blanks for weekends seem a little odd – have you tried letters but no colored background?- month names on Wednesdays again seem a little arbitrary – have you tried having them all on the first day for ease of scanning?
Well, I finish something http://flickr.com/photos/peewack/374632300/
PD: another calendar, more complex for large prints http://flickr.com/photos/peewack/374632297/Joe: Thanks! I tried your letters-for-the-weekends suggestion and while it was still more clutter (evil clutter, evil!) it looked quite well: here’s a mockup.
As for the month-names on the first day question—it was a hotly debated issue since the very beginning. Yes, one would think it should ease month scanning but the flipside is that they disrupt the entire design. Here’s a mockup. Wednesday is not that arbitrary when you consider it splits evenly the 5 weekdays, and the really nice thing about placing the labels there is that now you can be sure that wherever there’s a month label that’s a Wednesday. By placing month-names on the first day you effectively unlabel that column of a dayname.James:: Heh! Very clever, minimalist design! I, too, wanted to do something about number repetition and thought about omitting the second (101) position, but I would never have thought of your oh-so-elegant horizontal lines (1, 2, 3—perfect!). The type, too, is excellent sized all-around.
The bottom months, however, confused me for a while. From the top months I assumed that you were relating month and day by placing both in the same column but then below you seem to use a different relating pattern: month to the right of the related day.My main concern now is that the calendar might be too hard to use. For one thing, you lose the month ordering. For another, Roman numerals are not quite as immediate as month abbreviations—a lot of people have to actually count to relate them. But the biggest concern is that once you find the Monday for a month, you have to start counting to find the date of the following days—a little, but still.
Have you tried running it through your mom or some regular, non-designer, not-too-young stranger?PD: Your large print calendar is gorgeous! What programs do you use to create such beauty?
I almost forgot: there is one question my proposal answers better than any other previous calendar known to man: how many Fridays the 13th are there in the year?
That has got to be worth something. :)two (first: locate the 13th, second: go up, third and last: go 3 rows to the left [fri<
well, I choose Roman numbers ‘cuz the last 2 calendars (Julian and Gregorian (?)) are romans, and my auto-goal is make wordless artifacts, like visual automatons. The first time I was looking for put also the Hebrew and Arab calendars in the big-one, but I can’t.sat<-sun<-mon] or 4 to the right [mon>tue->wed->thu->fri])PD1: an update for the pocket one, less fucked up stuff, cleaner, color coded and http://flickr.com/photos/peewack/375417766/
PD2: the software is inkscape, and in the earlier design was MSOExcel/OOo CalcI do agree with all comments regarding my design, and compliment both Eliazar and James with their’s. A very nice thing in Eliazar’s design is (i.m.o.) that it’s clear how many days each month has. This is missing in some designs (among which mine). And I really like James’big design, which also has the moon phases. Beautiful!
I like looking at the other designs and pondering how to make it better, and I like to see doing all of you the same things with my stuff. So I agree with Elzr that it is not a real contest. That’s also why I thought I can bring in another idea, for which I do not have time now to finish it neatly. But the sketch can be found here. The PDF is here as well.Everybody says time is circular and repeating itself. A circle with which we could well work is the weekdays.I did not yet find a solution for the disorder in the months. Maybe someone else does?
James: Great incremental improvement. I replaced the previous proposal with this one.
“Wordless artifacts, visual automatons”—exactly!Jan-Willem: Wow, again with another revolutionary idea? I didn’t quite get it at the beginning (the dots where particularly troubling until I realized they didn’t mean anything) and so I build it from scratch (in Photoshop, I don’t know my vectors). The mandala below followed (gratuitously using James’s lines-to-tens technique :):
First: incredible. The spirals are breathtaking at displaying visually just what happens with the daynames through the month. Second, I think there is a rotation error of one day in the calendar. For instance, as far as I can tell, February 26 falls on a Sunday in your calendar, while it should fall on a Monday.
(To locate on the above mandala February 26: find 26 first; then, go up the column to find a 5. Now find February’s color—it’s blue. Now count rings in the circle out-in, stop at the 5th, and locate the blue patch within it. Follow the patch’s slice to its end and find the day of the week—it’s a Monday. Obviously, this is too much work.)Third, I don’t know if this beautiful spirals will prove in the end a siren. They’re amazing, to be sure, but they’re also very hard to correlate with the numbers and quite difficult to navigate. We’ll see. :)
PD: Here’s the PSD of the mandala, in case anyone wants to play with it. (Though I strongly recommend redoing it in vectors if you have the talent.)Something terrible must have happened! I see in my latest design almost all months start at the wrong places, and Feb, March, November even occuring twice! Too much hurry, sorry for this.
But you might understand the principle.I agree with Elzr there should only be dots on the crossroads of the radials and the circles. Your design is much more clear already, although to much work as well.
I also tried a wheel with the same 7 spokes for the weekdays, but then with 31 circles (instead of just 7). It’s more clear, with nice spirals, but much more space is needed than a creditcard…
Very cool contest!
Here’s the link to my submission.Wow Adam!, awesome design, I will remix another with all the columns, it helps with the usability I think.
Thanks, James :-). Good luck for your remix!
Hey :) any news on an outcome to this? Is your mum using any of the designs?
Yes, I am very curious too! :-).
Joe! Adam! Everyone! Sorry for the humongous lag, I have this nasty habit of using deadlines as an obsession catalyzer—“I’m not very disciplined; I have to substitute being obsessed.” Problem is it’s hard to let go afterwards.
I’ll begin with the question of whether my mom has used any of these fantastic proposals. Sadly, no. My granddad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer 2 months ago and ever since he has stayed at our house to take his radios, chemos, and whatnot. My mom is a doctor and takes care of him day and night, which drains her up completely. I have shown her all the proposals and she’s been delighted, but she really has her mind somewhere else right now.
As for an outcome to this challenge. Well, both me and my mom would be obviously too biased (not to say, in the case of my mom, distraught) to give a verdict, but fortunately my biotech friend and chic goddess, Sam, which I mentioned in the original post, came in to help. Her impartiality is guaranteed by the sad fact that despite my best efforts she rarely answers my emails :(. She sent me the following email Feb 22, 2007 12:29 AM:decreasin’ ↓
#4#3 (#2 credits) & #7
#10So congrats to Adam Sporka for a great redesign of Luis Pabon’s calendar that synthesyzed neatly many of the best ideas along this contest. Congrats to Joe Lanman, Jan-Willem Doornenbal, and to Ben Stevens! Thanks a lot to everyone who kindly participated—it was unbelievable to have so much talent at my little, messy challenge. Thank you. :)
Now of course this is all very informal and you don’t really know how good Zam really is, and since she has no online presence I know off, I can’t show you, so if you want a more formal verdict I’d be happy to contact the infostethics guys and see if they can give us a hand.Personally, I’ve found designing calendars quite a fascinating craft (I feel like an ivory carver!WP) and believe there’s still a lot we could do to improve our current state of the art (for one thing, it really would be fascinating if we somehow found a way to mark holidays). I’d love to keep this challenge open and keep the designs evolving. I’d be overjoyed if 2 or 5 years from now some stranger happens on this post and contributes something breathtaking out of the blue.
So to keep the submissions flowing here are two. Explained in detail in their Flickr pages: a Pabon-Sporka redesign and MiniMaxi (which comes in two flavors, the mini version shown above, and the normal, business-card sized one).Hope you like’em and remember, criticism in kind is the best kind! :)
Great ideas.
I came to this blog looking for design ideas.I am Leonardo Pablo Diez from Argentina. I created a system of representation of the calendar called CALENDAR10. I did the first prototype in 1998. In late 1999 I initiated the project for making it known. In 2001, I presented in a Mathematics and Design Conference in Australia. Today I leads several papers published and I delivered several conferences. These days I discovered this challenge and that’s why I communicate with you. I remain at your disposal. Greetings. LPD
Wow Leonardo! You’ve tried so many designs, it’s breathtaking. The ultimate calendar, in particular, is simply amazing. As you say, it’s probably the shortest perpetual calendar conceivable! What elegance! You turned out to be that stranger out of the blue with something breathtaking. :)
Excellent designs. Here’s my submission.
Seriously, #3 by Joe Lanman is the best one. Instantly recognizable, easy to parse, and it’s pretty. None of the rest of them can compete.
most of them are confusing to read
Some of these are great. But don’t you think you should be making them for 2008, so they’re actually usable? 2007 is almost done.
Whoops, never mind. I see this is a very old post. Followed Kottke’s link (which he added today—Nov.21 2007)
I really like #12.
The simplest solution is always preferable. My vote is for number 1.
All of the designs that attempt to factor out common day number information fail to support the last requirement. “Markable: You should be able to easily mark (circle, cross, check) holidays and special dates.” Only designs such as #5 where there is one day number for every day in the year can support this requirement. The rest fail to support all the requirements.
Here’s my calendar I designed for the backs of my business cards. I love that you did this!
It’s based roughly on Ben Stevens’ design, except it doesn’t reverse itself every other column, and each quarter alternates between dark numbers on light backgrounds, and light numbers on dark backgrounds.Nice Lester! The quarter color alternation is a nice touch and so is the weekend shading.
Do it again! I wanna play too.
Logan: It’s still on! Same reward as before ;). And if enough new contributions accrue we could, if we so want to, ask some web/design luminaries to pick their favorites.
This is really enjoyable—I’m amazed by the number of clever designs.
I’m a bit surprised I haven’t seen anything along the lines of the two-part rotating perpetual calendar. I have one on my desk—got it from the 826 Valencia Pirate Goods Store—that could straightforwardly be papercrafted. Or take a credit card enclosure, cut windows, and make a sliding interface for the calendar. I think you’d get a simpler experience and, more importantly, larger type.It’s very nice coming back and seeing that number of designs posted on this page steadily increases.
Meanwhile, I have redesigned my 2007 calendar for 2008: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adam_sporka/2037019771/, trying to address most of the issues that Eliazar pointed out in his comments to the 2007 edition.The acid test must be… can I work it (i.e any day or date) out at a glance and i’m afraind the only success here is Joe Lanman’s triumph of design and simplicity. All the others involve mixtures of “huh?”... “my EYES!” and internal spatial reconstruction!
Great redesign Adam, pretty and suave! It’s good to have you back! :)
Just one question: aren’t there some unneeded date columns? 2 in the first semester, 1 in the second?I don’t have the energy however … surely someone could work something out by including two cellophane foldout wings of blue and red, and then include months that end with 30 in the red pan, and months that end with 31 in blue ink … might make it easier on the eye?
Congrats on getting Boing Boing’d Elzr :) I think I may revist my designs for 2008 too…
Lots of beautiful, intricate and well thought out solutions to the basic calendar. Shame that so many approaches don’t fill the basic design need of usability. For something as common as the Roman calendar with a view that usually only spans one month, most designs simply have too high a learning curve and or too much information for the average viewer. That is to say its not a matter of attention span or intelligence, but the need for essentially instant information digestion of an already known format.
Vote for #1 as well. Its a full month with notations of which months have more or less days. Simple evolution. #6 would be a close second as it follows this simple method. On one hand it requires a manual or animated alteration of the media to achieve the same results. On the other hand, if there is no alteration it would be the same awkward problem of association (by the viewer) between months and week days that many of the other designs have.Runner up #5, with the issue that not all the months are shown, but otherwise very appealing.
Prize for effort to #13 just for the amount of work done and the many solutions or orientations shown.
http://k4m.us/2004-callendar2.jpg
Great ideas and nice contest. I was inspired by #11 (my personal favorite) to make this. It isn’t pretty because I don’t have a printer so I just made it by hand, but I solves the need for thumbs with a slider. I used Japanese characters for the days of the week and the month. Sorry I’m not much of a designer.
Well, not sure if this is ‘too small’ type or not, but here you go… http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/1148/myminicalmv6.jpg
that’s sized for 3.370 by 2.125 – but can resize to 3.5×2.0 when needed. original is in macromedia Freehand (long may it live).
Great, surreal work guys! Just please either embed only thumbnails or link to the images instead of embedding them (I’ll be sure to add them to the submissions gallery in a couple of hours). Thanks for contributing!
Joe: Thanks! And you really should revisit your designs, a lot of people have liked them!Sorry ‘bout that, thanks for fixing it. Here’s a link for corrected version, fixing a minor error and adding another feature. image is sized for 300dpi, 3.370 by 2.125 reproduction.
here
I fixed my printer and took the time to make the design look decent. You can see the new one here. Let me know what you think!
Again, this is kind of a ripoff of number 11, but I think the moving parts element is cool. It doesn’t fall off because of the slight ridge I cut out of the top.Keller: Done! I replaced with your corrected version. By the way, is there some deep order in the numbers within the squares? Why is there always one number in the lower leftmost corner?
Shelley: Ah! Pretty! Y’know, with some fiddling I have this hint that you could make your calendar perpetual working from Leonardo Pablo Diez’s etern01. Who knows, it would be awesome… :)All the recent contributions and attention has me inspired me back into the obsessive rough and tumble of mini calendar carving. Out came proposal #20: the too cool for words calendar! ;)
It’s actually extremely simple: You just need to commit to memory that .|..|...|~|,,,|,,|,
So if you want to find out what dayname was November 20, you go to 20, move up to the November row, find ... and you know immediately that it was a Tuesday!> Su|Mo|Tu|We|Th|Fr|Sa, which is, I think, a really nice relationship. Every row describes a month and top to bottom> January to December.It’s incredibly fast after some practice and the nigh wordlessness of it all can be surprisingly relaxing in a bizarre, zen way. And it has some big ass type.
(On a fanciful note, it could kickstart a notation revolution: 9/...11)in each of the ‘boxes’ – the order of the numbers goes down the first column then the second. So the second Tuesday of a month for instance is always in the lower left, while the fifth Friday is always in the lower right.
In the revised version the day-box containing the 1st is highlighted for quick access, and as a result the last date of the previous month is always up-and-left one, if you need to see how many days were in the last month.
The layout makes it really easy to find such things as ‘the same Saturday two months from now’ and it would even be reasonably quick to add up the intervening number of days.
Also, if the user doesn’t know exactly what date it is, they probably know what month it is at least and the day, they immediately then see a list of possible dates and should have at least a good idea which one it must be.
This layout caused me to notice that 2008 is a leap year, and one that will give us a rare fifth Friday in February.
BTW - the text boxes are all linked and I’ve got a perl script that dumps out the dates in the right order and pattern for any needed year, which I can then just paste in and they auto-flow correctly.Like one of the commenters above, I was surprised that nobody has submitted anything inspired by a rotating perpetual calendar—so here’s one (#21). The central white part spins around a pin at the centre.
There are space savings if they’re needed, but this is 105×105mm.A high quality lenticular that combines 12 single-month images, one image per month, ought to solve this quite easily. Peace!
Thanks for the suggestion. I made the perpetual calendar. I guess this would be a seperate submission because it is a lot harder to make and more confusing than my one year one.
It has three sliders, the big gray one for the month, the blue one for leap years and the red one for the year. It could work forever but I just printed 20 years on it.Michael Shelley: Wow! That’s incredible! Awesomely done! I honestly think it’s the most easy to use perpetual calendar I’ve ever seen—your fingers do all the computation! The arrows for the years and your leap year solution were particularly elegant.
Why is there a hole at each side of the daynumbers hole, though? Or why is there a hole to the right of the monthnumber hole? Do they have a purpose? They’re kind of confusing. Also, it may be a good cue to make leap year numbers and 29 be the same color.Again, awesome! I’m going to print my own set right away! (thanks for including the originals!)
Thanks! The updated pieces are now uploaded.. if you use the other ones you might run into a problem with leap years and not enough space. I slightly moved all the stuff down to make more room.
As for the mystery holes, the ones on the sides of the days are not holes but white space. This was a design choice because I thought it might look better.. basically I couldn’t figure out what to put there.The other hole can’t be helped. There is a big hole in the blue piece and the hole in the red piece has to go through to the bottom no matter where it is positioned. I hope that makes sense.
Another tip: When making the main bottom piece, I found that if you make it on a long horizontal piece and fold it around it keeps the big gray slider from falling off. Good luck.This is a great challenge. Thanks for posting this.
I made a paper design of my calendar.It’s called, “The Calyndar.”
I hope you all like it.
Original picture:http://www.flickr.com/photos/7720594@N04/2063077167/
Bigger picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2063077167&size=l
Yeah, great challenge! Here’s my contribution, the Roll Calendar. The big innovation? Print it on a cylinder! Just because it’s flat doesn’t mean you can’t use 3 dimensions.
The nice thing about doing it this way, BIG NUMBERS!there’s some really clever stuff here (especially that last “roll calendar”—props!). still, in practice i prefer the simpler ones. i’d trade large fonts for self-explanatory anyday. and if you want to be able to circle dates your going to wind up with 365 numbers (or some stand in) anyway.
i did these three using nothing but excel, a program that should probably not be used for anything… but it was fun tinkering.The best calendar i know is the french system calendar.
Their calendar can match a small card format if you use the both sider.
Furthermore, french calendar have a saint name for every day of the year.
Click Here !!French people are so smart :)
Paul Kobayashi: Fantastic! That was indeed very, very clever. I laughed out loud when I understood it (not that it’s hard or anything, it’s just so physical).
I’m sure you tried this already but if you could somehow incorporate the daynames (or some hints at them) into the design it would be even more of a favorite.matt: Pretty, nice calendars! We hadn’t seen that color here since Luis Pabon’s designs! I added each of your proposals individually since each was interesting on its own right.
I took to heart the comments on the general lack for simplicity, self-explanatoriness, and usability, and tried to come up with a purification of my earliest designs. I really like the result, hope you do too!
Hi there, great challenge.
I’ve had a go & come up with a design I quite like. It seemed quite useful to me to leave as much blank space as possible, so that events can be easily annotated on the calendar -- though it would certainly be possible to remix this design using larger fonts to make it more readable. (Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, my phone camera doesn’t like the idea of focussing this close to).http://web.mac.com/gavinbarraclough/
Hope you enjoy, and thanks.G.
Cool design gavin! The noting space (and system) is interesting. The quarter reversal though, I don’t quite get. What’s it for? To separate between quarters?
Ah, I like it Gavin. The noting system is indeed clever. The reversal is so you never have to slide the back card up too high. Although, if you switched it around one could easily fold the two number cards into a pocket in which the double-sided day card could slide up and down. Or maybe let it peak out from the top and bottom? Just a thought.
But why the red 28s? (Non-leap year compatibility?)Yep, as matt says the reversal is so there is an overlap between the two cards, making it easier to hold the two cards in alignment in one hand.
The pocket idea is interesting, and I imagine something like this could work. Personally I’m never a huge fan of purely card-on-card mechanisms, since they tend to get dog-eared from wear quite quickly, and tear easily. One alternative might be to do something like you describe, with the calendars on the outside, but pin the two cards together with a stud that allowed them to rotate to expose the day of the week. I’ve not got time to do a proper design, but I’ve sketched up a rough outline (http://web.mac.com/gavinbarraclough again). Even after this has been cleaned up it is clearly the case that the text would become unreadable beyond the first few columns, but if you can read at least the first three your brain will probably pick up the pattern & fill in the rest subconsciously.And yes, the red 28 is so the calendar doesn’t change on a leap year (no good reason since the year is printed on the same side, just a preference to maintain consistency across years).
cheers,G.
I present to you the <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2092583420&size=l” title=”calendar graphic”>graphic design of my calendar.</a>
I made a paper design before this to communicate the information architecture. However, this calendar communicates the look and feel of the design. It’s now a lot cleaner, simpler, and more usable.My focus for my design was clearness and usability, not fanciness and complexity. With this calendar you can easily locate any date of the year without confusion. You can find the name of the day, month and month umber. You can easily count the number of weeks leading up to a day, or count back the number of weeks from a day. It is immediately understandable and scannable. You can use the quarters to get an idea of the size of the calendar – it’s a handy size that’s slightly bigger than a business card. The heads quarter shows the front of the calendar. The tails quarter shows the back of the calendar.
Usability was taken into account with everything from the typography to the colors to the margins. I even did some “quick and dirty” usability testing. I asked my family to complete certain tasks using the calendar, and I’d time them while they did it. I’d asked them to point to Christmas, Labor Day, etc. I would also ask them to point to the third week of November or the first week of April, etc. I would also ask them to point to certain dates, months or month numbers I would name. I also had them tell me what day Sep 4th is, or what day May 17th is etc. What I found was that it only took them on average 2-3 seconds to complete each task! And it took them 1-2 seconds when they got used to it!This is not the final product yet, just the graphic design.
I have some questions for frequent calendar users:
-Where do you usually put your calendar? Desk? Wallet? Pocket? Where?
-What kind of marks do you make on it? X’s? Circles? Notes to the side?-Would a notes feature to the side of the calendar be useful to you? Would it be used a lot? How big or small would it need to be?
-What do you use your calendar for? Birthdays? Holidays? Schedule? What else?-If there was a schedule feature added to this calendar how would you feel about the increase in size? Would you want a schedule feature added to this calendar?
Adam Sporka wins.
Hullo everyone,
The downloadable 2008 version of my most popular design is now up on my site here:http://formd.net/portfolio/calendar_cards/
Is it too early to wish everyone a happy Christmas?Elzr was right when he said making calendars can be addicting. In my case, improving calendars can be addicting.
I have made the final design of my calendar and I’d like to know what everyone thinks. I know it’s not as visually fancy and complex as all the other ones, but I do think it is the most usable. And aren’t we going for the most useful?The final design of my calendar is so simple and effective that your grandmother could figure out how to use it in a few seconds (no offense to any grandmas on here). Just see for yourself and please comment to let me know what you think.
Thanks :-)
Yeah Song,
It is not bad.<a href=”http://www.sweetylife.com”>The french calendar<br /><br />
<img src=”http://song.free.fr/sweetylife/static/img/ssb_sweetylife.gif” alt=”http://www.sweetylife.com” /></a>
Good system.
I know that many like Adam’s calendar design. I like it too and I agree it’s rad, but I don’t like having to cover the left and right sides to identify a month. I mean, I know I don’t HAVE to, but then I find myself looking up and down to see if I’m in the right boundaries for a month or not.
As clever it might be, I think a calendar that is simple and much more organized will fare much better for users because I think when most users are looking for a date, want to be able to find it easily and mark on it, or make notes about a date if they need to. Also, being able to carry it them in their pocket, purse, or wallet will make it more accessible to users.That’s why I have decided to keep evolving my calendar until it can evolve no more. It started with a paper design and has gone through various stages. Although, my design has gone unrecognized and ignored that will not stop me from continuing the calendar evolution.
I present a new evolvement of my calendar. View it if you’d like. Comment if you’d like.A friend went to India recently and knowing my calendar obsession he brought me this nice pocket calendar that will tell you the date for the next 35 years:
It’s handy and very easy to use, an almost direct mechanical implementation of Leonardo Pablo Diez’s perpetual calendar.
i like the design #21.
is the 2009’s version ready?