I’m a bit late this year but I’ll be artworking it up this weekend and then writing them over the week to make sure they get there at least a week before Christmas.

Calendars are quite tricky things to do – not all months have the same number of days, not all months start on the same day and, while most months require 5 rows of weeks (Monday to Sunday) to complete, some months refuse to play the game and require 6 rows of weeks. Even worse, February 2010, requires only 4 rows of weeks as it starts on a Monday!

(OK, I can see this may not be the most fascinating subject for a blog post but graphic designers find this sort of thing really interesting!)

A calendar you can use for any year!

I have found that putting the relevant date into the appropriate place in the calendar a tad annoying. There’s 365 of them to do so, who wouldn’t? So I have hit on a great solution to help my fellow graphic designers to successfully set up a calendar for all the years to come … linked textboxes!

So, as you can see above, the dates are all linked. So if you want January to start on a Saturday (which it will in 2011) instead of Friday, you type 27 and hit enter in the box before where 28 is now. Enter moves the text to the next linked text box so that all the dates will shift over one day. It’s an awful lot better that moving them over one by one!

Download the PDF and Adobe Illustrator (AI) file for the 2010 Calendar

Please click on one of the icons below to download the calendar.

The AI was produced in CS3 and the document color mode is RGB. You will need the Trebuchet MS font loaded. I tried to save it in a legacy format but the linked text boxes would not work.

Please let me know if this has been useful for you. And if anyone wants a Christmas card contact me with your address and I’ll send you one through the post! Happy Christmas!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

They are not meant to be golden rules but after years and years of doing them I find they come in handy!

Click the image below to download the PDF.

Six “rules” for making an on-screen PDF

Here they are:

• Do it in RGB not CMYK This may not be an issue when exporting the PDF from Word or Powerpoint but very much is if exporting the PDF from Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign. In InDesign go Edit > Transparency Blend Space > RGB.
• Use A4 (297mm by 210mm) or Letter (279.4 mm by 215.9 mm) size so it will print out on desktop printers This just makes it easier for people using your PDF to print it out.
• Do not put anything within 10mm of the edge of the page as it may not be printed out by a desktop printer Most printers will not print right to the edge of the paper. This is a shame if you have a background image or graphic covering the whole page and is worth noting when considering a background.
• Make the format landscape not portrait so that the PDF fills the screen Seems obvious, but …
• Use vectors (AIs, EPSs) for graphics and logos not JPGs or other bitmaps This is a big, big issue for me. I am often very surprised to see PDFs from large corporations who have graphics (in some cases their own logos) in a jagged, pixellated bitmap form when the vector will appear beautiful and sharp in a PDF. It is possible to export PDFs with vectors from the Adobe products (Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign) but, sadly, impossible when exporting from Word or Powerpoint. Mac users, good news! Apple’s Pages application, which is free with all Mac’s, will create PDFs with vectors! If you don’t know the difference between vectors and bitmaps download the PDF and you will see what I mean.
• Enable interactive elements and hyperlinks so that users can click on websites and email addresses One of the great benefits of PDFs are their interactivity. It is important to check when exporting, especially from InDesign, that Interactive Elements and Hyperlink are checked so that buttons, web addresses and email addresses are clickable.

Interactive PDFs and rich media PDFs

I have written more about interactive PDFs and how to make them on this site. Also there are many more exciting things that can be done with the humble PDF. Buttons, rollovers and showing and hiding layers on a page are all possible in PDFs. Video and audio can also be added (either embedded or streamed from the internet). It is an area of great potential.

What are your experiences?

Do you make on-screen PDFs for widespread circulation? What are they for? How do you make them and what sort of extra functionality do they have? Do you have any more “rules” to add to mine?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I’ve noticed a trend emerge recently. A client of mine got me to design an invitation to a marketing event – cocktails at a new store – I sent him a beautifully designed invite in the form or a PDF and asked him how many he needed printed and he said: “Oh, there’s no need, I’m sending the PDF by email”.

More and more of this will be happening in the future. If this widely-predicted recession actually takes hold, marketing managers can tighten there budgets by sacrificing digital print for digital communication.

It’s another benefit of the interactive PDF. Why go to the expense of printing something when you can email a PDF? They look good, the file size is low enough not to bother the receiver and, let’s face it, it’s more likely to be seen than if it was sent in the post.

There are various other ways of side-stepping a printer. There’s html emails, although care should be taken that they’re not seen as spam. And there’s one-off web pages – if you’re very worried about spam filters simply put a link in your email. A new domain can be set up in seconds for next to nothing. Simply create a site at www dot something-interesting-that-hasn’t-been-thought-of-yet dot com and design an eye-catching splash page. Use web stats and forms to see if visitors have landed.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.