The Apanona calendars
If you’ve known me for a while, you might remember that this isn’t the first time I’ve made calendars.
Calendars are my thing 😀 I really like them, especially the wall ones that we can hang in the kitchen and write down important dates and things to remember.
At home we have had all kinds, but the illustrators have predominated: From Roser Capdevila and the Three Twins, from Violeta Denou and Teo especially when the girls were little; of those with a thousand stickers and lots of space to write. And more recently in 2021 a beautiful calendar by Carmen Saldaña that ended up serving as inspiration for me.
I don’t know if you will remember, but I made three Apanona Calendars: in 2014, 2015 and 2017, shall we review them? Oh, so many memories!
Let’s Party all year long! it’s the name I gave to the first calendar I made for 2014. It was Apanona’s first year as a full-time professional project and the truth is that it was very well received. Now I look fondly at those first vector drawings from 10 years ago, so… Every month you could see the couple of protagonists doing one thing or another: riding a motorcycle, dressed up as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or playing tennis.
The following year I wanted to continue with a similar idea of representing a boy and a girl doing things throughout the year. This time, however, I decided that the protagonists would travel around the world and titled the calendar “Around the world”. My cousin had recently done a bike ride through North Africa and I thought it would be a good idea for the caledary characters to go there too 🙂 The kids were traveling separately to different parts of the world and in the middle of the year (June) they crossed paths in London and did not meet again until December! I also added some QR codes to link to my blog where I gave specific information about each of the places they cycled through. I had so much fun and learned so much making this calendar!
In 2016 there was no calendar because I started a part-time job and had very little time left to draw and design, but the following year, now better organized, I made a new calendar “The good neighbourhood”. This time I drew a very special building with even more special neighbors. Each month we discovered each of the inhabitants and their hobbies. I really enjoyed making this calendar, inspired in part by “Rue 13 del Percebe” by Francisco Ibáñez. I really like the idea, actually…maybe I could maybe turn it into a story? Who knows!
As you can see in the photos, all three calendars followed a very similar format: large size (open A3) with a very generous grid for making notes and putting stickers.
This type of calendar is beautiful and super practical, but it is much more laborious to design and expensive to produce. And this year I was not (yet) in the mood to undertake such a project. And this is where the type of calendar I told you above that inspired Carmen Saldaña came to mind: a smaller A4 calendar where the star is clearly the illustration.
The idea is to be able to discover a new sheet every month and which also has the utility of telling you what day you live in! 😀 I know there’s zero room to write anything on it, but I use smaller size post-it’s (like the ones in the photo) and they work great! Here’s the idea in case it’s useful!
