The Making of the 2014 Calendar


Back in February, I launched 12 in '13 for '14, an epic calendar lettering project that involved lettering part of a new calendar each month of this year, resulting in a complete 2014 calendar. Each month, I sketched dozens of header options with a Pentel brush pen (pictured above), and then posted the top 12 on my blog for public voting. After curating the selects, I rendered the final titles in Illustrator and incorporated them into the layouts.

After hours – months! – of work, here are the final selects, alongside their polished versions:


In tandem with finalizing the headers, I decided that I wanted to complete a supplementary set of numerals and capitals for the week titles. These were also refined in Illustrator, compiled in FontLab, and then typeset into the final calendar layouts. Below is some process work. Sketches:

Refining:

A look at the original sketches compared to the finals:

And the final ten numerals:

Sketches of letters:

Refining:

Original vs. finals:

And the final week letters:

Here's a look at the custom cover sheets, which were lettered and editioned by hand:

The screen printed calendar sheets, before trimming:

And after:

This was such an exciting & challenging project, and it's incredibly gratifying to see it all come together into a completed piece.

If you like the calendar, please purchase your limited edition copy in my shop! More photos from the original launch here.