How to Make Calendars - Updated for 2009

The Vital Stats:

Our calendars are printed on high quality, high density paper that’s easy to write on and come bound and ready for hanging on your wall.

RedBubble calendars are printed on an HP Indigo 5000 (the word on the street is that this is the digital press). Each page is a matte coated print on 170gsm pages. The cover shows your choice of image on heavier 300gsm paper. Your calendars have a hanger and white wire binding.

RedBubble calendars are satin-coated prints on high quality art paper.
They’re A3 size (that’s 297×420mm, or 11.69×16.54”)

Christmas Orders:

Last year the 1st week of December was the cut off mark if you wanted to make sure your calendar made it in time for Christmas. Dates for this year are yet to be confirmed but will be pretty similar. We recommend trying to get your orders in before the end of November. It’s better to order sooner rather than later! You don’t want your Nan crying into her Eggnog on Christmas day because she thinks you forgot her gift.

Regular Orders:

The 2009 calendars will continue to be produced well into 2009. The cut off date is yet to be confirmed but last year calendars were available until March.

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Image Sizes:

The image windows for calendars are as follows:

2182 by 1906 pixels for the main pages
3271 by 2874 pixels for the cover page

That’s the minimum size. The bigger the images the better.

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Making a Calendar:

Before you get down to business, you’ll need to have all the images you want to use uploaded and ready to go under your art tab. They can be hidden from public view if you wish or you can use images from your public profile. If the image isn’t large enough then it won’t appear as an option when you are creating your calendar. As with all the products, the bigger the images the better.

Click on your calendars tab under my bubble. Then click on ‘add a new calendar’.

This will take you into the edit screen which should seem vaguely familiar if you’re used to uploading work on RedBubble. Fill in the following information.

1. 1) You’ll need to give your calendar a title. This won’t appear on the printed calendar but will appear on your profile as the name of the work.
2. 2) Fill in your description field. This is the spot for your snappy sales pitch or the heart wrenching story of your journey along the path to calendar creation.
3. 3) Add some tags so people can find your calendar in the search. It’s probably a good idea to add the word calendar in there too. Here’s some more info on the best way to tag your work.
4. 4) Select your cover image
5. 5) Choose an image for each month
6. 6) Set your markup
7. 7) Select ‘Allow anyone to view this work’
8. 8) Take a deep breath and click on ‘create new calendar’

Too easy!

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Once your new calendar has been created, you’ll see a message at the top of the screen that says ‘woo. Here’s your new calendar’. It really should have a capital W but we’ll let that slide.

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Don’t sit there like a fool waiting for it to display at the top of the edit screen (like I did). It won’t. You need to click on the calendar tab under my bubble again and you’ll see your brand new creation.





You can edit the calendar from this screen or you can go to the public view which will take you to a page where you can preview each of the pages of the calendar in all their glory. This is what your customers will see if they click on the calendar from your main profile page.

If you’d prefer this information in a more entertaining format, Jo has produced an informative video on how to make calendars. Goes well with popcorn ;)

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So that, my friends, is how you make a calendar. Go forth and create …

Is there any way I can make my images bigger to the right sizes? They’re too small for a calendar and I don’t know how to make them bigger. Is it anything to do with the fact I only use a digital camera? I don’t have any type of editing software.

Thanks for providing this information. It was just what I was looking for.—Rene

What height (how many pixels) do you have to make the cover image to AVOID the black lines at the top and bottom.

You have to use a portrait orientated image with the following dimensions or greater, the larger number is your height for portrait.
3271 by 2874pixels

calendars are not on bubblesites yet.
see the post below for some ideas on what others are doing to get them on their bubblesite
bubblesite & calenders
Dan

Hi all – hoping for some advice.

I have begun creating a 2009 calendar and added some black text around my front page image with a white background. I followed the instructions for image size (3271 by 2874 pixels) but when the calendar was displayed on the page it had a black band across the top and bottom. I figured the dimensions must be wrong and gradually changed the image canvas size to try and compensate but still get a black band along the bottom.

Has anyone else experienced this and do you have any tips on how to prevent it from happening? If not, I guess I will need to change the text to white on black to hide the black band!
Thanks in advance
Glen

Ahh, I see. Thanks for letting me know prb :-)

Matthew, I have just had a look through your calendars and no title is shortened in the previews and this is how they print. It would have to be a pretty damn long title to cause problems as they can go the width of the calendar.

My daughter want s me to use some of her pictures of “the baby” aaaah!!! However they are all 1200×1600. what sort of a job will Photoshop do if I transform them ? will it guess ok or will o end up with a blurry mess. the originals are nice and sharp

Here we are already in September of 2009. It is not too early to start thinking about calendars for 2010. I don’t recall how we got from ‘08 to ‘09, but I believe that an ‘08 calendar of mine from back then carried over. MY QUESTION now is whether the calendars currently in my portfolio will revert to 2010 automatically when the proper function has been put in place by RB (and when will that happen)? Or will I have to create new calendars from scratch? I just tried updating three of my 09 calendars by changing the title to say “2010” but in public view, the cover page still says “09.”

Ginny see here