Although modern technology offers various modern solutions, printed calendars are still our allies throughout the year. Sometimes they are completely invisible, occupying our walls or tables, at the same time, we glance at them from time to time to remember some holiday or plan our time.
How reliable and predictable they are! Isn’t it? Is it really possible that they are fooling us? Do they tend to contain errors?
As the enivo study proves, unfortunately in most cases the answer is yes! Being in the printing business since 2007, we have encountered various customer stories and our own observations. More often than not, clients don’t even imagine that such a problem exists and live in the belief that their individualized calendar is the very perfection. Before the list of questions, we invite you to look at what errors are and how they occur.
Why do calendars have errors?
The occurrence of errors in calendars depends on various factors – one of the most common – the desire of the manufacturer to make extra money in the production of the calendar, without taking into account how it will affect the quality – a cheaper choice of paper, inexperienced and careless employees, lack of understanding of the process, “one-man orchestra” – situations in which one employee is responsible for both design and layout. Each profession has its own most suitable type of person – designers – they are creative personalities, model makers – accurate up to a hundredth of a millimeter. This situation becomes a reason for errors. No matter how beautiful and visually successful a calendar is, if its technical part is managed by a creative personality, there is a high probability of error. Each type of person has strengths and weaknesses, so it is important that the technical part is handled by the relevant specialists.
Making calendars is not just about posting a pretty picture, it is a long and complicated process that requires a lot of time and concentration. If its processes are not thought through, it results in errors. For example, if many people are involved in the test without a unified system – the calendar will be checked, but will errors be found and eliminated.
What are the most common mistakes in calendars?
Name day errors – The State Language Center regularly examines the proposal to expand the name day calendar with different personal names, if this list is not followed, the names of persons may be omitted. In addition to not inserting name days, a common problem is overwriting or duplicating names.
With name days, problems can be not only with duplication, they can be with ill-conceived design. When creating the design of the calendar, it is not taken into account that there are days with very long or many words. As a result, there is not enough space for the words, they merge with the date number or are transferred to the second line, which makes the overall image sloppy.
Errors in dates – when creating a calendar block, months are often cleaned up and aligned correctly, if there is no experience in this process, it is a long and tedious job with wide possibilities for errors – dates and names are duplicated or the month starts on the wrong day.
An error that often cannot be noticed by the untrained eye, the date spaces are not exactly aligned for the entire year.
Wrong choice of paper – as we mentioned above, thinner and cheaper papers are often chosen for calendar pages to save money. As a result, the previous or next month shines through, together creating a cheap impression of the calendar and the company that has given it away. The choice of cardboard for the base of the calendar is also essential, if it is chosen thick, with cracks in the folds.
Paper fiber – during the production process, paper retains its fiber direction. This feature of the paper must be taken into account when producing the calendar, as the pages and the base of the calendar can bend, roll, deform, creating a sloppy impression. By choosing a technically correct fiber direction, these problems can be reduced or completely eliminated.
Inconvenient calendar date box – if the date box for wall calendars is strengthened with rubber on the back of the calendar, it will deform and bend the calendar pages, in the worst case – the rubber will break in the middle of the year.
At the moment, the largest number of errors that enivo received as a sample from a customer is 47 errors – starting with technical nuances about different tones, ending with name days, where people’s names are transferred to a new line.
We invite you to download the prepared material on what to ask when ordering calendars – 5 questions that will save your company’s reputation.