I’ve decided to do a Calender for 2013. While I haven’t done a Calender every year I’ve done one for family and friends more years than I haven’t. This years Calender started out as a wish to do something beautiful with the phrase “keep the faith”. I like the idea of a Calender because it is useful and if someone really likes the image for a particular month they can keep it after the Calender is finished.

Once I’d decided that the project was going to be a Calender I had to come up with short phrases for each month. After some brainstorming I asked Bill to help me pick which ones we would use. Then it was time to get to work. I originally started laying out “keep the faith” in InDesign using Before the Rain by font designer Mans Greback but as I thought of all the months I needed to layout and I didn’t want to use the same font on all of them but I wanted them to be beautiful I decided that I would change things up and do each phrase by hand. I hope I won’t regret this but so far I’m having fun working with pencil and paper instead of my computer for a change of pace. I keep telling myself that I’m looking for an organic look not something precise and perfect so it lends itself to being hand drawn. But I’m lacking in confidence that I can pull this off.

I have sketched out each of the 13 phrases that I’ll be using on my calendar and I’ve continued to use Mans Greback’s fonts as inspiration to help me have a good variety of styles from image to image. I’d love some feedback on what I have so far. So fire away.