Over 10 Years of the Pickle Design Calendar

I realised today that we have been designing calendars at Pickle Design for over 10 years now! Our first in 2008 was a simple introduction to the team in the form of a little book of bookmarks. I illustrated something to do with each member, including the postman, printers and freelancers, as a little something to hand-out for our clients. 

For 2009 we went a little bigger and a little bolder. Carl had the idea of showing what inspired us as a design team so we illustrated 12 Things We Like as badges. These were mounted on DL uncoated grey card, each with a month printed on. 

The badges were great fun to do as well as a challenge, such a tiny format! They included things like 'plenty of colour', 'conversation', and some favourite films such as 'The Third Man' and 'Amelie'. 

2010 marked the first of our poster calendars. Here we used a tree changing through the seasons to represent the year. A muted colour palette and simple vector illustration created a wall-worthy keepsake. 

2011 came to me in a dream, no joke! I woke up with the design all formed in my head. Using our brand colours of orange and grey we captured the seasons with little hand illustrations and dictionary definitions.  We love typography and the two colour design actually provided plenty of scope for our designs. The concertina format was folded to A5, handy to post! 

For 2012 we explored our love of colour. This A4 print colour-coded the months of the year in a wonderfully visual way. Sturdy uncoated stock allowed the colours to really sink into the page.

Back to our beloved concertina format, 2013 saw yellow, grey and black come together with our theme, the design process. From when pen touches paper, it all starts with a line and we wanted to show a continuous line linking everything together throughout the year.        

2014 is definitely one of our favourites! We illustrated in a bold two-colour vector-style classic chair design. The A2 poster in crisp white provided the perfect background for the bright red and blue layered transparent illustrations. This poster still has pride of place in our office!

Our theme for 2015 was a no-brainer, this was the year Marty McFly travelled to in the Back to the Future movies and so we indulged our inner geek created a time travel calendar.  

The large poster resembles the star map of Time Bandits and features our illustrations of movies and books with the likes of 12 Monkeys, Dr Who, Groundhog Day and The Time Machine. 

For 2016 we came down to earth and decided to celebrate our beautiful county of Cornwall. Inspired by the vintage travel posters designed for railways, we captured Cornish landmarks for our poster with muted shades in a stylised form. This was a time consuming project but we were really pleased with the end result.  

2017, still in our fair county, we focused on Cornish food. By now we were featuring our designs our monthly newsletter and this provided an opportunity to share recipes alongside our illustrations. For this poster we drew hand creating an etching style finished off with a touch of blue to reflect the feel of Cornwall. 

Last year, 2018 was a riot of colour! Our inspiration for this calendar poster was a mix of vintage children's books and Scandinavian design. We wanted to feature native trees to Britain as we are all big fans! I loved creating this one, the colour palette was a joy to work with. 

For 2019 we picked up pen and pencil and decided to celebrate packaging through some familiar cupboard classics. Finding the early forms of these items of food and drink was great fun and so we decided to go vintage once again. In our newsletter this year we are also illustrating the modern version, so we can highlight the journey of these familiar brands. With family favourites such as Marmite, Cadbury's Dairy Milk and Bird's Custard, this calendar has proved popular!

Our calendars have always been the main way we introduce our work to clients and local businesses, a format we love as it allows us plenty of creative freedom. I am already considering next years, pondering what direction to go in...