For today’s POD I thought I would take a break from the Emergent Task Planner and do something different. Reader “Steve” sent me a cool planning calendar he had made in Excel. It’s designed to print very large so you have room to write, and aligned all the weekdays of each month into columns. I thought it looked cool, and Steve said it was OK for me to make something based on it; he’d seen the format elsewhere himself many years ago:

I suspect Steve’s calendar (shown right) is far more useful than today’s 90-minute experiment, the Year of Sundays Calendar. I hadn’t realized how large Steve’s calendar actually was when looking at the PDF on my screen, and so I tried to fit it on a normal sheet of paper. Rather than use rectangles, which felt constraining on the small page, I wondered if I could instead use markers for the days themselves as anchors, and people could write AROUND them. Even with that, there wasn’t a lot of space, so I thought maybe I could just highlight the weekends and fade-out the weekdays enough so you could write over them as notespace. I thought that was kind of funny, so I went with it.

Useful? Maybe for planning weekend fishing trips. Or maybe the psychological fliperoo of focusing on the weekends and other highlighted time-off is a boost. I’m putting this out there just to see what happens, a lesson I learned from the occasional feedback I get from users of the Compact Calendar. One of the most unexpected uses I’ve heard of was a doctor that used it as a gestation calendar, since it was easy to count the weeks. Maybe this will spark an idea and someone will leave a comment that changes all our lives for the better.

» Download Sunday Calendar
» Download Sunday Calendar w/ more space

UPDATE: Thanks to CK for pointing out that November had 31 days. It has been corrected.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is recommended for printing. The built-in "Mac OS X Preview" and "Chrome Browser" PDF viewers do not always draw dotted lines correctly.

Enjoy!

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Today’s product-of-the-day (or POD, as I’ve been calling them), predictably, is related to the Mini Emergent Task Planner. It’s the print-ready design for my long-desired A5 Printed Journal. This POD isn’t intended for end-users like us, however: I packaged it up with my notes (see screenshot above) and sent it to my local full-service printer, Papergraphics in Merrimack, NH. They’re a short drive away, and have been very helpful in starting up the print side of my design work. It’s awesome to put the money into the local economy, too.

I’d started the conversation with them about these notebooks before the November 2012 election, but then I got caught up with the holidays. After they get a chance to look over my files, I’ll see if I can schedule a meeting with them to go over some options. The nice thing about having your local full-service printer is that they KNOW ABOUT THINGS that I’ve never heard of, and can suggest alternatives that save money or are MORE AWESOME.

I just sent the email to Frank, the guy in charge at Papergraphics. Just need to hear back. Total production time: about an hour to tweak the design and measure safe areas, another hour to take photos for Frank and make a package that he can hopefully look at on his computer and check, and about 30 minutes to prep today’s post.

So there’s no download for today; we’ll have to wait to see what Frank says.

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Today’s product continues from Monday’s work, creating all the variations for a new “2013 Mini-ETP 7 Task” digital download to sell. In addition to making the color versions, I made the 2-up double-sided and single versions as well, both dated and blank, for a total of 24 templates. Then, I had to make new images for Gumroad and write descriptions, not to mention creating some new landing pages for copyright information and other goodies.

Although my inclination is to want to give everything away—blame my missionary upbringing—I’m now offering the new color designs and templates as two US$7.00 packages: a US package for US-based users, and an A5 package for people outside the United States who use the ISO paper size standard. You may continue to use the black-and-white versions uploaded on day 4 and day 5 for free.

» USA: 2013 Mini ETP 7-Task Daily Planner (US) (GumRoad link)

» International: 2013 Mini ETP 7-Task Daily Planner (A5) (GumRoad Link)

Please note: the A5 version is slightly wider than the US version, but has 30 minutes less time at the end of the day.

Production notes: It took 45 minutes to make the color version. I have to adjust line widths, spacing, and font weights for the color version so they’re thicker. Tedious, but necessary to get the best result on a monochrome laser printer (which can draw finer lines but doesn’t handle tone well) and an inkjet (slightly blurrier output, so thicker ilnes are advised, and background fill can be more aggressive). Packaging took FAR LONGER: another 6 hours to make all the digital variations, create zip archives, make the listing images and listings, then create the post and supporting graphics. I’m tired. Whew.

Enjoy!

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Today’s product is the A5-size version of yesterday’s product! It took about 30 minutes last night to make the modifications (trimming 30 minutes, widening), and 15 minutes to process the graphics for this post. It seems a little like a cheat, counting this as a whole new product, but I have other paying project work this week AND a long out-of-town day trip today, so I am exercising my right to pace myself ;-)

Like yesterday’s post, this is a 2UP: two ETPs on one A4 sized piece of paper, arranged so if you print it double-sided, you can staple together a nifty booklet with a nice wide gutter in the middle!

» Download Mini ETP Template (2UP on A4 paper)
US compatriots: you’ll want the US Letter version.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is recommended for printing. The built-in "Mac OS X Preview" and "Chrome Browser" PDF viewers do not always draw dotted lines correctly.

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Enjoy!

I started work on an update to the half-size Emergent Task Planner, concentrating first on the black-and-white laserprinter version for US Letter. The template is a 2-UP PDF (meaning that there are two pages per printout), which is helpful if you’re making a bound version of a double-sided journal. Production time: 2.5 hours to adapt the old design available as a multi-pack to have the cosmetic features of the 365 Day Almanac version.

Instead of making all the versions at once, I’m going to spread the production out over the week. Next up will be the A4 version, and after that I’ll probably make the color versions. I can also start the conversation with my printer about producing high-quality bound versions of these for sale on Amazon.

While I don’t think I’ll be releasing them all as free versions, I will provided the B&W laserprinter version for US and A4 sizes so people can try them out. Color versions and special variations will be available as digital downloads on Gumroad.

I’m pretty pleased with this refinement over the older version. And, this is a good time to solicit some feedback before moving ahead with print production. If you leave a comment or send me an email with feedback/requests, I’ll send you a free ETP Mini PDF package when it’s all done!

In the meantime:

» Download Mini ETP Template (2UP on US Letter)
European users: I’ll post the A4 version tomorrow…thanks for your patience!

Adobe Acrobat Reader is recommended for printing. The built-in "Mac OS X Preview" and "Chrome Browser" PDF viewers do not always draw dotted lines correctly.

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Enjoy!