This week I started printing my 2008 calendar design. I’ve already printed my Christmas cards and some winter coasters. My obsessive pre-planning has the effect of making me feel as though I’ve skipped much of summer and fall and catapulted myself into winter!
Of course I’m not the only one who’s obsessive! Last year, Nikki Thompson of Deconstructed Artichoke Press made a bookwork for the PCBA Calendar Show called “A Contemplation of the Obsessive Nature of Time.” It’s 12 flipbooks, one for each month, based on prose writings by Julio Cortazar: “Preamble to the Instructions on How to Wind a Watch” and “Instructions on How to Wind a Watch.” She decided that the repetitive nature of a flipbook structure was the best for communicating obsessiveness and said, “originally I was thinking about using minutes or seconds in a year as the constraint for the number of flipbooks and the number of pages per flipbook, but practically speaking it was too obsessive, so I chose the twelve flipbooks, ranging from 28 to 31 pages.” I immediately bought a copy, not only because of the subject but it’s a wonderful way to think about the year rather than as structured set of days and weeks and months.
The images above are from the December flipbook. And below, my copy of her books spread out on my shelf. At the end of this month, Nikki is teaching a class in calendar making, “Handmade Calendars: From Concept to Completion,” at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Be sure to check it out!
