Costs and printing

We produced the calendar using a printing format that enables it to be easily carried around in your pocket or your shopping bag. It has a stiff card front and back cover and folds out to reveal the calendar on one side and adverts for local suppliers on the other. It was printed by a company called Z-CARD® Ltd, who hold the patent on this type of product. You may be able to locate a different print company that can provide you with a folded paper product that will cost less to produce. We opted for the Z-CARD format because we felt it would last longer with stiff covers.

Paper / Card Options

 ZCARD can print on a range of paper / card, the cost of which varies quite a lot.  Zcard's standard finish uses a laminate finish which is not biodegradable, they also offer a Cellogreen card option (which is both biodegradable and recycled) although this pushes the price up significantly. We opted for a cover which uses FSC Certified card finished with a biodegradable aqueous varnish. The inside of our calendar is printed on 100% recycled paper. Again, the standard option for Zcards is FSC Certified paper. The recycled option does add to the cost slightly, but we discovered that by combining the aqueous varnish finish with the recycled paper inside the total cost was less than that of the standard paper products Zcards use.

Print Run

The more you have printed the less each unit will cost, proportionally. We opted for 10,000 as the unit cost difference between 5,000 units (45p per calendar) and 10,000 units (27p per calendar) was significant. As we were applying for grant funding to produce the calendar we felt that 27p per calendar represented better value. We also felt that 10,000 was an achievable number to distribute effectively, using in part the businesses who feature on the calendar.

How Much Did it Cost?

We paid 27p per calendar for the printing. Hard copy proofs added costs to the process, which raised the price to 28p per calendar. Our calendar was produced with Local Food Funding, so we are able to distribute it for free. As this will not always be the case, the hope is that the low unit cost of each calendar will make it possible to cover costs through contributions. For example by asking local suppliers to contribute something for their adverts on the calendar, and by requesting donations for the calendar itself where it is handed out at events, etc. 

Using The Kindling Trust's Template (Z-CARD format)

To make it easier for other organisations to produce the calendar we have made the calendar side of our artwork and the front and back covers available on this website. This means that the only work you need to carry out is filling in the adverts side - where there is space for eight reasonably sized adverts. We can also recommend a designer who will put the adverts onto the template for you, as the template requires specialist software and/or a designer to produce the artwork. As our (self employed) designer did the work for us she is familiar with the requirements and therefore will be able to carry out the work easily. This is the easiest option in terms of re-producing the calendar if you opt for the Zcards format. Zcards provide detailed design guidelines to ensure that the artwork meets their requirements for production.

Liscensing

We have invested a lot of time in producing this information and hope it will prove useful. We provide it under a Creative Commons license, which requires that the original artwork is attributed to The Kindling Trust and that you make any further works based on it available under the same conditions to others. Currently the calendar carrys a non-commercial license, but if you are a commercial organisation wanting to produce the calendar please get in touch, we don't by any means rule out it's potential for raising funds for groups and projects that share our values.