Feedback...

The members of the Pride were all very pleased with the calendar and declared it "to be the best we have so far produced". They were especially delighted with the colour scheme and how it complimented the children's pictures.

The members present that evening were all very impressed with the calendar and commented that it was the best one to date. They loved the choice of colours and were very happy with everything. After the similar colours and design of the 2007 and 2008 calendars, they were delighted that my design was, to them, a radical departure from the earlier ones.

They were also very relieved that these calendars had been delivered on time and were not delayed like the previous years.

I suggested to the members that, if they wanted a calendar for 2010, we begin preparations in the middle of the year with the aim of getting everything finalised and at a print ready stage by the autumn. Also, Sue and I reiterated our view that a modest cover charge be considered.

Cover...

January, February, March...

July, August, September...

April, May, June...

October, November, December...

Delivery...

The completed calendars were delivered to Sue on Monday 5th December - the day of the final Brighouse Pride meeting before Christmas. Perfect timing!

Final pages...

It took a few weeks before Gary returned from holiday and this delayed me from completing the artwork. Eventually, Sue and Gary managed to get enough advertisers interested and I was able to complete the final pages and sent them to the printers on November 3rd.

Netherton Cross Printer...

I visited the printer armed with a set of proofs, my laptop and the artwork and all relevant files on a CD-ROM.

This is the stage at which you can suddenly find the printer cannot use your artwork and you have to redo something or, occasionally, start again. Hands on hearts time!

Thankfully, they said that everything was in order and they would begin printing ASAP.

The relief I felt was immense.

Nearly there...

It took a few days for me to draw all the adverts and place them into the relevant spaces; several of the companies had specified that they had to go onto a particular month. I played around with the positioning of them to ensure that each month had a variety of different trades displayed and that the adverts complemented each other.

I then carefully placed the scanned images of the children's pictures into the correct month - they had already been decided upon by Pride members - and added the correct child's name. This in itself was an issue that had not been fully resolved as we were still awaiting a decision on whether we could use the full name of each child or only the first name. Plus, we were still waiting for a definitive list of all the names anyway! The details eventually came through and the full names were allowed by the school.

The cover was designed quite quickly - the only problem was in deciding on a title for the calendar. I chose to call it "Brighouse 2009 - our town through young eyes". Slightly corny, but in the abscence of any firm details from the Pride, I had to use something or the cover would be, at best, anonymous and possible even confusing.

The first 9 months plus cover were now ready to show to Sue. I took a trip to her office armed with a set of prints and my Apple Mac to see her. Sue was delighted with the look of the pages and gave the thumbs up for me to send the artwork to Netherton Cross.

I returned to my studio and prepared the files for print and burnt a CD to take to the printers.