When I first started making calendars, I designed a completely new design very single year. And honestly, I wish I still had the time to do that!

Instead, as I have time, I’ll take the previous year’s design and just tweak it a bit. Slowly over time, the design changes into something different. It reminds me of the Word Ladder game, where only one letter is changed at a time, but eventually the starting word becomes something entirely different, with every step along the way still being a valid word. 🙂

For the 2027 calendar, I kept some ideas and added others, refining the calendar theme one step at a time. Below are eight ideas that shaped this year’s calendar—and I hope they will help spark inspiration when designing your own!

1. A Meaningful Calendar Theme

There’s nothing special about the idea of a printed calendar. They’ve been around forever. So there has to be something different and unique about your calendar.

There are 3 elements that I stick to.

First, I only use my own landscape photos. This doesn’t mean much because I’m not famous, but it does make it more attractive to the people who know me personally. To go the second mile with this aspect, I do what I can to share with the viewer the fun stories behind each main photo to make it a more interactive and personal product.

Secondly, I highlight a song or hymn each month. Sure, it’s not a selling-point for a lot of people, but it’s wholesome, uplifting, and out of the ordinary, hitting a niche, target audience that will appreciate it when they find it.

Thirdly, I love to sow God’s Word, so I always include a Scripture on each month that generally fits with the overall calendar theme. The title for my calendar this year is “Jesus, I Come.” As I was reading through the book of Isaiah this year, I was impressed with how God kept coming back to His desire for repentance and humility. With 2027 being the final year before a presidential election year here in the US, I wanted to do whatever I could to be part of the spiritual revival needed among grassroots voters to elect righteous leaders who fear God and govern according to His Word. “If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray . . .” Jesus, we come to Thee. That’s the first thing that needs to happen. If there’s anything truly useful about a calendar, it’s the Word of God set before our eyes!

2. Breaking Outside the Box

Perhaps the most noticeable update I made to the design of this year’s calendar was extending the main photo to flow down onto the bottom spread. This is an idea I got from another calendar I saw last year. Without reducing the size of the date boxes, and with adding only 1 additional inch of space to the photograph, the perceived size of the main photo is now substantially larger. This strategic change also ties the entire spread together in an intentional move toward seamlessly enhancing a borderless appearance!

3. Room for 6 Rows of Dates

Because there are seven days in a week, most months fit on five date rows. However, when a month has 30 or 31 days and begins late in the week, it will bump down with an extra day or two on a sixth date row. This can be a design hassle when updating dates from year to year, so if you set up your layout with enough room at the bottom of the date grid for a sixth row when needed, you’ll save yourself a lot of time tweaking the dates.

4. QR Codes

Because practically everyone has a cell phone these days, you can use QR Codes to direct folks to more than what can fit on the printed page. This is new to the 2027 calendar, but I figured if I’d already written a blog post about the featured image, why not direct folks there if they want to read a more details about what happened behind the scenes?

5. Spiral Binding

It’s usually more expensive to use spiral binding, but the benefits it provides are worth it!

First, it allows you to use paper that’s coated only on one side, thus making the images glossy looking while the date grid is matte, making it easy to write on.

Secondly, it allows you to use nice thick paper for a durable design. The spine doesn’t crack. Pages don’t curl as easily in high humidity environments. The drill hole actually holds the calendar up all year.

And thirdly, it makes the entire product feel so much more upscale. Matches the fine-art feel. And thankfully, there are ways to get quantities as low as 25 for cheaper than saddle stitched, if you know how to do it.

6. Moon Phases

I honestly don’t know why I didn’t start including these until this year! I guess no one had ever mentioned it before. And it does take a bit of extra time to add. But it is another fantastic idea to add to your calendar theme.

7. Behind-the-Scenes Photos

It was a last-minute thought this year, so perhaps I’ll develop it later. But if you’re like me, I enjoy the feeling of being on the inside and seeing how folks do what they do! Behind‑the‑scenes photos or stories give viewers a sense of being “in on the process,” which increases appreciation for the final work of art.

8. Cutouts

If you have a program like Photoshop, one idea to enhance your calendar theme is to add small cutouts of either elements in the main photo, photos taken at the same location, or photos taken elsewhere that match nicely with the main photo. For example, the red barn used as the cutout in January is not in the main photo. But it was at the same location, off the frame to the right maybe 30 yards or so. Including it gives viewers a sense of depth and what it was like beyond the main photo.

Bonus Tips

If you want to sell multiple calendar designs, my suggestion would be to keep them all the same price. This is something that I’m doing this year with the Personalized and Original calendars. Because I have efficient processes set up, I can add personalized information to a calendar quickly, and I like the simplicity of keeping them both at the same price.

I’m also running an incentive for folks to buy early. Because I have other things for sale on my store, I’m giving away a coupon to anyone who places an order in the first 10 days after the calendar was announced (which happens to be through the end of August, the 31st). It’s a 20% coupon for almost everything on the Lenspiration Store (the coupon just excludes calendars and cameras, and can’t be combined with other discounts or offers). And if that’s not enough, it’s a coupon that can be used however much they want all the way until the very end of the year!

But now I’m drifting into marketing. 🙂

When it comes to ideas to add to your calendar theme, there’s no one, single idea or design that’s “best”. As I see things and get more ideas over the next year, who knows how the 2028 calendar will be different! Hopefully for the better. 🙂

Do you have creative ideas for to add to a calendar? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!