Ok, this is another brushing about Aventude, but this time it’s not about a customer case, it’s about the calendar we produced for the year 2020. First, when the idea was proposed; it was little out of the traditional way, because technology companies do not create calendars, they would instead create a notebook or nothing at all.

But some felt, let’s do it for some fun and creativity – not to mention I was one of them. The idea of using animals was the first idea, and all agreed, so no much noise in deciding the theme of the calendar. The challenge was, we need to map the technological concepts with nature. We wanted to take a different approach there; we wanted to bring the technology in a more explanatory way, rather than using buzzwords directly.

Also, we wanted to check the quality of the print, images, fonts etc. with one sample. So without spending much time we took one sentence from our corporate slide deck ‘Speed & Quality at Scale’ – Cheetah came in, and we needed a cheetah that resembles both quality and a hunting speed. We reviewed the morphing method eight times as it should be natural as possible without any hard finishes and also colour fade should not disturb the calendar view. Last part we wanted to bring the tech feel from the photos, with neural connection kind of a mesh. The mesh should be based on triangles, and three shades of blue are needed to create a beautiful pattern, we reviewed many combinations of blue on-screen and on print. At this time, the entire concept was not even started, but reviewed the execution viability more than twenty times.

First draft took around two months to get a final cut; I did not want to spend much time and money without seeing it in print, Because if the print is not right, then it will be a wasteful effort. First sample was good and fine to go ahead.

Now, we need 12 concepts. All of us fell in love with the Cheetah, it was amazing on the big screen. So, we decided to keep him, so we needed 11 more. We started with buzzwords, and came up with the lovely and elegant phrases to bring the inner meaing.

Month	Phrases
January	Quality & Speed at scale
February	Collaboration across Geographies
March	Cost Effective Architecture
April	Three Lane App Modernization
May	Assimilated Engineering with DevOps
June	Data Driven Decisions
July	Simple & Elegant User Experience
August	Effortless & Powerful Serverless Architecture
September	Composable Service Architecture
October	Democratic Authority & Blockchain
November	Rationale Intelligence
December	Unified Experience & Digital Convergence

Now we have to find the right images. We described what kind of an image is needed, rather than saying that and this. Some are very specific.

We were adamant on we need a peacock, but it is not that all fancy with a fully opened feather (called train). We need a good healthy looking one, should be proud but pure, should resemble elegance and not overly showing-off. I’m pretty sure the design team should have thought, they were stuck with some retards. After 28 reviews, we got the right one.  Some image explanations are too crazy to write here.

However, some were quite straight and quick, ‘Cost-Effective Architecture’ – with one review it came perfect, and this one is my personal favourite.

After completing all the images, we thought ok now it’s time to distribute, but our CEO wanted a nice packaging – Indeed Yes !. An excellent product needs a beautiful packaging.

Now all set, and it went out, we received excellent comments. I thought, little scared that people would think Aventude as a calendar printing company. Lol. The most remarkable comment was from the print agent, as they wanted to use this for their portfolio and the design team was happy they told they hadn’t done a thoughtful design like this.

It was an excellent and an extraordinary effort from them, and no one would have grabbed the idea better than Pixolines. I appreciate and recommend them.

So what now? Are we working on such a thing for 2021? – the answer is No. We may work on something, but it is too early to decide on anything, but it will not be a calendar.