I contacted Gavin Patterson after seeing his amazing “Jimny Owner” artwork online and he agreed to share 13 images with me for an A3 2022 Wall Planner / Calendar I wanted to create.

The perfect Christmas present for my Jimny fanatical friends!

Design

I wanted it to be big so I went with A3 and went for a wall planner design as that is most useful.

The Suzuki Jimny’s most iconic colour is the kinetic yellow so I used that as my accent colour. The rest I kept quite clean as the cartoons themselves were in Black and white and I wanted them to be the focus.

I included all of the official South African holidays from gov.co.za and steered clear of the religious holidays so as not to exclude anyone.

It was originally printed on 300gsm paper which is like card and was quite heavy but I needed to think about courier costs. I decided to use a lighter paper for the internal month pages and keep the thick 300gsm for the front and back. It still feels like quality and it was finished off with a perspex front protective cover.

Printing

I got quotes from numerous printers around Cape Town and tried out a couple of online calendar creator programs like netflorist and Orms where you can upload your own pictures onto their template. It may of worked and they could have handled the logistics but it was a bit pricey at R300 per calendar with a discount for bulk prints. I wanted to use my own artwork and to keep the costs down so I eventually settled on Digital Express in Woodstock.

I printed conservatively as I have never sold calendars before and I didn’t know if they would sell. After a quick poll on the Jimny social pages, I gauged that there is a fair bit of interest and I did a print run of 50. Whether or not the “interest” translates into sales is another matter though… We will wait and see.

R250 each – If you would like one, you can contact me at oliver@masterson.co.za