Clean and Simple Calendars

 Updated each year around October. 

I started making these one-year-on-one-page calendars when I couldn't find anything suitable online.  There are plenty of sources for blank calendars on the web (probably thousands), but most are formatted as one-month-to-a-page.  Options for customizing content are also available, but nothing that I could find was as simple and straightforward as this.

The emphasis on federal holidays and paydays is due to the fact that I worked for the government at the time I started making theses, but it's still useful for planning and budgeting for anyone who's in the U.S. or on a biweekly pay plan.

Past years are available after the break, along with feedback from those that received these as part of what became an annual distribution tradition.

DVD/CD Packaging (mock-up)

During the summer of 2009, I was an extra in a movie about the Mormon Battalion.  I used a cellphone to take the picture to the right while trekking from one shot to another with several other extras.

On one of the last days of the shoot someone brought in copies of a self-published disc containing several out-of-print books about the Battalion.  Since the packaging was very rudimentary, I had the idea of using my picture as one element of an improved packaging design.  (I'll update this post if the project develops further.)

Set of Brochures and Flyers

Some marketing materials:

• On the left: my rates for creating a digital manuscript of a family or personal history.
• In the middle: the kind of digitization that I can do.
• On the right: a combination brochure and order form for custom calendars (the full PDF of this document is linked below, and finished calendar examples can be seen here and here).

   

Manuscript and Covers for Print-on-Demand Title

This was something of a technical work, with hundreds of footnotes and images.  I received the manuscript as a roughly formed MS Word document, and returned it as a ready-to-print PDF.  The scope of this job included basic copy editing, standardizing citations and usage, correcting layout, correcting formatting, and updating or creating images where needed.

I also created covers for hard-bound and soft-bound editions, and created some basic marketing materials (pictured after the break).

Hardbound Personal History

A 402-page personal history covering client's life from the 1940s to the date of publication. Project included extensive copy editing, the creation and/or improvement of hundreds of images and tables, and all layout and formatting.

Significant features:

• Full-bleed cover and endpapers.
• Cross-country collaboration with client and printer for the full duration of the project.
• Research and special organization of ancestry section.

Technical Report Rewrite

The History and Significance of Military Packaging was written by Joseph Maloney, Jr in the late 1980s.  It was later published as Technical Report 1-96 by the Defense Systems Management College Press.

I was first introduced to a version of the report that was being updated by Mr. Maloney when he retired.  Since this "new" version was outdated and still very rough around the edges, I asked for the job of bringing it up to date and into a ready-to-release form.  I got the job, and this is the result.

To get a sense of the quantity and quality of the work I did, you can go here to look at the first published version of the report (39 pages long), or go here to see the version that I started with (51 pages long).

Climatic Branch Overview Briefing

I made this PowerPoint briefing completely from scratch to replace one that was very old and ugly.  Some key attributes of the new version:

• Curb appeal: a polished, professional look that's clean and simple rather than gimmicky and cluttered. 
• Flexibility: the core slides can be used effectively for a five-minute overview, but they are backed by dozens of supplemental slides that contain enough information to use for test program negotiations. 
• Navigability: both the person giving the briefing and those receiving it benefit from the visual cues to the organization of the content.  Extensive linking allows for easily diving into details at any point and for easily returning to the point of departure.
• Maintainability: Updates and edits can be made without triggering a cascading set of consequences.  This was especially important in that an expansion of facilities and some organizational changes were imminent at the time this was produced.