Why personalised calendars get ordered in November

A calendar is the only gift on this list that somebody looks at every day for a year, which is why it is the one grandparents ask for by name. It is also the only one with a built-in deadline, so November is when the counter gets busy with them.

Picking the twelve

Twelve photographs sounds like a lot until you start, and then it sounds like too few. The trick is not to pick your twelve best. Pick one from each month of the year just gone, even where the photograph is ordinary, because the point of it is the sequence rather than the quality of any single shot.

Match the photograph to the month where you can. A beach in July and a frosty morning in January read right. A barbecue in February is the sort of thing that bothers people more than you would think.

Landscape beats portrait

Landscape images suit a wall calendar and portrait ones fight it. If the photograph you want for a particular month is portrait, it will work better with space around it than cropped square, and we would rather set it that way than cut somebody in half.

The mistake that spoils them

The mistake that spoils them is resolution. A calendar page is large, it is viewed close up, and it hangs there for a month at a time being looked at. An image that was fine on a phone screen will not hold up. Send the original file rather than one that has been through a messaging app.

Birthdays and anniversaries can be printed onto the dates, which is the detail that turns it from a present into something the household actually uses. Send the list with the photographs and we will set them in.