A daily calendar hangs on a wall for a full year and is looked at every single day. Getting it there takes many skilled hands. Here is the journey a calendar takes in Sivakasi, from the first sketch to the carton that arrives at your door.
1. The design
It begins with the artwork: a deity, a temple, a scene. Designers prepare each picture with its frame, border and title, and every design is given its own design number — the number you order by on our price list and find in our catalogues.
2. Pre-press and plates
The artwork is colour-separated into cyan, magenta, yellow and black, arranged on a printing sheet, and exposed onto metal printing plates — one plate for each colour.
3. Offset printing
The plates go onto an offset press, and sheet after sheet is printed in full colour. Printers check colour and registration throughout the run so every piece matches. (How offset printing works.)
4. Finishing the surface
This is where one calendar starts to look different from another:
- Lamination adds a glossy protective layer.
- Foil adds metallic gold or silver highlights.
- Gold emboss raises parts of the design with embossed gold foil.
- UV glitter adds sparkle to selected areas of large fancy cut boards.
5. Mounting and cutting
The printed sheet is mounted on board for strength. For fancy cut calendars, a die cuts the board along the outline of the artwork — the arch, the halo, the temple top — giving the calendar its shaped, three-dimensional look. Plain boards are trimmed square.
6. The date pad
The tear-off date slips — the “cake” — are printed separately, one slip for each day, with the date, month, day of the week and more. They are bound into a pad and attached to the board. We offer cake daily slips in several sizes, and a detailed panchangam back sheet.
7. Your advertisement
For a business calendar, the shop name, address and phone number are printed in the advertisement area — in single, double or multi colour. Many presses buy boards and slips and print their customers’ advertisements themselves; others order finished calendars ready to hang.
8. Packing and dispatch
Finally the calendars are counted, packed and sent — across Tamil Nadu and the rest of India — in time for the new year.
At Senthaamarai Press, the Lotus range covers every stage of this journey, from printed boards and date slips to finished calendars. Browse the range on the price list and see your total as you type.
