information aesthetics.
the elzr weblog has recently posted an infodesign challenge: "My mother’s 48. She can’t read small type very well. She has trouble using little calendar cards because the day numerals are so small. There is so much repetition in the current scheme for representing a year that there has to be a better way, a better infograph that will fit a year within 86 by 54 millimeters of hard paper."
not sure whether this is sufficient for a design brief (or whether a collection of far-sighted mothers will judge the entries), but I guess someone from the infosthetics crowd could try to help her? I would appreciate any submission to be posted here in the comment section as well, as the entries could then be added to this post.
for inspiration, see also creative calendar design.
see full post below for entries so far.
[link: elzr.com]
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Time and Date follows 
Google for large print calendar.
UK and states both provide them.
If available, seems the M$ pageplus Serif, the DTP package,
can generate calendars (you name the font size).
If available, take an appropriate calendar and enlarge it on a photocopier, or at a copier house
(pronto print or similar in UK)
HTH
Dave, I think the idea is to fit a readable calendar onto a small space, not to enlarge the whole calendar. It's an interesting challenge, especially because it deals with different requirements than the usual population you think of when designing stuff.
My idea is a double sided 'flexible' calendar. The user can fill in the days of the week for the current month, with next month on the reverse side. True you can only see two months at a time, but I think that's usable for most situations. The disposable nature also encourages reminder markings.
Thanks for the link! With so many people volunteering and checking the challenge out I had to explain myself more thoroughly. Please check out the much-improved, fully-detailed challenge.
Here's another if you want to display it :) Based on Jan-Willem Doornenbal's design (http://www.elzr.com/articles/2007/01/21/infodesign-challenge#comment-862).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/366972076/
I also designed a small calendar in response to Elzr's call. It does not answer many of her newly added requirements though ;-)
It can be viewed as a picture or as a PDF.
It should definetely be less fatiguing for the eyes, but the more so for the brain. This can be considered an advantage as well (prevention of dementia). Hope you like it, Jan-Willem
PS calendar is in Dutch, but can be translated on request. [info AT mededeler IN nl]
Here is an infodesign proposal that makes use of a "folding" dimension in order to share a common grid of numbers among different month headers:
http://www.luispabon.com/entropia/index.php?entry=entry070123-145900
Regards.
Hi!
In and unexpected turn of events, I've entered my own challenge after some 6 days of obsessive prototyping. Here's a picture of my proposal and here's its Excel 2007 source file. I've also written a post and a photoset extensively chronicling all the previous prototypes that lead to it.
Finally, here's a comment in the original post with a more detailed explanation of my actions and what it will mean for the challenge and the rules I had only just managed to write for it.
Thanks!
one for the pocket:
http://flickr.com/photos/peewack/375417766/
one for the wall:
http://flickr.com/photos/peewack/374632297/
an update to the pocket one: http://flickr.com/photos/peewack/375417766/
Here's mine.
It is also based on sharing the array of numbers.