MONSTER CALENDAR

A monster-themed calendar made exclusively out of typography.

CONCEPT

For the project, we had to think of a theme that could function across all twelve months. Every month had to be a sub-category of the overall theme and be broken down further into four weeks, followed by seven pages for the days of a specific week. My calendar theme was monsters from myths/folklore, so each month shows a different type of monster, each week is a different monster in that specific category, and each day of the week depicts the progression of that monster's story from beginning to end.

MONTHS

There is a single page for each month and each month is dedicated to a different category of monsters. For example, May is for Vampires, July is for Bogeymen, and September is for Demons. Each month could only be illustrated using one letter and once we used that letter, it couldn't be reused for another month. I specifically used the letter Y for the entire month of July. When I think of a Bogeyman, I think of a monster lurking under your bed while you're sleeping, so that's what I tried to depict here. As a bonus, every month page also includes an icon key to show what activities are occurring throughout the month (birthdays, resting days, laundry days, etc.)

WEEKS

There are four pages, one page for each week of the month. Each week depicts a different monster that fits the overall theme of the month. Since July is under the Bogeymen theme, each week of this month has a typographic illustration of a bogeyman.

WEEK 1

Name: Mètminwi
Origin: Haitian
Description: A giant man, over two stories tall, with thin stilt-like legs and matching arms. He roamed the streets at night looking for people who stayed out too late, scooping them up and taking them away forever.

WEEK 2

Name: Kawkaw
Origin: Malta
Description: A slimy creature that roamed the streets of Malta at night, tracking people who had misbehaved by the smell of their guilt. He would use his form to squeeze into their homes through cracks or open spaces to torment them through the night or kidnap them away to an unknown land.

WEEK 3

Name: Bubák
Origin: Czech/Polish
Description: A scarecrow-like figure that finds people out in the night and shoves them in his bag, taking them away in a cart pulled by giant cats, never to be seen again. He often lures his victims in by imitating a child crying and grabs them when they come to investigate. During a full moon, he weaves clothes made from the souls of those he has captured.

WEEK 4

Name: Nargun
Origin: Australia (Aboriginal)
Description: A large rock creature impervious to weaponry that kidnapped children wandering alone at night. It lived in a nearby cave that was sacred to the Gunaikurnai tribes, who used the cave for rituals of initiation and maturation.

DAYS

Each week is then broken down into seven days in which I depict the monster of the week's origin story. In this case, I expanded upon Week 3 of the Bogeymen Month, which belongs to the Bubák. Starting on Monday and ending on Sunday, each page is a progression of that monster's story.

DAY 1
The Bubák hides within the crops and cries out loudly like a child in distress in order to lure in its victims.

DAY 2
A little boy walking nearby hears the noise and turns around in curiosity.

DAY 3
The boy runs into the corn field to try to find the "crying baby."

DAY 4
The Bubák sneaks up behind the unsuspecting boy, ready to capture him.

In order to differentiate the day pages from the week pages, I decreased the size of "July 2024", labeled each day, and lowered the opacity of each illustration so that they look gray instead of black. Each page also contains time stamps for every hour from 8AM to 8PM so that people can write down their schedule for the day if they want to.

DAY 5
The Bubák reveals itself and reaches out to grab the now frightened boy.

DAY 6
The child is stuffed into a sack and tries to claw himself out of the bag, unable to escape.

DAY 7
The Bubák puts the sack with the kid in his carriage and rides away into the night.