From failure to success: We celebrate 10 years of Calidario

Good ideas usually have one thing in common: they often arise from an unfortunate situation, and a mistake then develops into a solution that at least solves the problem and, ideally, even initiates an innovative solution that brings additional benefits.

That's exactly what happened 10 years ago when we founded our calendar service Calidario: At that time, Tobias Köngeter created all kinds of calendars in the preliminary stages of a printing company. Great patience and concentration were required for the laborious updating of the day names, numbers and holidays — and so it happened one day that Christmas Eve fell on December 23rd in one of the calendars. Despite the care, this obvious error was initially overlooked in the large amount of calendar information. For Tobias it was clear: There must be a better way to create calendars! And with the resulting search and development of new types of calendar automation, Calidario was born.

Calidario creates time for creativity

Calidario now generates simple and complex calendars for 249 countries in 118 languages using our award-winning software ManyPrint Solutions. With a supplementary printing service, a comprehensive service for calendars and calendars has been developed that allows graphic artists and designers to concentrate on their creative work. Careless errors in manual data transfer as well as the previous research work for the extensive data updating of holidays, day names, moon phases, etc. are now a thing of the past.

Calidario offers the full range of common calendar formats: The configurator currently offers wall planners, three-month calendars and photo calendars. Other types of calendars are available upon request. Customizable concept calendars — such as the no-waste calendar — are also part of the offer. They can all be played out in several languages and with freely combinable calendar dates. And all within minutes. Young Tobias couldn't have dreamed of this back then.

Database with interfaces enables calendar diversity

In order for this variety of calendars to be created reliably and in the shortest possible time, a strong technical basis is required. The complex merging of layouts with huge data sets and their automated creation is made possible through the use of interfaces.

Our automation software ManyPrint Solutions is the heart of calendar creation: It brings together layouts with large data sets fully automatically and produces an IDML file for Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress or Affinity, which can be designed by designers as required — alternatively a finished print PDF. The translation of day and month names is also done through this application. Worldwide holidays and holiday dates can be combined from Calidario's extensive data set. In addition, other information such as zodiac signs or moon phases can be recorded.

The close networking of design, programming and layout automation has characterized our company WirbelWild, which includes Calidario and ManyPrint Solutions, since its founding: In addition to classic printed matter such as calendars, entire concepts as well as complex, customizable products are created with a well-thought-out design. We think about our customers' products from start to finish — this applies to company calendars as well as to individualized books. Due to the diversity of our tasks and applications, we understand how to deal with large amounts of data and get the most out of it for our clients according to their needs.

The good solutions of the future

After 10 years, we are still far from tired of constantly refining our products. To this day, tricky cases help us develop better solutions. Our calendar database is growing tirelessly. In recent months we have been able to update our holiday dates through 2028, allowing our users to plan and create more proactively. With a new visual editor, calendar layouts can be created without your own software and the necessary fine adjustments can be made directly in the browser.

It was already clear to Tobias back then that automated calendars were a good idea. Of course, he had no idea what extent Calidario's development would take. With this knowledge, we look forward to the coming decade with expectations and high motivation and look forward to all the challenges that lie ahead.