A new calendar by Fedrigoni celebrates 365 creative takes on the theme of 'love'

Contributors to the project – ranging from various artistic disciplines – were asked to interpret their image of love, covering romantic relationships, heartbreak and platonic love. In keeping with the love theme, calendar sales will aptly benefit the British Heart Foundation this year.

2023 marks the first year that Fedrigoni has selected a theme for its annual calendar. "Fedrigoni 365 has always created a sense of community and a creative outlet for our collaborators, and being able to involve so many creatives in a single project is incredible. It has been wonderful to see the response on a topic we can all universally relate to: love," Fedrigoni UK's Marketing Manager Ambra Fridegotto told Creative Boom.

To double down on its homage to love, Fedrigoni used a single colour for the calendar – love's constant colour companion: Red. Fridegotto explained: "Through a single colour – red – we displayed many shades, textures and features, each with their own defining identity."

The book is printed on a beautiful range of red to pink hues from Fedrigoni's collection of fine papers, each range showcasing unique features – from uncoated to coated, smooth to felt-marked, pearlescent to recycled. This year the book is created with several different paper stocks, including Sirio Color, Sirio Color Rough, Sirio Pearl, Ispira, Woodstock, Freelife Merida and Materica.

Designed by TM and printed by Identity, the book covers and spines were assembled at random, with varying coloured front and back cover boards glued to each book block. The process has been purposefully left to chance, allowing each edition to carry its own visual signature and message of love, bringing together both complementary and juxtaposing mixes of colour.

This year's Fedrigoni calendar features contributions from 365 contributors – one for each day of the year – including designs from well-known agencies like Pearlfisher and Design Bridge, as well a host of individual creatives, like Top Award-winning designer Claudia Vergine and illustrator Sara Zanigni.

For many of the contributors, the project offered a rare opportunity to really meditate on the concept of love, and the process of turning their personal understanding of love was special.

Simon Gibbs, a designer at Butterfly Cannon, shared that reflecting on the theme of love, in tandem with thinking about when in the year people would land on his design, was a unique experience. He told Creative Boom: "The creative challenge of how to bring LOVE and the date together made the outcomes more meaningful."

"For me, one of the most meaningful aspects of working on Fedrigoni's LOVE 365 was in the exploration into the topic itself – how much it made me reflect on what love means to me and how as individuals, we express it," Craig Riseborough, a designer at Design Bridge, told Creative Boom. He explained: "When trying to whittle down ideas to a single solution for 13 August, I realised just how much we underestimate love's importance to us and the vast number of ways it manifests itself in our lifetimes, emotionally or visually.

"It can be a feeling we cherish, a simple graphic mark, a Roman mythological God (as our submission became based upon), a song or a lyric, or it even has its own five languages. Love surrounds us in many forms; we would be lost without it. Knowing this was possibly the same thought 364 other creatives were experiencing to create their submission, to create a book full of 'love' in our own individual expressions that would ultimately raise money for the British Heart Foundation, was such a great feeling."

Like Riseborough, many contributors shared how heartening it was to create within such a large community. Generating a cohesive project made up of 365 different design voices was surely no easy task, but it was one that all of the creators found immensely satisfying.

Danny McNeil, creative director at TM, one of the agencies overseeing the calendar's creation, told Creative Boom: "As a studio, we derive a lot of meaning from the sense of togetherness that the project creates. Not many projects focus the minds of so many creatives on one single theme, nor do they invite them to come together to celebrate their creative achievements."

A limited number of Fedrigoni 365 LOVE calendars can be purchased from Counter-Print, with profits from sales donated to the British Heart Foundation. A limited number of past-year calendars are also available for purchase. To date, the Fedrigoni 365 project has raised more than £25,000 for different charities.