The folks behind the unbelievable Typodarium calendar have done it again. For the sixth edition, hundreds of designers have graciously typeset 377 fonts for this neatly packaged project (edition of 10,000 copies).

As a thank for for contributing, during the first four years of the project participating designers received a complimentary copy of the calendar. But suddenly in 2013, MAGMA Brand Design and Verlag Hermann Schmidt said it was too expensive to show their appreciation to the designers. So they did nothing.

For 2014, they attempted to avoid some of the hate mail and bad karma received in 2013 and again sent the contributors a free calendar. Some are undoubtedly thankful for this gesture, but I for one am not impressed. Yes, it’s nice to have a copy, but to me this one is useless because it doesn’t come with a box… Maybe that sounds trite, but the box is a unique selling point of this calendar – you are supposed to tear off the specimens each day, and collect them in the handy box. I have done exactly this since 2010 and have actually kept all of them. For 2014 I will neither be using the calendar nor submitting fonts to Typodarium again.