Staples Calender Printing Review

All year round, but most notable for holidays, Staples prints out custom calenders. They are accurate to the year (if not I would tell you to run away now), and you can submit your own pictures to be used for this process. Not to mention that it's less than $13 to do. But is it good at all? Let's find out.

The calender itself is printed on what Staples calls its "Allure" paper. The allure stock is a photo paper that is usually overlooked for regular photo printing. Why? The allure stock is almost as thick, so no problem there. Rather, it is a matte finish and most people desire a glossy finish for their photos. I think the matte though goes much better with calenders. The paper feels smoother, also you won't have an annoying glare all the time with this stock, so looking at your calender (the main reason for having one) is not going to be disrupted.

As I said before, the photos for the calender are custom to your order. You can supply any photo (providing it is not offensive like pornography, nor if it is copyrighted. So if you have anything with a trademark, that says "do not copy" on the back, or was taking by a professional photographer, unless you have written permission from the photographer they will not use it as doing so would be illegal) to be used for the months and the cover, so a total of 13 photos can be used. The associates prefer if you label the photos as what is going to be each month and cover. You can do this by writing in pencil on the back, or just taking a sticky note and applying it to the back. Don't worry about the size of the photo, as they will be blown up large as possible for the sheet.

What if you don't have your own photos, or only want to use a few? Does Staples offer any stock photos for you to choose from? At the time of this article, they do not. It is either all custom, or none at all. For most people, this won't be a problem at all though.

Binding the calender together is a plastic spiral, not unlike a notebook, and serves it's purpose. As long as no one tries to pull the calender apart, it will stay together.

The entire process takes about 24 hours (unless they aren't busy), and there are discounts for high quantities (such as 100), but you will have to wait much longer for those to be complete, as can be expected.

The only real downside I can think of is that sometimes the associate does not hole punch the calender, and some people like that. If you are such, just ask them and they will do it quickly enough.

Now, I said the entire price was less than $13, but what could you expect the price to be if you printed out 13 allure sheets and bound them? The price for each double sided allure print would be over $2, plus a binding fee of about $1.50. So the calender deal saves you over half, a good bargain for once from Staples.

If you're looking for a custom calender Staples is the place to go. While you can find better deals online for high quantity (over 100), for just one or a few Staples actually does well at this sort of printing.