LO Annual Vol. 5 is heading to print!

It's rare that we turn something in to the printer with an artist literally in the same room, but with Dan Black out visiting Portland from Minneapolis before making his way to Flatstock in Seattle this weekend, we were able to do just that with Volume 5 of the Little Otsu Annual planner. He just had to make a few tweaks to the list pages and then finalize the cover (which turned out great ...and yellow!) and we could sit in the same room knowing it's now up to 1984 Printing in Oakland to print and cut and collate and bind and then finally ship out the final product to us and then your favorite hometown stores and then to you! Normally we work with artists over email and the phone and IM and we talk often and send each other files, but it's not the same thing as being able to talk and give feedback together in the same room. Hopefully more artists visit Portland so we can work on stuff together in-person!

a sneak preview of Volume 5!

Since this was the fifth Annual we've done, we wanted to take the best ideas from each one and put them together to make something new. So we've taken the initial idea from Volume 1, added the "clean" look and similar size of Volume 2, added monthly pages like Volume 3, retained the look of the daily grids from Volume 4, and mixed in a new weekly layout and completely hand-drawn elements (including over 18 different typefaces). Of course it has the personal and list pages you're used to and plenty of room for notes on each weekly spread. Needless to say, we're pretty excited with the results!

an example weekly spread (click on it for a larger image)

Every year with the Annual so far we've changed the look, size, theme and grid, trying out different ideas to see what people like and what works best. With Volume 5, we've landed on what we think is the size, format, and weekly & monthly grid that really works the best for the most folks and we're going to stick with the basics of it for each Annual from now on, but always with new themes and art. That way you can rely on having the organization you like with new art to look at each year. We love feedback on our planners so always feel free to let us know what you think! And stay tuned for Volume 5 to be available at the beginning of next month!