Here's a running narrative on the history of this iconic calendar.
In 1976, The Daily Planet Almanac was launched through a group effort at an alternative school in California. The initial financial support came from Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, who were acquainted with the school. This annual publication was an alternative to traditional almanacs, and included astronomical, astrological, and the phase of the moon for every day of the year. The first images for the moon phases were simple geometric circles with dark shading, a standard approach in calendars and almanacs for hundreds of years. In 1980, the simple moon symbols were replaced with detailed, accurate pen and ink drawings of the day-by-day phase changes visible to the naked eye, produced by staff member Kim Long. In 1981, the staff added display advertising in order to generate more income. To notify sponsors, we created a poster (folded for mailing) with appropriate information about the publication and ad rates. This advertising guide was the first appearance of the full sweep of moon phases and in a late night brainstorming moment, the initial idea for The Moon Calendar.
Launched in a small printing in 1981, The Moon Calendar was initially a standard-size poster (20x32 inches). Distributed and sold in rolled form, floor displays for bookstores soon followed. The first publisher was Johnson Books, a small book publisher in Boulder, Colorado, who marketed the calendar widely, including at annual events such as the American Booksellers Association national trade show.
The Daily Planet Almanac ceased publication in 1982. Lots of fans, but it was expensive to produce and the original staff drifted on into other ventures ... except for Kim Long, who created the original moon artwork and continued the adventure of producing The Moon Calendar. Beginning with the Daily Planet Almanac, producing the Calendar involved “old-fashioned” systems linked to offset printing. This meant producing each year’s calendar at its full poster size, with each type and graphic element carefully cut out and pasted onto large sheets of acetate.
But as access to desktop computers and digital processing arrived in the mid-1980s, production shifted to this much more efficient method. By 2007, the poster version of The Moon Calendar poster was replaced with the card format, a casualty of the extra packaging and distribution handling costs associated with rolled posters. For a few years beginning in 2011, the author experimented with a standard 13-page wall calendar before shifting back to the card size. Along the way, another experiment was Moon Wrap, sheets of moon phase wrapping paper sold through bookstores. Another sales failure, perhaps to be resurrected some time in the future.
The Moon Almanac outlived its original publisher but currently thrives with The Experiment Publishing, surviving through decades of shifting influences and customer demographics. As of 2024, a total of more than half a million copies in cummulative sales have established it as a fixture despite the tempting lure of online and digital competition.
Meanwhile, the author produced The Moon Book, a companion to the calendar with background information, perspective, and much more information about the cycles of moon phases. As of 2025, this title has gone through several printings and is now updated in its third edition. The Moon Almanac is another extension of the theme, with annual editions that feature accurate times and dates of key moon cycles for 15 major
U.S. cities.
Contact:info@themooncalendar.com