The arrival of the Habari Media calendar has become a much-anticipated annual event in the media industry, especially since the 2013 calendar won a coveted Loerie award for illustration. Habari Media MD Wayne Bischoff believes the team might have another winner on its hands with the 2014 masterpiece. “It is always exciting to be involved in an award-winning project, but this also creates a tough act to follow,” says Bischoff.
Over the past couple of years, the Habari Media calendar has showcased 12 prominent media and marketing personalities, creating a level of excitement and expectancy about who would be featured, and how. But this year’s brief to Machine was to create a calendar that not only profiled the talented people that make this industry what it is, but that also showcased the innovative spirit of Habari Media through the calendar’s creative composition.
Based on the premise of a Native American Indian totem pole, the calendar is composed of 12 stacking pages for each month of the year. Each of these pages is assigned to a specific media personality, who is depicted as a specific ‘spirit animal’ that has been chosen to match their individual character traits. The result is a calendar that is not only breathtakingly beautiful but also manages to transform a traditionally paper product into a digital tool. The MediaShop’s Richard Lord has made it. So has Kim Weisensee and Rohenie Naidoo.