After the big success that was last year's Musical Advent Calendar, it was VERY quickly decided that pianist Hanna Bachmann and I wanted to give this pandemic-fueled idea another try in 2021.
We started planning the 2021 calendar in early September and decided that we wanted to give our users a similar, yet refined, experience compared to the year before.
That meant that the huge amount of tasks that such a project inevitably brought to the table could be tackled better if we had more people working on them. After all, it was almost exclusively Hanna and me who brought the Calendar to life in 2020, and it showed in some places.
This christmas, we had additional help from mixer Agnes Ecker and editor Alexandra Careaga Franco, so the video side was covered by others. That meant that Hanna could focus more on playing the piano and I was allowed to work on the calendar design and web development.
I designed a logo reminiscent of the 2020 logo, yet more modern in style. The new calendar - of course fully responsive - had subtle effects for opening doors, peeking future doors and was decorated with modern icons.
The main calendar page was visible for all visitors. If you wanted to watch the performances, though, you could sign up for a small fee on the very same page. Payment options included CC payments, Apple/Google Pay, Paypal and direct bank transfers. Each paying customer would be notified of new performances via Email on a daily basis.
We launched the signup page in November and were happy to see many returning customers from 2020 as well as new customers that we acquired through various methods: Word-of-Mouth, newspaper articles, flyers and more.
It was once again an absolute pleasure to work with Hanna, and i sincerely hope that we'll be able to continue with our digital advent calendar in 2022 - after all, it has become a christmas tradition now! ;-)