Twelve months, twelve photos, one frame.
January to December, one photo each, with the month names printed underneath. It reads as a year rather than a pile of pictures — which is exactly why it works as a present at the end of one.
A year is the only unit of memory everyone already agrees on.
Ask someone about a holiday and you get a shrug. Ask them what happened last year and they can tell you, month by month, in about ninety seconds. That is why twelve photos with the month names printed underneath work so much better than twelve photos in a grid: the labels turn a set of pictures into a sequence, and a sequence is something a person reads rather than glances at.
It also makes the poster easier to make. Twelve arbitrary photos is a paralysing choice. Twelve photos where each one has to come from a specific month is twelve small, obvious choices, and most of them take about fifteen seconds — you already know what happened in July.
The result dates itself deliberately, which is unusual for wall art and exactly the point. Hang three of them side by side after three years and the change is the whole story.
One photo per month, and a rule for the empty ones.
The camera roll is already sorted by date, so this is mostly a matter of not overthinking. Scroll to each month, pick the first photo that makes you feel something, and keep moving.
Pick the event, not the best photo
A month is remembered by what happened in it. Choose the birthday, the move, the trip — then take whichever photo of that event you have, even if a technically better photo exists from a duller day.
Let quiet months be quiet
February will be a dog on a sofa and that is correct. A year in which every month is a highlight is not a year, it is a marketing campaign, and it reads as one on the wall.
Borrow across the boundary
A photo from 2 March happily represents February. Nobody checks. This is the escape hatch for the month you spent indoors with the flu.
Vary the distance
Twelve portraits look like a staff wall. Mix faces with rooms, landscapes and food, and the poster gains rhythm — the small slots on a twelve-photo grid reward simple, high-contrast pictures.
Three shapes for twelve photos.
A Year in Photos — 3 × 4 is the default: three across, four down, month names beneath each photo and the year across the top. It hangs comfortably in a hallway or above a desk.
A Year in Photos — 2 × 6 is the tall version. Two across, six down. It suits the narrow wall next to a door, or a stairwell where nothing else fits.
Twelve Moments prints the same twelve photos with no labels and no year. Pick this if the poster is a gift and you would rather it not be pinned to a specific twelve months.
The year and the month labels are both toggles in the editor, so you can start on one and change your mind without re-uploading anything.
The end-of-year present, and the ones you can backdate.
December is the obvious moment — a year poster is the Christmas present for the person who has stopped wanting objects, and it doubles as the Christmas photo gift for grandparents who mostly want to see the grandchildren. Order-by dates for December are on that page.
The less obvious use is backwards. A poster of the year someone was born, the year they moved country, or the first year of a business is a stronger present than a poster of the year that just happened, because the photos have had time to become historical. The year field is free text, so any year you have twelve photos for is fair game.
For a first year specifically — a baby's, that is — the new baby poster covers the same twelve months with fewer rules about which month a photo came from.
Museum paper, pigment ink, posted flat or rolled.
Enhanced matte art paper, 200gsm, in a natural white with a slight tooth and no glare. Printed at 300 DPI on a Giclée press with pigment inks — the method used for limited-edition art reproductions. Away from direct sunlight it holds its colour for 100 years or more.
On a twelve-photo poster, size does more work than anything else you choose. A2 or A1 is what we would order; A4 makes each photo about the size of a stamp. Add a real-wood frame in one of eight colours for €40 to €80 and it arrives assembled with your poster already mounted — see the frames FAQ.
What happens after you pay.
Send it straight to them
Put their name and address in the delivery fields and yours in the contact field. The confirmation, the tracking link and the invoice come to you; the parcel goes to them. Outer packaging is plain — no branding, no windows to see through.
Nothing to sign up for
No account. Pay with iDEAL, Bancontact, card, PayPal or Klarna. VAT and shipping are already in the price, so the number in the cart is the number you pay.
Spotted a mistake?
Email [email protected] straight away. If the file has not reached the press we fix it, or cancel and refund in full. Once it is printing we cannot pull it back.
If it arrives damaged
Email us within 14 days of receipt with a photo of the damage and we reprint it free — the replacement ships within 2 working days. If a parcel goes missing, we chase the carrier and reprint.
Year poster questions
How does a year-in-photos poster work?
You upload twelve photos, one for each month. We print them in order with the month names underneath and the year across the top. If you would rather not print the year or the month names, both can be switched off in the editor.
What if I have no photos from one of the months?
Use a photo from either side of it. Nobody audits a January against its metadata, and a poster with twelve good photos beats one with eleven good photos and a blurry car park. If a month is genuinely empty, Twelve Moments prints the same twelve photos without month labels.
Which layout should I pick for twelve photos?
Three across and four down is the default and suits most walls. Two across and six down is narrower and taller — good for a slim wall or a stairwell. Both print the same twelve photos at the same quality.
Can I put a different year on it?
Yes. The year is a field you type, so you can print 2019, a birth year, or the year someone was married. Making a retrospective of a year that has already passed is one of the more common reasons people use this layout.
What size works best for twelve photos?
A2 (42 × 60 cm) at €74.95 or A1 (60 × 84 cm) at €99.95. Twelve photos on A4 means each one is roughly the size of a stamp, which is a lot of paper for very little photo. A3 is workable at arm's length; A2 is the size we would order.
Do my photos need to be high resolution?
Less than you would think. We print at 300 DPI, and on a twelve-photo poster each slot is small enough that any phone from the last five years is comfortably sharp — even at A1. The editor flags any photo that is short for the size you picked.