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It may be a little early to start Christmas shopping for you lab, but Abcam have released the 'must-have' for this season, our 2009 calendar! This year's theme is 'The fine art of science', and in addition to Molly the sheep, it features 12 great characterization images from our lab.

Update: as well as giving out the calendar in all orders, we have also produced some limited-stock fridge magnets based on the designs!

I had a quick chat with John, the designer who's worked on the calendar, our pathway posters, and the famous Molly...

Q: Hi John. What's the idea behind the Abcam calendar, and how many years have we been making these?

A: The first Abcam calendar in was made for the year 2006. The size was originally dictated by the dimensions of our shipping boxes back then; it was the maximum size that would fit in. The boxes have changed a little since then, but folks seemed to like the size of the calendars so they have stayed the same.

By our second calendar in 2007, we had some bespoke Mollies to fit the individual months. This went down really well, so the third calendar last year went a little further with the Mollywood theme and I designed 12 completely new Mollies for it.

Q: There are some iconic paintings in this year's calendar, did you find any of them particularly challenging to emulate? Did you have a particular favorite from the calendar?

A: Some were trickier than others. I think the Renoir was probably the most difficult to get right, but the Van Gogh seemed to go together in minutes. As a result, 'Van Gogh's (Molly's) Chair' is my favorite. Hopefully we have a good spread of periods and styles.

Q: What other projects have you been working on recently?

A: I've worked on the Chemokines and their recptors (10Mb) and Tumor Biomarkers (7Mb) posters. They're all in our poster library.

Q: What do you enjoy most about working at Abcam?

A: I get to draw pictures all day! How could I not enjoy that? I love the design industry and have been lucky enough to work in many areas of it: architecture, animation, fashion, product, theatre, furniture and graphics.

Abcam is great because the guys I work with are experts at what they do and as long as the designs I come up with are technically correct (sometimes a great deal of re-drawing is necessary, to get things just right) they tend to let me have my way on the design front.

Q: I guess that experience in the fashion industry is the reason why Molly always looks so well turned-out. Where do you keep finding the ideas for different Mollies?

A: It's fairly easy to come up with ideas, it's the drawing them that can be the difficult part!

Whatever will they think of next, an Abcam Advent calendar? Now, that I think about it, that sounds pretty good.. However, that idea might have to wait, as John's next design project is a brand new poster for Nuclear Signaling. Keep checking the blog, and I'll be sure let you know when it comes out!'