2025 Design Classics Calendar

For our 2025 Pickle Calendar, we returned to one of our favourite subjects: design icons from around the world.

This time we approached them a little differently. Rather than creating detailed illustrations, we stripped each object back to the visual features that make it instantly recognisable.

What makes a design icon recognisable?

Some products become so familiar that we can identify them from surprisingly little information. A distinctive silhouette, an unusual proportion, a particular curve or one characteristic detail can sometimes be enough.

That was the idea behind the 2025 calendar. Each illustration asks how much can be taken away while the identity of the object remains. It is an exercise in simplification, but also in noticing what makes a piece of design distinctive in the first place.

The subjects cross fashion, furniture, transport and everyday product design. They include Chanel No.5, Converse All Stars, the Bialetti Moka Pot, the DeLorean, Coca-Cola bottle, Barcelona Chair, Anglepoise lamp, Philippe Starck’s Juicy Salif, Lambretta scooter, British telephone box, Ray-Ban sunglasses and the Olivetti Valentine typewriter.

Illustrating the essential details

Reducing an object sounds simple, but it makes every decision more important. Once texture, background and small details disappear, proportion and shape have to do much more of the work.

For us, that is part of the appeal of illustration. It does not always need to reproduce everything that is there. Sometimes choosing what to leave out communicates the idea more clearly.

It is also one reason these objects have endured as design classics. Their strongest visual characteristics remain distinctive even when they are reduced to just a few shapes and lines.

The 2025 Pickle Calendar

We produced a limited-edition A2 poster calendar bringing all twelve illustrations together. As with our other Pickle Calendars, we also created free monthly artwork for phones, tablets and computer screens.

Explore the individual 2025 calendar illustrations and wallpaper downloads below.