I suppose the best schedules are those that are thought-out solutions to the problems at hand. In this sense, looking at other schedules would just obfuscate your solution, because they might encourage you to try something fancy when a simple list might work best.

This is of course the kind of design that is best when it’s invisible: nobody will give it a second thought if it works well, but people will be cursing you for months if it doesn’t. Any kind of complex iconography or code system tends to confuse people, in my experience. For something like a rehearsal schedule, I would want to get a personalized calendar with just the dates I needed to show up on listed for me. You can set up this data in Excel, then export it to Word and even Illustrator and InDesign, I believe.

A few places where you could look for inspiration on information design projects in general, if not schedules as such, are:

www.nigelholmes.com
www.textmatters.com
www.dynamicdiagrams.com
www.andorif.co.uk
www.studiolift.com
www.boag.co.uk

I usually find inspiration for schedules in European train tables and work backward as my projects are never so complex.

Hah! Try reading the Long Island Railroad timetables. It’s amazing anyone gets anywhere.

Or the Tokyo ones for the matter.

Well, there’s a reason I specified European timetables.

I find Visual Complexity a great online ressource when it comes to sophisticated data visualization – like schedules and networks.

Visual Complexity seems to be a fantastic resource. Thanks for pointing it out Florian.