Album Design

Something that I have thought about posting here for a while is a small piece about the albums that I make for wedding and engagement clients.

First of all, let me flesh out the difference between these and photo-books. A photo-book is essentially a thinner coffee table style book. These are a nice feature to a wedding package, but they are not my favorite to make. In fact, I’ve stopped offering them because I would rather spend the time working on designing albums. An album (at least the ones I offer) is thicker, uses quality paper, and is more of a finished product. These are keepsakes that you bring out and look through on your anniversary. These are the books you show your kids when they start asking questions about what your lives were like before they were around. I think these are the perfect compliment to wedding done in digital, because while you have the images on disk, many people leave off printing the images for when they have some spare time. Sarah and I never got around to doing that with ours, and it’ll be 7 year in May. Having something right out of the gate to hold in your hand is such a nice perk.

Unlike loose prints, the album tells a story. I try to design these with that purpose in mind. The albums that I use are made from “spreads” where I design the layout of the two pages. Unlike a traditional book with a gap or page break in the center, these are all one image, and only have a slight crease in the middle. This allows me to show the images at various sizes and to use more or less of the total page width to best fit the images for display. When I make the pages, I am starting fresh on each page, which allows me to really think about how to best show off the images on that page; because I don’t work off a template I am free to design specifically for the images at hand. One other element that I particularly like about the books that I am offering is the paper, which is watercolor. I remember when I first heard of fine art photographers printing on watercolor and thinking to myself how lame that sounded. It seemed like an attempt to merely do what was “artsy.” Don’t get me started on that. When I began using these books, I took a chance on the art watercolor, just to see how I liked it. Honestly, I was blown away. A lot of my images have a vintage-muted color look to them and the paper seems to perfectly work with that editing style. At the last wedding show I was at people kept commenting on how much they loved the albums, and one of the key factors was because the pages weren’t the typical high gloss material. Love it!! (several new books will be displayed at the Tacoma wedding show this weekend, for anyone who wants to see one in person)

Speaking of love, I have a confession…I love making these things. I know a lot of photographers hate doing these, not because of a lack of creativity, but because of the time drain. Yeah, they take some time. But…SO. WORTH. IT. Seriously, when I get a book back from the printer I am always a bit giddy (did I just type that out?), and can’t wait to share it. Having something beautiful and at a size worthy of display, right there in your hand is thrilling. Its much like the first time you print something bigger than 11×14. I remember the first time I printed an image at 16×24. I think my face melted off. It was like that the first time I got a book back. Anyway…enough gushing over the books. I hope you found this little window into my thinking on the albums to be helpful.

Cheers