1. Plan beforehand
Before you even start thinking about layouts or going through your camera roll to pick your best photos, it’s essential to come up with a plan beforehand. This will help you later on by making it easier to stay focused on the photobook’s theme, selecting the image aspect ratio, and more.
The very first thing you should do is come up with the theme for the photo book. It can be as general as a year overview, or you can be more selective and create a dedicated album for your latest vacation, wedding, baby’s first year, Valentine’s Day – basically anything you want (it’s your photo book after all!). Having a specific theme for the photo book will help you organize which photos should be included and save you precious time.
Choosing what type of book you want is also essential. One of the most important aspects is the book’s size, as this will affect the pictures’ display significantly. A helpful trick to understand what size works best for you is to get sheets of paper with different sizes, sketch the photos’ layouts, and see which one you prefer.
2. Tell a story
You could print all the images fitting your theme and place them randomly throughout a photo book. However, if you try to tell a story with them, you’ll notice that your album will have a better flow. The most natural way to do this is to display pictures chronologically. For example, if it’s a photo book showing your last vacation, you can go day-by-day like a travel journal. That being said, you can tell your story any way you want and come up with the flow you prefer. Using the same example of a vacation photo book, you could have all food-related photos in one section, sightseeing in another, etc.
3. Be a minimalist
Sometimes you might feel that you want to add all of the pictures you’ve taken to your photo album. We recommend against this. Instead, carefully pick the photographs that you love the most. They can be your best shots or the ones that make you reminisce the most. You can even have your favorites displayed alone in a set of two pages to give them maximum exposure.
4. Don’t be afraid to add text
Just because you’re designing a photo book, it doesn’t mean you can’t include text here and there. Of course, the main focus of the album is the pictures, but do you know what usually goes well with them? Inspirational quotes – social media is the perfect proof of this. If you love to write, you can also come up with your own quotes, poems, thoughts, etc. This brings more depth to your album, making it even more personal.
5. Have fun!
The most important part of designing a photo book yourself is to have fun! Sure, there are some steps that you need to take to finish with a good-looking album, but the main goal is to relax, play with the awesome pictures you took, and come up with a book that takes you down memory lane every time you open it.
Daniel C.
Inês P.
User feedback