Photo Books With Text: How Words Complement Your Pictures

Still, adding text to your photo book is not as simple as it sounds: you have to pay extra attention what you want to include and how.

Working with words

The most important thing to decide is how much text, what kind you want to include, and how long you want it to be. In fact, the text’s length should be the most important factor, since long text shouldn’t be put into a text box. In other words, it’s best to change the page’s layout and find one that either contains both photos and text or only contains one or more big text boxes. For anything else – like a simple caption describing the focus of a photo or a quotation – the default text box is more than enough.

And what should you include in the text boxes or on the pages? Well, basically anything goes provided that it complements the photos. Using captions and quotations is a popular choice, but why not use something more creative instead? Jot down an entire short story detailing how the photo came to be, or write a poem you think accompanies the page well. Remember that this is a photo book, with an emphasis on the word ‘book’: photos can effectively describe the subliminal message you want to convey, but complementing the pictures with your own thoughts just makes your book even more personal, and provides even greater insight to the moments on display.

But what if you’re struck with writer’s block when building the photo book? Worry not, because you can leave the text box or even an entire page completely blank and add your thoughts later. This comes in handy when photo book editors don’t contain a handwritten font (although this is rare), but particularly in cases when you might consider handwriting important or you just want to add another special touch to your book.

The neat tricks of photo book builders

As already mentioned, there are literally no photo book editors that lack the option to add text to your would-be books. In fact, Mixbook provides plenty of different layouts that include a text box by default, but there are also layouts that feature just text boxes, or even nothing at all. However, regardless of whichever editor you pick, don’t think that these preset layouts are mandatory: the whole point is that they can be changed any way you like, even removing the places for photos and leaving nothing but the text boxes.

Another seemingly forgotten way of using text is to complement it with stickers. Photo book editors are full of text-based embellishments, so it’s more than logical to use these stickers to substitute words that you might have added anyway. Such an enhanced description automatically draws the attention of the reader and puts a smile on faces.

Last but not least, certain builders, like AdoramaPix, can go as far as to provide text boxes in the form of speech or thought bubbles. This option opens up endless possibilities: turn the photo book into the ever-popular comic book format, put funny words into the mouths of your loved ones, explain your thoughts of a moment in a clever and highly expressive way… the list could go on.