How To Design a Family Album | Boston Photographer
In today’s age, it is common to let our family photographs exist only digitally for eternity. Families (and photographers!) often state that they know they need to print their photos but never actually get around to it. If you work on one project during this COVID-19 quarantine, I implore you to print some photos! The best way to print a lot is by designing a family album. While this can seem like a daunting task, it is manageable when you break it into steps.
How To Design A Family Album
Step One: Choose the Photos for Your Album
This might seem like an obvious step but it’s often the most intimidating. My biggest recommendation is to load the group of photographs you’re choosing from into an easy-to-view format. This might mean your photographer’s gallery service or a free consumer service like Flikr. What this allows you to do is view similar images all together and helps you to quickly identify which 1-2 you like best from that set. An average sized album with 10 spreads (20 pages) fits roughly 30-50 photos depending on how busy you like your pages to look!
Step Two: Choose An Album Company
My favorite album for an “everyday” family album is Mpix’s Premium Panoramic Album. Other great consumer printing sites include WHCC, Blurb Books, and Artifact Uprising. If you’re looking for a leather-bound, premium album, I’d suggest going through your professional photographer. But for an everyday album where you don’t have to freak out when the kids handle it, these are great options!
Step Three: Design Your Family Album Spreads
Most of the consumer printing companies offer easy-to-use software with drag-and-drop options for creating a family album. Upload your images and get cracking!
Design Tip 1
If you’re including images over a period of time (and not just one session), I recommend putting them in chronological order.
Design Tip 2
If you’re using the images from only one family photography session, I like to start with the more “formal” posed images and progress to more active and intimate shots.
Design Tip 3
Black and white images can be both mixed into the same page as color images or kept to separate pages. I like both!
Design Tip 4
I recommend alternating spread designs from one page to the next. If you have a large image on the left side, don’t repeat that. If your images take up the entire page, edge-to-edge, mix in a lot of white space on the next page. Variety keeps the album looking higher-end.
Design Tip 5
When creating your album, don’t forget the tiny detail images! While the detail images might not be THE IMAGE you frame for your wall, they make an album sing. Trust me. Details tell the story more completely and make an album much more interesting to look at.
Design Tip 6
Try to group images that go together, together. This might mean similar colors (maybe all from that one room in your home with the teal wall) or similar lighting if outdoors. The pages will look more cohesive overall!
Design Tip 7: The Final Tip
Finally, and *maybe* most importantly, resist the urge to over-stuff your pages. I know that albums can be costly and you’re trying to print as many images as you can…but over-stuffing your pages takes away from your images. A crowded page looks busy and overwhelming to the eye. Having some spreads with a minimal amount of images is ideal!
