Many of you love taking photos whether you are a photography enthusiast or just someone that has a smartphone and is so used to capture the moments in your life. The ease of taking photos on your app and upload photos to secured cloud storage changed the way we document our life and share our cherishing milestones. Some people literally share their status and photos almost every single minute which can be annoying, but if you have friends and families regardless of them being in the same town or thousands of miles away, photos connect people and communicate in a way that words cannot simply convey.

But sometimes it is good to take a step back from social media posts and take time to enjoy and appreciate these moments. With the help of different online printing services or local Walgreens and CVS, you can easily turn photos into professionally designed photo books, calendars and wall tiles. My soon-to-be mother in law Julie puts together a family calendar each year and give out to the big family as a Christmas gift tradition. She likes to curate memories of the big moments of members and fun family gatherings and use her creative eyes to turn the photos into a family calendar.

Given the quarantine shelter-at-home situation, now is a good time to go through piles of your photos on your phone and cameras and remind yourself of the good moments of the past 10 months in 2020 and get some good laughs out of it.

3 Reasons Photo Books Are a Great Way to Present Your Cherished Memories

  1. It is easy to make, you can print as many copies as you want, and gift to your loved ones. In the digital era of 2020 when tons of options of phone apps and cellphones equipped with a good camera are more affordable, you can design and order a customized photobook that adds a unique flavor to your family album collection.
  2. You can tell a story of your trip or your milestone using visually pleasing layouts of photo collages and texts. Yes, you can create organized photo album folders in your hard drive or on your phone, but it is not convenient to share and flip through compared to a printed photo book that you can hold in your hands. Rather than having the risk of losing your photos years down the road over a defected hard drive, photobooks now can be easily passed down to your kids and grandkids in the families with the hardcover design and thick matte pages. Images in the photobooks will last for generations!
  3. You don’t need to be a designer to use the tools to design and order a customized photo book. Most of the online printing services have good themes available and can guide you through the process of laying out pages and picking fonts that complete the story.

Recommended Photo Book Services

Among the different photobook services, I found Mixbook and Google Photos extremely easy to use. If you are new to online photobooks and are someone that wants a simple and streamlined experience, Google Photos is a good start. It provides fewer layout options for each page, so you don’t need to spend 4 hours picking through different layout options, font options, or adjusting your design if you are not someone that like the lengthy designing process.

However if you are prone to exploring the full customization possibilities and the process of testing layouts and themes, Mixbook is a better option.

  1. They offer themed photobook templates for you that fits into most of the occasions such as travel, yearbook, and wedding book. You can preview the pre-designed options and decide if you want to use the template. It gives you ideas about what a photo book can look like. Whether you want to capture the whole wedding planning journeys or just the big timeline of your big day, you can use the template to archive those moments. The themed templates already provided you with the pre-designed backgrounds and layout variations.
  2. You have options to customize each page with different backgrounds, photos, text layouts, and fonts. White background with centered square picture offers a clean and minimalist look while patterned backgrounds with angled photos add vitality and playfulness to the story-telling.
  3. Swapping out layout design is easy. I do notice the text will go away if you switch the current page layout to a different one but the photos do transfer over to the new layout.

Basic Design Principles for Creating an Alluring Photo Book

If you want to try out creating a photobook from scratch, below are basic design principles that ensure you a final professional look.

  1. Create contrast. Use two different layouts on the two sides of one spread breaks the rhythm of repetitiveness and attracts people’s attention. For instance, a page with a single centered page and white space around pairs well with a full bleed page of 3×3 collages without spacings. A left page with a centered portrait style photo balances well with a right page with a centered landscape style photo.
  2. Treat the whole spread as one design entity. When you open the photobook, your eyes read the whole spread instead of the two individual frames. A left page of loosed scattered collage images does not go well with a rigid grid collage design on the right. Too many loose elements also weaken the focal point of the whole spread and people will have a hard time to follow your story.
  3. Use symmetry. Symmetry adds balance to a design. A left-aligned portrait photo with blank space on the right with a right-aligned portrait photo with blank space on the left makes the whole spread harmoniously speak to our eyes. Most brands use symmetrical design, like logos of Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Gucci to represent a feeling of classic, balanced and timeless design.
  4. Limit fonts type to less than 2 or 3. The most fundamental principle of graphic design or design, in general, is “less is more”. Too many fonts lead to chaotic representation and do not contribute to the style of the whole design. Consistent styles and themes are the main factors in designing a professionally-put-together photobook.
  5. Last but most importantly, the story is the key. Decide on the story of the photobook first before starting designing individual pages. This will help you pick out the photos that relate to the stories and leave out the ones that are visually pleasant but just do not fit into the storyline. For instance, if you are designing your travel photo book you don’t want to fill it in only with your selfies at the different locations; but rather a variety of photos of food, landmarks, portraits, and hotels you stayed at to narrate a full story of this journey.

Cost of A Customized Photo Book

Because Mixbook offers more customization options, the final cost of each package varies depends on the size, inner page and cover options. A 21-page 6-inch by 6-inch with basic regular semi-gloss pages can keep your starting cost around 20$. The cost of a photobook with 21-pages 8.5-inch by 8.5-inch with hardcover can go up to 37$.

If you are looking for an even more affordable option, Google Photo’s photobooks cost around 26$ for one copy with 21-pages 9-inch by 9-inch as a comparison.

Quarantining at home can be isolating and stressful. Cleaning out your digital photo storage and thoughtfully designing photobooks helps you retrieve the positive memories. Start designing yours!