Well I finally got to have some free time and get our first album done. It's a 10x10 album, so I wanted to see what insight, comments, critique you all have for it.

Heres the link

First Album Design

Thanks guys and gals.

Stewart C.

Hey Chris!

I'll bite

It's a little bit busy for my taste- and it just doesn't seem like you! The two pages I would play with are 6 & 10. I might take the opacity down on the main image in page 5 to really make the others pop. I really like page 8- the circular images are pretty unique!

But I'm a little confused- what kind of album is this? I'm just wondering where the first and last page are or if it's some kind that I don't know of?

But I know how tough that first design is and you did an awesome job! What software were you using?

I used Indesign. I bought Kevin Swan's tutorial on designing a album in Indesign. Yes it is my first design and I want to get better cause wedding is going to be apart of our business. The album is a wedding album obviously, and is a 10x10 ( which is 10 pages, 20 sided album)

I had seen a few people that designed their albums for clients, that the last page was just a picture or 2 of the bride and groom. I really liked that and wanted to try that with my album. I wanted to do a front page, but now I am realizing that with only 10 pages, your limited. Definetly going to do 20 page, 40 sided albums i think from now on. I appreciate the criticism. Its hard on page 9 cause I wanted to capture the reception, cake cutting and the garter toss, and bouquet toss, and thats the best i could come up with. Anyway, thanks laura.

Stewart C.

Oh- I get it now! It's so tough trying to squeeze things in to fit when you have all these great shots you want to show and a story to tell!! You did great- I've been there!

What I was trying to get across on the first & last page tho- is you open the book and what you look at (the first "spread") is on the left, the inside front cover and on the right, the first page. I hope that makes sense. Just worried about what kind of album you're trying to get this into and hope you won't have to redesign it!

Let me find a link for a visual...

http://www.pro.pictage.com/ad-samples/Tren...mposite.xml.htm

hope you don't mind this pictage one just for a reference point

Oh wow thats a great reference to look at. Thanks and I know what your saying. Its SO hard to cram everything in it. I got to page like 6 and was saying to myself, oh sweet this is starting to come together, and then realized, "oh crap I cant fit everything into this album" But you gotta start somewhere.

Stewart C.

I'd say-- lose the background images.

My opinion is that cleaner is better.

In designing albums, I always ask myself: what do I want people to look at? At first glance, will their eye be drawn there?

I find that a lot of times background images (instead of leaving it white or black) is just a distraction, rather than being helpful in drawing your viewer in.

Highlight what you want to highlight-- don't look at other wedding albums and copy them.

I quite like it, I agree it is a little busy, just take off one or two photographs per page then it will be cool. I'd keep your backgrounds either coluor or b&w, and fade then out a bit as well, they compete a lot for attention.
Good first effort, mine was rubbish

looks like you needed more pages(or less images,) cause when you have to cram to many images into to few of pages it just ends up looking really busy.
a tip on designing albums: before you start look at the number of pages you have and how many images you have, then divide images by pages, this way you know exactly how many images you have get on each page, on average.
doing that helps you start to mentally planing out how to lay things out so the design is consistent from beginning to end.

if you want to see some examples of album designs, take a look at my examples page, http://design.bymarkcollins.com

Wow mark your designs are really good and simple. Yes i ran out of pages but th bride had seen her proof and wants to add a few more pages. Do you always do a cover page? We are still learning all of this. Thanks for your comments. It helps alot.

Stewart.C

I think you need more High Impact images on each page.. Right now it just seems like there's a bunch of images all slapped onto each spread. I would pick at least one image for each spread that will be BIG - maybe full page size on a lot of them, that will really bring that WOW factor.

thanks
i like the simple clean design way of designing the best, it's a style that never seems to go out of style.
when people look at a book i've designed i don't want them to think "wow that's a great design" i want them to think "wow these pictures are great."
in my mind the best designs are the ones that are basically transparent so that the focus stays on the content.

and yes, most of the albums i've designed so far have had photo front covers, and companies like asukabook and vision art book have full wrap around covers standard, so you can put whatever you want on there(photo, text, a mix of both.) it's up to the client how they want the cover to look, but i do personally like the photo covers.

another tip: pay attention to how the photos on the page interact with each other. for example if a person is looking a certain direction in one picture, maybe place that image so the person in that picture is looking towards another picture, maybe of the bride and groom.

Cool mark. Cameron you are right as well. I redid the layout of some of the pages and added 2 new pages so I might repost it but Cameron good advice on layout. and definetly the WOW factor I need to work on a bit. Mark man I said it before and I will say it again, your layouts are amazing!!

Stewart C.

haha, thanks man. i guess that's a good thing since i'm trying to get my album design business off the ground.

and yeah cameron is right, typically i find it best to chose a main image for each spread to focus on, make it big, and then have the other images support it.

yeah it makes sense to want the client to love the pictures not the design.

Stewart C.

+1 Super effort though on your first album design! You definitely show some great images so make sure to let them speak for themselves on their own every now and then

hey chris!

not too bad! a few ideas (if it's not oo late)
lose the drop shadows, it's competing with the backgrounds.

loose some background images - unless they add something to the page.

why are you limiting this to 20 pages?
imho - an album needs to be designed to tell the story, feature the couple and express their style. build it. let the client choose the pages they want.

if you absolutely HAVE to keep it small - cut images.

if you are trapped by the album company only allowing a set number of pages - (i hate to suggest this) but, use something else? i recently tried to sqeeze a book - it was horrible. i ended up pulling pages apart and i will let the client decide what they want. they are used to seeing my clean designs, and it would have been a disappointment to them. i can easily slash whole spreads, and cut it down for them, if i need to.

here are a few examples:
http://bellissimadesignsolutions.com/samples.html

I have to respectfully disagree with this, in a sense.

While they obviously should love their images, and the album is a showcase for those images (and the photographer's creativity and capture of the event), a well executed design can beautifully enhance the presentation. The album then becomes a complete work of art ... a true heirloom quality book with unique style and visual delight.

While I normally design very clean, simple layouts, I often see Robin create wonderfully enhanced albums that, while containing graphic elements and bold design accents, are just lovely to look at. The added elements shouldn't distract from the images, but accentuate them while making the complete book visually stimulating. Excellent, intelligent design skills can make this successful.

Just my thoughts on it!

Thanks Bellisima! I did run into a few problems with the design. It was realy hard to tell the story of the day with few pages. I did redesign it last night and took out some of the background images and changed a few layout of the pages as well.Heres the link if you want to view the new design.

Proof Book

So should you always design the album with as many pages as it would take to tell the story of the day, or set a page limit per album? I like the idea of just designing the album the way I would do it, show it to the client, and then see what they say. So you understand how we have things set up right now. We offer an album credit as a part of our wedding packages. We let the client know that that credit will cover a 10 page (20 side) album and that they can choose to add pages to their album for a price per page. I appreciate your comments very much. Thank you!!!!Stewart C.

Very True Bruce. I agree that if you have great pictures and the design enhances them, then thats perfect. and yes I do like that the fact the album should be a wonderful piece of art as well as Great Pictures. Stewart C.

i have a 'process'. first off, the client is aware that they will see an album design first - and that they can CHOOSE the pages they want to keep. YOU MUST let them know that the design is a draft and they do NOT have to keep it all.

client sees a small slideshow after the wedding - and that's all, until i release the album.
i try to choose the strongest images. i build the album for me. i don't limit it. once i release the book - it's theirs, it's no longer mine.

when the wedding is such that really beautiful images were made, the album will be big. really big - almost too big! it's a natural progression. but, i let the client choose what to leave out. if the wedding were a plainer affair with fewer images, the book will just naturally be smaller.

i can respect that everyone has a budget - i have budgets! - i can also appreciate that most weddings that my clients celebrate are kind of pricey affairs. my clients tend to really value their photos and want a beautiful album. when i try to decide what my clients can or should afford, it's not only insulting to them, it's insulting to my work. if someone cannot afford, or does not want to afford something you offer, they will not buy it.

there are always ways to cut costs - a different size (8x8 instead of 10x10, for example) or a different kind of album. the funny thing is, not one of my clients has ever opted for the cheaper option, even though i present it. they have expensive taste!

Ok Robin thank you so much for the advice.!!!

Stewart C.