Entries Tagged as 'Design Tips'

Design Tips: Hire a Pro When You Need a Photo Book Designed Perfectly

There are plenty of photographers out there who want to be sure that they are able to use and get a lot out of printed photo books within their businesses. Of those, what you are likely to discover just as quickly, many photographers are constantly on the lookout for great design tips because they don’t feel that they have the confidence or experience to simply create the ideal photo book.

Whether you are looking for design tips for your first printed photo book or you are looking for suggestions because the first book that you created didn’t quite meet your expectations, what you will find is that sometimes the best design tip is the one that reminds you that you don’t need to do all of the work yourself.

When you want to be sure that all of the best photo book design tips are used in your photo books - but you also want to be sure that the book that you design doesn’t look like you just followed a list of design tips - the best thing that you can do is to hire a pro. When you’re working with someone who designs photo books as a part of their career - or, more importantly, as the foundation of their career - you will find that you can get the high quality photo books that you’re looking for without the stress of designing and laying them out yourself.

By taking the time to have a pro design your photo books, you’ll find that you’re able to benefit in a number of ways; most importantly, you will find that there is a lot less stress that you need to deal with while growing your business and giving your clients everything that they are looking for.

Design Tip: Draw on Your Other Marketing Materials

When you’re designing printed photo books for your business - whether you are using them in place of a portfolio, to compliment a gallery showing or for your clients as a way for them to have their prints in what feels like a more meaningful way - one of the best tips that you can receive is simple: when you’ve been working with a great design stick with it.

If you love the design of your other marketing materials and are planning on marketing yourself with printed photo books, shouldn’t you be making an effort to keep the theme consistent? Even if you choose a complimentary color for the cover of your photo book, you can be sure that you’re maintaining some design consistency; the same is true if you choose the same fonts that you use on your website and print marketing materials throughout your printed photo books.

Of course, there are bound to be some differences between your marketing materials and the printed photo books that you design for your clients. Even if it’s something subtle - like the way you reference yourself as a photographer, there are ways of focusing on the big picture.

Everything that you do within your photography business contributes to the ways in which you market yourself; be sure that you are bringing that design into printed photo books - regardless of how subtly - and you will be able to stay on top of it.

Design Tips: Choosing a Theme for Your Photo Book

Designers will give you one tip more than any other: choose your theme. This is a great design tip for those who are getting ready to design a printed photo book to showcase their work.

When you set out to design a photo book, you’ll want to think about what your theme is.

If you’re a wedding photographer who is using photo books as an option for your clients, the theme of your photo book is likely going to be based on the theme of the wedding: stylish and modern, classic, based on a movie theme or holiday. If you’re going to be using a photo book for marketing your work, you’ll want to look at what message you’re trying to send. If you’re collecting travel photos into a book, you’ll want to consider a theme based on the place - using colors that are related to the place - or the shots you’re using - if you’ve taken underwater photos during your travels, you’ll look towards a theme based on water or coral.

Once you have a theme for the book you are designing, you’ll find that it’s far easier to choose your shots and organize your work.

Photo Book Design Tips: Organize by Theme First

When you set out to design a photo book, you’re going to want to make sure that you choose the right book for the project. The best way to do that it to consider the theme of the photos that you’re going to use.

Once you know the subject of your photo book, the design process really starts taking off. You’ll know the general size of your album and the number of pages you’re going to include.

You’ll choose the photos and then figure out the best layout - whether you’ll spread a shot across two pages, tier or layer multiple photos on a page. You’ll choose the book’s cover and end pages once everything else starts coming together.

But if you just don’t feel up to designing your own photo book, you don’t have to give up the idea of having one: the best course is to take advantage of design services: let a pro help you put your first photo book together.

The first photo book you design is always going to be the most challenging; get the help you need to set it up, and you’ll find that additional albums are far easier to compile.

Not Sure of How to Design Your Photo Book?

When you spend some time on some message boards, you’re likely to find that there are photographers and there are designers. That doesn’t mean there’s not some cross-over: plenty of designers who struggle to find the right photos for their projects start capturing shots themselves.

When your photography work focuses on portraits, or events or weddings, you may be exceptional at framing shots and capturing a moment in time. Maybe you’ve heard about using printed photo books to market your work, and you believe that using them would help you to reach your goals, but you’re worried about your design skills.

Not sure what you can do to design a photo book? Not sure that you’re really up to the challenge of creating the right layout or cropping your photos ? Worried that it means you won’t be able to take advantage of photo books as a result?

Don’t be. Design services are available that will help you create the perfect project: a photo book that captures everything just as you hoped it would.

How Do You Put Design Tips to Work?

Visit just about any photographers’ forum and you’re going to find more than a handful of designers who are lurking and posting, offering some suggestions about getting more out of your photos and about what kinds of shots are really sought out for use in product marketing and web design.

Reading these posts doesn’t always seem important to some photographers: they see that they are there to take the photos and it’s up to the designers to make something out of them. That opinion can make sense - especially to a lot of the photographers who participate in the microstock industry - but before you dismiss them, think about this: when designers aren’t getting the photos that they need from photographers, they go out and get themselves a camera to capture the shots they need, creating more competition for the photographers.

Rather than just dismissing design tips - even if you are quite content to be a photographer - why not look at ways that you can put the suggestions to work for you?

Think about it: designers create portfolio books to present their skills to businesses, why not follow their design tips and use a printed photo book to show off your work to your current and prospective clients?

Design tips can give you a sense of what layouts are most affective, give you a feel for how you should be marketing your work and can help you to show your clients all that you’re capable of. Why let the designers have all the fun?