Three quick tips to simplify album design. 1. Avoid unnecessary repetition (eg this is the bride looking slightly left, straight ahead, and slightly right) unless you make your profits from the number of images you sell. 2. Embrace open space (especially in sample albums - lead by example). 3. Offer a two album option that allows people to have lots of images without overcrowding. While I'm mentioning 'leading by example': If you don't make a sample album from each order, at least make each design into a slideshow you can show prospective clients. This library of slideshows allows you to show To View More >>

I'm going to drop two shoes in this post. First shoe: Some time ago Johannes wrote a post he called Crikey ("that's a lot of money for an album"). It made me feel a little fidgety. I thought, we care too much about the quality of our products and services to compromise them, and maybe that's a problem. Clients often say they love what we do, but can we do it cheaper? Sometimes we try. We go about looking at how we could adapt a product, system or idea … but we don't do cheap well. We're as proud of our work as you are of yours, and compromising feels like we're shooting for the moon with an To View More >>

When Kayla and I were planning our wedding we decided... We'd rather pay someone to design and assemble our invites than do it ourselves. We'd rather pay our photographer a travel fee and have him sort out his own travel. We'd rather pay a wedding co-ordinator to run things on the day. That's us shifting the responsibility ... taking the easy route ... spending more than necessary. Whatever. But during that period, our time was worth more. Managing the process as opposed to doing it ourselves left us with plenty more time for the things we really wanted, or needed, to focus on. How valuable is To View More >>

Steve Sharp sent us this exceptional album to complete our series of posts with him. Steve shot Ben and Lauren's wedding in Taupo, New Zealand, a few weeks ago and designed them a 14x10 Queensberry Digital Album.  The couple initially committed to a 12-page album package, but Steve presented them with a 24-page album, pre-designed in Photojunction. Steve finds that most of his clients, when presented with a larger range of page designs and images, decide to include more pages in their album than they have initially pre-committed to.  Ben and Lauren have not yet finalised their album, but any To View More >>

Follow the links for "the story so far" in our series on the recession... Yes, times will be tough for a while but you shouldn't assume the sky is falling. It makes no sense to sacrifice your business and market reputation to survive the short term challenge. Instead you may need to pull your horns in and find ways to prosper while others decline. A good place to start is by analysing your budget and business model, and we have a spreadsheet to help with that. Most people react to the threat of declining sales by saying, "I've gotta cut my costs". Everyone needs to work out their own figures, To View More >>