We caught up with two of the design team,  Simon and Rachel, to talk all things album design. Here are their top four tips for creating beautiful, clean layouts.

Less is more

Rachel: Unclutter your design. It’s simple. Let the key images and high quality materials of an album speak for themselves. If you notice the design, it’s taking precedence over the images – good design is effortless.

Simon: If the design is loaded with images the hero shots can be lost among a forest of images. By keeping the image selection minimal, you’ll free up space and make the rest of the design sing.

Continuity is important

Rachel: An album is meant to tell a story, and images that look out of place throw the viewer off. When designing an album, I always think about the order of events, the scaling of the objects within the imagery, and the general feeling of images featured together. An album layout should always feel cohesive.

Simon: Images that match in context tend to sit well together, and images that don’t tend to distract. With every design I aim to create flow between the images that is effortless from one setting to the next.

Be wary when cropping

Rachel: Cropping an image should always leave its integrity intact. It can be good to remove distracting elements, or emphasize a point of interest, but you can’t use cropping to try and change an image.

Simon: You may be tempted to crop in on an image to feature the subject matter larger, but be mindful that you aren’t losing the quality and integrity of the original composition. Also, if you crop tightly you run the risk of critical areas of the image being hidden behind a mat, or trimmed away when the book block is guillotined in production. And important details often look awkward when they’re jammed up close to the image edge.

Watch out for Aunty Sue

Always take in account the page margin and spine. Whether you offer Duo albums or Panorama Flushmounts, there will always be either a split or a crease in the page. Get to know the album you offer and take into account the margin width to avoid splitting Aunty Sue’s face in two.

Why not outsource? Some photographers like to do their own design. Maybe they use design as a sales tool, or their design skills and sense of style add value to their work. Or maybe they just enjoy it! But otherwise, let us do it for you! Our team of trained designers do a great job and will make your life simpler, and there’s no extra charge for their services.

Alexandria x