Zookbinders’ Ten Tips for Designing Your Own Albums

For several months we’ve been sharing with you how much easier your life can be and how much more money you can make by utilizing zookie pro, Zookbinders’ new album design and fulfillment service. We of course realize that some of you, whether new to the industry or with many years of experience, do enjoy designing albums yourself. To help ensure you are creating the best possible album for your clients, we’ve put together our top ten design tips. These tips are primarily for flush or collage style albums but would work for matted albums too.

1. Shoot for the Album. Think about the album as you photograph your event. Be sure to create background images, images that will compliment one another on a page and that tell a story together.
2. Streamline Your Workflow. If you want to enjoy your album designing, you need to be efficient. If you use Photoshop, use templates and learn short cuts so you can design quickly and make easy modifications. If you are uncomfortable with Photoshop, find a design solution that you do enjoy and is easy to use. There are many options out there and most have free trials.
3. Organize Your Images. Whether you select the album images or let your client, start your album design by grouping images in separate folders for each page spread.
4. Keep it Simple. The best designs are simple and let the images take center stage. Avoid needless or too many embellishments, use graphical elements that enhance the theme of the event or layout and that don’t detract from it.
5. Use a Feature Image. Page layouts with a key image, designed larger on the page, complimented with a series of smaller images is much more interesting that a page with all the images the same size.
6. Use Negative Space. Just because you have a 12×24 canvas in front of you doesn’t mean you have to fill every square inch. Negative space can be as important to your images in your final design.
7. Set a Theme. A theme can be the color of your backgrounds and borders, whether or not you use background images or any number of design elements that create a cohesive look to your page layouts.
8. Selectively Use Color and Black & White. You and some of your clients may prefer all color or all B&W image layouts. To add impact, use these design choices to add drama and emphasis. Imagine how much a color image would pop off the page if it was surrounded by B&W images.
9. Know When to Break the Rules. Variety is the spice of life.
10. Post and Promote. Once your layout is approved by your client, post the layout to your blog or Facebook page. Album layouts not only show off your design skills but your photography and ability to tell a story. It’s a great promotional tool.

For those of you who have taken the zookie pro test drive and seen the power of our customized shopping cart, please note that we will be making this cart available to all Zookbinders’ clients later this year when we launch our new ordering system to replace ROES. With this new system, you’ll be able to upload your page spreads and have us create a digital flip book and custom shopping cart for your clients to view their album. They will be able to suggest changes, place their order for their main album and add parent books and framed page spreads to the order as well. Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to our launch date.