Zookbinders has been producing high-quality, handcrafted professional wedding albums since 1995. In 2011 we added an album design service to provide a one-stop shop for wedding photographers. Photographers can upload images to  Zookbinders’ professionally trained team of designers, and get a design back in about 7-10 business days.  Our design department creates thousands of unique wedding album layouts every year. We’d like to share 5 things we would never do when designing a wedding album.

One

Don’t forget to set boundaries. Offering an unlimited number of images, in a limited number of spreads, is a recipe for disaster. For example, if the couple’s album comes with 10 spreads (20 pages), don’t send them their gallery with an open invitation to choose all their favorite photos for the album. You’ll end up with small images in a busy design that won’t make your work look great.

Instead, sell albums by the image, calculating the number of spreads based on an average number of images per spread. At Zookbinders we estimate 4.5 images per spread. So, 45 images would fit on 10 spreads, and 90 images would need 20 spreads.

Two

Don’t collaborate. Getting couples to choose their favorite images is hard enough. Asking them where images should go in their wedding album could be a point of aggravation. Inviting your customers to get overly involved with the initial wedding album layout should sound like a nightmare.

Remember you are delivering a service. Their album will be designed with the expertise of a professional. Sure, it’s nice to get feedback, that’s what revisions are for.

Let clients stay in their lane and offer them color choices and upgrades. Have couples make decisions on a cover style, where they can show off their preferences without having to get into the minutiae of how each page will look.

Three

Don’t be a know-it-all. As tempting as it may be, don’t ignore layout guides, bleed lines, safety margins, and trim areas when creating a wedding album design. You will pay dearly in tears and remakes if the spreads you upload are the wrong size, the wrong color space, too close to the edge of the page, or part of an image is erroneously cut off.

Zookbinders design guide can be found HERE. You can create a canvas in Adobe Photoshop or your preferred design software, but do add those guidelines and check your measurements.

We also have design specs in  Smart Albums, and Fundy for most of our album types. Just don’t turn off those helpful guides in the software.

Four

Don’t send the wrong message. After your beautiful photo album design is complete, you’ll want to share it with your clients. Be sure that you are sending the right message about the design and what the next steps are. Stay positive and talk less about making changes, and more about getting their wedding album with a custom design into their hands.

Don’t Say:

“Hi Jack and Jill,

I’ve finally completed your album design. Sorry, it took so long, I am just so swamped. I literally finished this at 2 a.m. this morning.

I hope you like it. I’m happy to fix anything that you aren’t happy with. Just let me know the changes you’d like to make.

Click on the link below to check it out.

Thanks – Sally’s Exhausted Photography”

Do Say:

“Hi Jack and Jill,

I’m soooooooo excited to reveal your album! Just click on the link below and page through the love.

The spread with the two of you walking through the wildflowers is so dreamy. The weather was perfect too.

I’m so glad you picked all those detail shots. That spread really shows the style of the venue.

This design is ready to go to print. It will be delivered to you in about 3-4 weeks. Let me know if you have any questions, or just give me a thumbs up that it’s good to go.

Happy Newlywed-ness!

Jim’s Best Photography

Five

Don’t hesitate to ask for help. You can’t have a great wedding album without a beautifully composed wedding album design. However, wedding album design can be a pain point, a time suck, and a deterrent to offering professional wedding albums to clients.

There’s no need to be overwhelmed like Sally’s Photography from #4. Stop the struggle and outsource your design jobs to an album design service.

Why Use an Album Design Service

• An album design service helps to bridge the gap between creating those beautiful images and getting them into a professional wedding album.
• An album design service takes a big chunk of time out of the album process. The design is done! All that’s left is your approval and submitting payment, which takes seconds rather than hours.
• An album design service gets you over the biggest obstacle in offering wedding albums.
• An album design service can increase your income. If you are not offering albums, couples will look to other resources for the albums that they want.  Ultimately, a company whose name might rhyme with Butterfly is going to take in the profit rather than the person who creates the artwork and preserves the memories.

This might be a Number 6, of 5 things we would never do when designing a wedding album but;  don’t be a control freak and let it go. Our goal at Zookbinders is to help workflow, decrease backlogs, reduce album turnaround times, and increase photographer profits.  We go beyond albums!

To learn how to get started with album design, check out this video.

Getting Started with Album Design. 

To learn more about outsourcing your own dedicated designer click HERE.