Wedding Album Design Tips
For some time I have been thinking about posting my wedding album design tips. Couples often don’t get a wedding album these days, and who can blame them! A wedding album can be easily several hundred dollars and often it is more than that. It is sometimes hard to foot that bill right after a big wedding which would have left a couple with many bills to pay. However no one can deny the value of a well-designed album, something that you can touch, feel and cuddle with long after your wedding. You just can’t have that feeling by browsing your wedding images in a digital portfolio. I hope my clients can budget for an album, even if a modest one, soon after the wedding, if not as part of the wedding photography package. Here are my wedding album design tips for them who want to preserve their most special day in this artistic and memorable way.
Size and Content
A good size is 10″x10″ or 12″x12″. If you want to have a rectangular shape, you can go for 8″x10″ or step up to 11″x14″. Bigger the size, greater the impact of the images. However high end albums will get pretty heavy, assuming that you will want to have at least 20-30 pages. 2 sides make a single page, according to this definition. Some photographer mean a single side to be a page. So the first thing you should get clear about is the size and what exactly the number of pages in your album mean. You cannot possibly fit all the images in an album. You cannot even get close. Assume you have will have at least 300 edited images that are good. That is too way many to fit in an album. You don’t want every page to be a collage of 10 images. Your album will look too busy and images will be too small to have the desired impact. Every good image needs its own breathing space. The photographer is not trying to sell you more pages by not cramming 10 images in a page. She is really trying to make a pleasing layout which tells the story of your wedding. Some pages will have a single image, some will have 2 or 3. Usually not more than 4. At a minimum you should have bride and groom portraits, shots of the bridal party and with immediate family member, first dance and pictures from the ceremony. Must have are candid shots when the bride and groom are getting ready and after the ceremony from the cocktail lounge and the reception. The bride and groom need not be in every picture in the album! It is their wedding because of the friends and family that are with them.
Layout and Style
Before you read on, please do me a favor and open this link (Wedding Album Options) in another window and refer to it as necessary.
There are few approaches to layout your images. The cleanest one is to come up with a meaningful assembly of images for your page spreads. You can do partial frame overlays, insets on a larger image or even use a stylized image – such as a blurred or faded one – as page background. Some people may like a lot of blending and compositing of images in a single spread, which is Ok if that’s your style. But that requires a bigger design effort for which there can be an additional cost. Some people also use design artifacts like clip arts, texts such as poetry, other related graphics to complement the shots. If you are not sure about the style you want, ask for various samples before making up your mind. However please do not mix styles that are too different in the same album. It does not create a pleasing viewing experience. Personally I like the images to speak for themselves and so I prefer to stay away for frills like clip art or graphics. I am not a big fan of compositing and blending either. My favorite style is to have simple spreads with nicely arranged collages when appropriate. I have shown some 2-sided spreads of one of my albums in the gallery below. While showing the bridal gown and shoes, I used the detail of the dress as background. The same idea goes for the pictures from the ceremony. The picture of the groom giving the ring to his bride is the background to few other shots from the ceremony. I used sepia for the background so that the images in the foreground can stand out. A loose collage shows the few selected images from the photo session after the ceremony. The picture from the dance floor is a full bleed where I preferred the unrestrained look to bring out the energy of the dance. Right before the reception was over, there was a photo session with close family members. I wanted to fit all the images in the same spread using a tight fitting collage, so that the people in the photos can see everyone else at the same time.
I understand that not everyone likes the clean simple style of album design that I prefer. I believe that my images are powerful enough not to need fancy Photoshopping or other decorations, that obviously add cost to the album design process. But I can happily design the album in your preferred style.
On a Budget
My next wedding album design tip should help those on a budget. At the lower end, albums are referred to as photo books. These are press printed, meaning the printing follows a process used to print marketing materials like brochures. Photo books can have soft cover (certainly not recommended for wedding album) or hard cover. Obviously there is a difference in quality. The depth in the printed images is less when compared to a high end album. But even a photo book is better than having no album at all. Photo books usually have a higher minimum page requirement than albums. Still it is cheaper to have a photo book. If you are on a budget, it may seem as an attractive option as it is often used by photographers to sweeten a package. But if you can wait for a few months and come up with a budget to step up to the next level, please consider doing so. You can ask your photographer for an album anytime you want. The step-up is a plain leather cover album. You can have engravings on the cover to counter the plain look. But the quality of the printed images are expected to be better than that of photo books.
Finish and Bells and Whistles
Album pages come in various finishes – like semi-gloss, metallic (high gloss), linen (textured) etc. No, you cannot have different types in the same album. Not that it would look good either, if it was at all possible. Pages can have options on thickness – a thicker page adds weight but gives a certain gravity to the album. You can also have gelding done on the edges of the pages – usually in silver or golden color. Higher end album covers come in premium leather (with textures as option – such as a snakeskin look or a distressed look), a full front to back photo spread, metallic, acrylic or linen finish. Acrylic covers have a modern feel too it, that may or may not suit your style. Again the best way to have a feel is to hold an album in your hands and decide what you like. For a plain cover you can have a cameo, which is a window cutout on the cover to display an image as inset.
Parents’ Albums
These are a pair, and companions to the main album. You cannot have these without having the main album, no matter how much you love your parents above yourself. These are smaller in size, but often have the same images. Parents’ albums usually do not have all the bells and whistles options to help you save some money after you have spent yourself on the main album. The parents don’t feel bad about that. They always feel thankful and proud for having their own smaller versions, like for anything else you can do for them. After all they have done to bring you up to see you get happily married, these little albums bring smiles on their faces when you two are on your expensive honeymoon halfway around the world.
