The Outside
I've been measuring books. I know - not quite in the same class as the killer first ten words of Rinda's wonderful post. But if you're going to produce a photobook, getting the right size for your purpose matters. Abi and Amy's beautiful volumes are 12"x12" inches and I can really feel the pull of those glorious large photo pages. On a practical note, I think that size is going to be a bit large and heavy for me: if I live long enough to reach LOL (Little Old Lady) status, I'll be a little sad if I don't have the strength to manoeuvre my books off the shelf and onto my lap. So I've been a-weighing and a-measuring ...
... and balancing the sizes from Snapfish and Blurb, along with Amy's comment that the Blurb books don't lie flat, the fact that some of Snapfish's can, plus the possible benefits of using the Blurb plug-in for In Design, along with the portrait/landscape dilemma, the desire to have more room for story perhaps than photo ... too many choices to balance! I'm finally settling for an 8"x10" Blurb book (about the size of The Repurposed Library above); a double-page spread has more of a square look than would be the case in landscape and might be easier to design.
The Inside
This has also needed some weighing up. Though I really like the concept of Project Life, such a lot of my enjoyment in digital scrapbooking comes from playing with design - the same structure for each page is not going to keep my interest. On the other hand, experience tells me that designing every page from scratch will almost certainly result in zero production! So - my solution is to divide the year into four blocks of three months, roughly corresponding to the seasons, with a different theme for each section of my Day2Day 2014 book. Since I love magazine design, I might as well design myself one! In January-March, I'm taking a dotted line and a semi-circle for a walk and seeing how they develop; here's how the template possibilities are looking so far ...
Many of the photos will be details and close-ups, I think, rather than large panoramic or scenic views - life here is relatively stable and uneventful! And it will be perfectly possible to have an entire page or spread of just photos if warranted. I'm also hoping to include some of the lovely memes which are around, as regular features.
My Clean and Simple side is nicely satisfied with this. My Artsy one, meanwhile, is bouncing on and off the furniture chanting "Boring, boring ..!" Please excuse me while I try and get her under control - back soon :).
