Popular design trends to use in your photo book
Chances are, you probably have thousands of photos stored on your computer, but what can you do with them? A photo book is a great way of bringing lots of photos together and sharing them with people you care about.
But what themes can a photo book cover? And how can you make sure yours look great? Don’t worry, if a spark of inspiration is what you’re looking for, we have just what you need. Read on for some popular design trends you can adapt to make your photo books truly memorable.
Where to start with designing your photo book
Before you start choosing photos or picking designs, you need to ask yourself “why am I creating this photo book?” Are you remembering an important occasion, a coffee table book or exploring a specific theme? Understanding what you’re trying to achieve will help you select the best photos and edit them in the right way.
The second question to ask is “who is this for?” Are you gifting the photo book to a loved one or is this to record something that interests you. By thinking about your audience, you’re more likely to create a photo book that they’ll enjoy.
Once you know the theme and audience, you can then start thinking about the style and format.
Unique photo book design ideas
With so many possibilities for photo books it’s easy to be overwhelmed – but fear not! If you’re struggling to choose a design, then here are some unique photo book ideas.
A photo a day
Photos are great at capturing the ordinary and recording change – so why not take a photo in the same style every day?
If you have a baby, you could take a headshot every day until they turn 18 years-old. Put all these pictures in a photo book and you’ll have a record of your child growing up before your eyes. It’s the perfect gift for both parents and their children.
Seasonal highlights
Every season has its own established colour scheme. Christmas is all about those rich reds, greens and golds, while spring has a more gentle palette of soft pinks, greens and blues.
Use the right colour schemes so your photos reflect the season they were taken in. You can also use themed frames to emphasise the season.
A year in review
People love diaries and a photo book is the perfect way to record dates visually.
You can start with the classic calendar year (1st January to 31st December) but there’s no reason why you can’t pick another significant date. Perhaps you want to record your first year of marriage or your adventures after moving to a new country.
You can then either keep the photo book as a personal secret or share it with the people who made that year special.
Important events
Weddings, christenings and important birthdays all provide perfect opportunities for creating photo books so people remember these special occasions.
However, you can also pick less obvious events, which are still important to you. For example, the first holiday with your partner or the opening day of a friend’s shop. Photo books can help to represent the significance of these events.
Tell a story
The best books tell a story, so why not use photos to help? With a photo story book, you can set your photos our chronologically and add in a snippet of text on each page to really highlight the narrative. How about creating a book to showcase how you and your partner met? You can then share this with your children. Alternatively, if you’re feeling adventurous, you could make up a story and use photos to really personalise it. You could even make your own bedtime story for your children.
Elegant monochrome
In fashion there’s a strong trend of creating outfits around one colour, or monochrome – why not do the same with your photography?
Having all your photos in the same colour but different will create a striking and bold photo book. Go classic with black and white or greyscale, or use a monochrome filter that focuses on a specific colour. This is a great way to bring focus to the subject of a photo. For example, using a blue monochrome for photos of the sea will emphasise the water aspects.
Select a colour theme
Sticking with colour schemes, it’s safe to say that the best photo albums have a strong thematic tie. And choosing a specific colour theme is a wonderful way to achieve this. There are many methods for choosing a colour theme and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the theories on how different colours relate to each other.
You can keep it simple by deciding if the photos are warm or cool tones of lights. Morning pictures emphasise the yellow hues and evening photos the blue ones. Another method is to pick colours around the subject. For example, if you photograph a woman in a green dress then you could emphasise all the green colours in the photo so the subject ‘pops’.
Then and now: recreate old photos
Photography has always been the perfect tool for documenting change. The ‘Then and Now’ style is when you recreate a photo of a place and then compare it with the original.
A good example is photographing a famous landmark and putting it next to a photo of it being constructed. The key is finding the same location and angle that the original photo was taken. A fun variation is taking photos of locations used in TV and film.
For a more personalised twist, try recreating photos from your childhood. Get your family together and recreate the portrait from the day you met your baby sibling. Or how about that funny snap from the day at the beach when a seagull stole your dad’s ice cream? The process of making a ‘then and now’ photo book is sure to get you all laughing.
Vintage style
Old photos are magical. The faded colours and the grainy resolution create images full of character and nostalgia. It’s no wonder that many modern photographers are trying to recapture that vintage vibe with their digital photos.
The most successful vintage style photo books choose a style or era of photography from the past to mimic. For example, you could edit portraits like they’re characters in a film noir or holiday memories like they’ve been taken on a polaroid camera.
Pet diary
Pets are beloved members of the family, so it feels only right that we create photo books for them. You can put together photos from special days and moments. Remember to date them and write a short entry about what happened.
The pets might not be interested in the photo book, but everyone else in the family will love it!
Book of remembrance
When we lose someone we love, it’s natural to want to find different ways of remembering them. A photo book of remembrance is a lovely way to pay tribute.
It can also bring friends and family closer as you ask people to share digital copies of photos to be included in the collection. You can then sit together as you go through the photo book and reminiscence about the memories each photo brings.
Inspired by Instagram
Although there’s something special about a physical photo book, you can definitely get inspiration from social media. The ‘tile layout’ used on Instagram is a great way to showcase your favourite photos.
You can even really personalise the photos by adding likes, comments from different people and hashtags. But while an Instagram post is soon forgotten, a photo book can be treasured for a lifetime.
Customise and personalise with the myFUJIFILM creator
Whatever style of photo book you want to create, bring it to life with myFUJIFILM.
First you choose a theme, including size and paper finish. You then upload your images and add them to your photo book. After this, you can decide on the layout, size and positioning for all your photos.
Want a visual guide? We have a handy video to walk you through the whole process.
Try out your photo book design ideas with myFUJIFILM
myFUJIFILM is the one stop shop for all of your photo printing needs. We offer photo prints on Fujifilm’s high quality photographic paper in a wide range of sizes and finishes, giving endless possibilities for your creativity.
Photo books are a great way of cataloguing cherished moments in our lives, allowing us to tell our stories to future generations. However you need it to look and feel, we can print the photo book you want, even creating your own photo flipbook to bring photos to life.