6 Design Lessons Learned

by Stacey Wiseman | Jun 18, 2014 | Description, Tutorial

Recently, I wrote about Blurb hosting a photo book contest to design a book for your favorite person. This was right up my alley so I used it as an opportunity to design a book for my husband. 

Now I’ve never designed a book specifically for one person so I knew it would be a challenge – and ultimately a learning experience. And you know me, I’m always up for sharing what I’ve learned! 

Here are my 6 key takeaways from my most recent book.

1 | Define the book concept.

I spent more time developing and defining my book concept than I did actually working on my book. It may sound a little strange, but I spent over a month visualizing my book. I thought about the overall look but also about the details – graphics, page numbers, titles.

This process allowed me to quickly execute the book once I was ready with the photos and text.

One crucial element to the entire book process was to select a very particular theme. This helped tremendously with selecting my photos and determining how the book would be organized.

My book concept: four letters. I divided the book into four sections – all around the theme of a (nice) four letter word that describes my husband. Then I wrote a small letter to go with each theme. My themes were:

Draw.

Bike.

Cook.

Kids.

2 | Select photos with a clear concept.

With a clearly defined theme, selecting the photos was a breeze. First of all, I could easily narrow the photos because they were centered around my husband as a subject. Plus, I don’t have massive amounts of photos of him. 

If I was completely organized, I would tag the person in the photos immediately upon import. But alas, I’m not THAT organized! So I went through the last four years of photos, scanned for my husband and if it fit a particular four letter word it got a special keyword.


3 | Let go of perfect editing.

Once I finally selected my photos, the deadline to submit the photo book was quickly approaching. I didn’t have the time to go back though each and every photo before I exported them. I went with them. 

This tells me two important things. 1) It helps if you do minimal white balance and basic edits when you import. And 2) If you didn’t get to editing, don’t worry about it. If the photo means something to you, it doesn’t matter if it’s edited or not, it’s preserving the memory and needs to go in your book! 


4 | Write text ahead of time.

For this book, I wanted a short description to start each section. This way I didn’t worry about captioning photos or how to explain the photos. Before I even started with the book layouts, I wrote what I wanted to say in a word document file. I could easily edit, check spelling and for this book. I even did a word count to make sure my descriptions were pretty even in length so they would look comparable on each section page.

5 | Design a simple layout with one distinct move.

It was part of my design concept to keep this book simple and modern with a lot of white space. This suits my husband’s style but it also makes it possible to design a book in a short amount of time. 

But I also knew I didn’t want the book to be boring. So I included a thin graphic line on a diagonal to add some interest. This graphic then defined the margins for the book which established how the photos were positioned on the page. I carried this look even down to the page numbers.

6 | Work toward a hard deadline.

This book would probably never have been completed if I wasn’t working toward a hard deadline. A deadline that couldn’t budge. I’m a huge deadline advocate. If I don’t schedule something with a firm and real date, it’s most likely not going to get done.

Find whatever way you can to give yourself a deadline to finish your book. Using a coupon code is one way to work toward a specific deadline. Social accountability is another great way to stick to a date. I do this with my accountability group every month….but here is your opportunity to get in on the action.

Four Letters. by Stacey Wiseman | Make Your Own Book

Leave a comment below with your type of book and when you want to finish it.

I will follow up with you to make sure you finish it! 

One great example is finishing your vacation book within one month of when you return. Are you willing to commit to that this summer? If so, make sure you leave me a comment below!