Oh my goodness, it’s already the end of June!!! While June flew by, I did find the time to sit down with my kids and figure out what we wanted to accomplish this summer. While I’ve seen some summer bucket lists on pinterest with a lot of items, I decided to limit my Summer Bucket List to at least 10 activities.

We could always do more this summer….but I’m a fan of keeping things simple and doable. On our list, we selected some creative activities (like a painting), typical activities (reading a book) and activities that will require a bit more effort than a common weekend (visiting a national park). 

I love the idea of writing down how you and your family want to spend your time this summer. It makes the summer and weekends more intentional. And it provides a template of the photographs to take over the next few months which will ultimately make your photo book more interesting. 

Here’s the list of ten things we want to accomplish in our household this summer: 

What about you? Have you created a Summer Bucket List yet? If not, it’s not too late! Sit down with your kids and figure out at least ten things you want to accomplish this summer. At the very least, write them down and place it on your fridge (or in a visible place) and start marking them off. 

Or you can download my blank Summer Bucket List to fill out yourself. I’ve got a digital and printable form you can fill out. 

And don’t forget to share in the comments below one thing on your Summer Bucket List! 

Get my Summer Bucket List:

One of my goals for Mother’s Day, was to get in front of the camera. This is something that I often overlook. I’m so focused on taking the photos it’s hard to find time and make the effort to actually get myself in the photos. But this weekend, I made sure to set up my tripod, get out my remote and take some photos with my kids. I also handed my camera over to my husband to take some much needed photos. After all, it’s important that I make an appearance in the photo book as well.

The reason I design photo books is to record to precious moments of our everyday life so my kids remember what it was like to grow up. And they won’t get the full picture unless I’m in some of the photos too!

So while these are not perfect, I’ll take them. And most of these will wind up in my annual photo book.

Last week was the season premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO. Whenever I heard people talk about the show, I was not that interested in it. Didn’t seem like my type of show. But….last year when my husband and I had watched all of our shows in our queue and looking for something new, we thought we’d give it a try. I wasn’t expecting much. Just a show to have on while I worked in the evening.

Turned out, I got sucked in. While I don’t follow all of the details, I’ve been surprisingly gripped by the storylines and beyond gorgeous scenery. To celebrate the start of Season 6, I wanted to examine how this show, and others on HBO, align the font characteristics in the title to the vision and style of the show.

They all have a very different style and way of showing the title at the beginning of the show.

1) The Game of Thrones title appears after the long initial sequence. The font itself is a relatively simple serif font. The “G” and “T” are slightly larger and the “T” is asymmetrical top bar, as the right side extends the entire length of the word. The “O” adds the uniqueness to the font style and gives the font a more historical feel.

2) Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is a perfect example of a clean and modern font. The sans serif, centered font has all of the letters in black against a white background except for his name which is in a muted yet bright red color. To make the title a little more interesting, “Week” is written backwards to express a little bit of attitude and the desire to flip the news stories of the week by telling it from a different perspective – with humor from a Brit.

3) The hilarious show Veep uses a traditional serif font very similar to Times New Roman. The designer used a star instead of the space in the middle of the “P” to provide a nod to the political nature of the show without it being too bombastic.

4) With the show Girls, the title always appears after a couple of scenes in the beginning and then full screen a black background with the title all in caps and displaying a different color every week. I love the typeface of the title. It has a early to mid-century modern feel to it. The fact that it’s all caps, a bold color and takes up most of the screen mimics the show’s ability to unabashedly portray twenty-somethings in New York City as they sort through employment, relationships, and trying to find themselves.

5) The vibe of Togetherness is more understated than a lot of other dramatic shows which is evident by how the title is displayed over a scene. In this particular example, the color of the font is so similar to those in the scene there is complete unity. Here’s another example of a sans serif font but the letters are more rounded than the letters found in “Last Week” or “Girls”.

6) Oh, The Jinx! What a show. As seen in this electrifying still, the title of the show is featured prominently over a scene in the opening sequence. The title design features a common element to make “The” smaller and set in from the main word of the title. Also, the two words appear to have a slight transparency to them. This design tweak adds to the sense of confusion ever present throughout this documentary.

Now, how does this translate to your photo book design? Well, as you probably already know, defining your vision is super important for me and a huge first step in making a photo book. It helps you stay focused in your photo selection and gives you a direction for establishing design parameters for your book. This is also true of the graphics, color and fonts you decide to implement. In this blog post, I’m sharing how to select a font style to match your design vision.

First, you should already have a clearly articulated vision. To help keep you focused, decide on three essential words to define your vision.

Second, find examples on pinterest or in magazines the align your vision. Make sure you pay attention to the particular font style used. You are looking for examples where the font matches the overall feel or vibe of the image/graphic. Ask yourself, why?

• Is it a traditional or modern typeface? 
• Is it bold or understated?
• Does it involve color? 
• What about the text makes it feel cohesive?

Third, search through your font directory (for example, on apple computers use the Font Book application) and use the arrow keys to find a style that suits your vision.

If none of the font styles seem to fit, try looking at font directory sites like font squirrel or dafont for more ideas. They usually have categories that make it easier to narrow your selection.

Finally, determine if there is a small element or graphic twist you can use in your text. This can either be assigning a color to a specific letter or word in your text, adding a glyph (special character), or inserting your text in an unusual way.

To get you started, I’ve assemble some common photo book design themes and paired a title and body font style to match. Of course, there are many different directions you could go, but hopefully this helps you see how I begin to pair fonts with a particular vision.

Get a PDF download with the links to the fonts shown above + find out my go-to favorite serif, sans serif and handwritten fonts: Simply add your name and email here:

And of course, I’d love to hear from you! What three words define your vision for a recent book design and what is the font style you selected? Leave a comment below.

All too often, I hear people who want to make a photo book. They know it’s important to print their photos and set a goal to make this year – the year – they actually make one. Yet, most people don’t follow through.

Why?

Their goal isn’t stated in a way to set them up for success. It’s not specific or action-oriented. Instead it’s a generic, bland statement without any steps. If you want to make a photo book this year, my recommendation is to define a SMART goal. In a recent post, I explained the core principles but if you want to hear how I reverse engineer my goal into action steps watch this video:

Set Your Photo Book Goals in this FREE Workshop.

Ah, January. The time for making resolutions and setting goals.

I have to admit, I get a little caught up in the beginning of the year / time to start fresh season. And if I’m being honest, I have the same feeling in August during the Back-to-School rush! What can I say, I’m planner at heart. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Of course, I’m setting the typical goals. I started working out more in 2015 and would like to be more consistent in 2016. This sounds almost silly to type, but I also want to drink more water throughout the day. Sometimes I get so caught up with work that I forget to drink the recommended 64 ounces.

I’m also hoping to do more crafts with my kids. Throughout December, I participated in my first ever 25 Days of Christmas. We spent a lot of those days working on crafts and food-related activities. I realized how little I do this with my kids throughout the year….and how much fun they had doing them. Obviously, this is not something I’m going to do every day; but I do hope to have a craft or recipe to bake every weekend.

After I finish my In 100 Pages Photo Book, I use the collection of my photos to figure out how to define my photography goals for the upcoming year. As I looked through the photos contained in my book, I realized how few storytelling photos I have. In a lot of ways, the photos tell more about where we go instead of what happens around the house. I want to take more photos that include environmental clues about our home, the interaction, what my kids play with. I love taking portraits. It’s something that I know I’ll continue to take. So I set my goal to attempt to capture more conversations and tell our story within the frame.

As for my photo book goals….I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit….but I’m a little behind on my annual photo books. I’ve made plenty of personal books (and books for my clients). But I miss my in-depth annual photo books. Similar to my photography goal, I want to make a photo book that includes more text and photos than a lot of my other books.

My goal for 2016 is to finish my 2015 photo book and stay on top of my 2016 photo book.

To help me stay accountable, I’m hosting a 2016 Mastermind.

I’ll share my progress in a private facebook group and interact with others who are also setting the intention to print more of their photos in 2016. One of our first exercises is to make a SMART goal. Now, I’m sure this is something that you’ve heard of. It’s a common concept for a reason – it helps you set a goal that you can actually achieve. Now there are a couple of variations but for this post, I’m assuming SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely.

To show you how this works for my photo book goal, notice what I said above – “I want to finish my 2015 photo book and stay on top of my 2016 photo book.”

Not exactly a SMART goal.

Let me re-work it a little.

Specific. I want to make a 240 page photo book with approximately 1,200 photos from 2015.

Measurable. I want to start working on this book in February and finish by the end of July (6 months). This means I need to complete 2 months of pages, every month, for 6 months.

Attainable. This is achievable and something I’ve accomplished in the past.

Relevant. It’s extremely relevant because 2015 just ended and is still somewhat fresh in my mind. It’s also something that is really important to me.

I value printing my photos and sharing with my kids, family and my future self. Timely. Yes, I’ve given myself a time limit to work toward and track my progress. I want my 2015 photo book completed by the end of July. All of these define a much more specific goal:

To complete my 240-page photo book with 1,200 photos from 2015 by the end of July (finishing two months of pages, every month, for 6 months) while the activities, conversations, and moments are still fresh in my mind.

Now that I’ve stated my goal in this manner, I already have a game plan and a better shot at achieving it. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be working with my mastermind participants to further refine their photo + printing goals to make sure they meet the SMART criteria.

Happy New Year!!!

I hope you had an amazing 2015 and are looking forward to the new year.

As I’m sure you’ve read in SO many blog posts, now is the time to set goals and intentions for the new year. It’s something that I mention in my In One Hundred Pages workshop. One of the benefits of making an annual book is to see what you accomplished in the previous year in order to set goals for the upcoming year.

But even if you didn’t make a 2015, you can still gather up your absolute favorite photos of the year. Then make an assessment about what you shot and what was missing from your documentation. Use this as a guide to set what you would like to accomplish in 2016.

Here are my 15 favorite photos from 2015:

Besides my 2015 In One Hundred Pages photo book, I also make an End of Year Video capturing our snapshots and videos from the year. Check out my 2015 Video:

We started 2015 adding one goal to our long list of photography related projects: printing our images. We had either printed books or loose prints sporadically before but we wanted to commit to one print project per month and getting in the habit of printing our images.

How:  What we found successful

• Keeping the rules loose – minimum one print goal per month
• Printing goal could be anything from printing loose images, vacation books, project 365, project 52, mother’s day books, gift books,
• Checking in at the beginning of the month to decide on personal print goal
• Sharing our progress during the month
• Sharing finished product
• Working through challenges, bouncing off ideas
• Readjusting or refocusing when we got stuck
• Talking out loud: Why am I making this book? Who is the audience? What is the objective?

We motivated each other by being present, listening, ideating together. Also by being open regarding the print goals, not every month was a book, some were prints or smaller IG books. Knowing that the other person was working on their print goal also served as motivation to choose a monthly goal and work towards it.

After watching many of Stacey’s free tutorials, we understood that having a clear vision was very important to achieving our print goals.  By discussing our vision together we helped each other find clarity and move forward on our book project.  The simple act of putting our monthly goal in writing and sharing it served as a commitment to getting it done.

What we have accomplished between January -July 2015:

• Project 52 Book
• Macro prints for office
• 1st Half of a Project 365
• Prints for home
• Mother’s Day Books
• Top 10 images per month of 2014 book
• Prints from Film images for Father’s Day
• Chatbooks as a Thank you, Instagram series of summer vacation, Instagram subscription
• Travel books of family summer vacation and weekend trips
• Grandmother and grandchild books
• Prints for husband’s office

We plan to continue this Project during the rest of 2015 and most likely beyond. Printing our images has brought great satisfaction and joy, not only to us but also to our families. It is a great feeling to see your images in a book or on the wall.

This blog post was graciously written by two great friends, Jackie and Daniela.

Jackie is a hobbyist photographer and like most of us my passion lies in documenting my family.  I am a South Florida native, mom of two – a high school freshman and college senior (yikes).  Check out her website and be sure to follow her on instagram: @jackiecuervo

Since my mind is always thinking about photo books….I wondered how it would look to use these in my personal photo book alongside my son’s obligatory Back-to-School photo.

To be honest, these photos are never my favorite. They always feel forced and my son always has really, really puffy eyes in the morning. I liked the idea of using a graphic to liven up the page and make this milestone event a little more fun in its presentation.

Instructions:

If you like my layout examples below, follow my simple instructions to add a little extra somethin’ to your photo book!

1| First, buy a copy of Martha Stewart Living and turn to page 27 for the free download link.

I highly recommend this magazine, not only for the great advice and the free downloadable items they provide each month….but it’s also beautifully laid out and a source of design inspiration. If you don’t already have a subscription, pick up a copy during your next grocery store trip.

2| Go to the website to access the free downloadable graphics.

3| Once you’ve downloaded the graphic, determine which one you would like to use. Open up that particular PDF page in photoshop. Use the rectangle tool to select the area you want to include.

A simple {open apple} +C, {open apple} +N, and {open apple} +V is all it takes to copy and paste into a new file.

4| Save the file as a jpeg into the folder where you keep all of your annual photo book photos. If you don’t have one yet….create one now. You may find other items you want to include in your book that are not from your camera.

5| Finally, insert this photo into your photo book as you would any other photo. Add your kids’ back-to-school photo plus any title or text you want to include and you’re finished!

Here are my examples:

Enjoy!