Premium Storybook Album – a closer look
May 7th, 2010
Last week, for several of our clients, we came to what is probably the second most enjoyable part of our work – the final handover of the album. Carolyn and Andrew got married last October (as reported on the blog here) and while six months may seem a long time for album delivery, it’s actually fairly typical.
As with all of our clients, Carolyn and Andrew got an initial album design to peruse when we showed them their presentation upon their return from honeymoon. They looked over this in their own time and came back some time later with a list of revisions. We then went back-and-forth, making suggestions for how the design could be improved and still include all the images they wanted and tweaking the layout until everything fitted in properly whilst still maintaining the story ‘flow’. This is where all the time goes! Eventually, we locked-down the layout design and they made their choices regarding album cover options.
Carolyn and Andrew had opted for our Premium Storybook Album – a top-of-the-line product we get imported from Australia. We have a great deal of design flexibility – something the UK suppliers are way behind the times on – and the albums pages are precision cut to order and then hand bound. Once the order was placed, we got the prints ordered from our usual photo lab here in the UK and patiently waited for the book to arrive. When we opened the box, this is what we got…
Unusual colour for a wedding album? Why not. The luxurious natural grain leather, finished in this orange tone complemented Carolyn’s bouquet colours perfectly. Who says all wedding albums have to be white or black?
Detailing of the front embossing and inset cameo picture. Notice the grain of the leather and how the lettering is actually stamped into it. Top quality.
First page. Very often our album designs start off with location and detail photographs that quietly set the scene and mood for the rest of the book.
One of the big reasons we chose this Australian supplier is illustrated above – the photographic prints on the left are physically mounted into the page with a bevel edge, while the close-up bouquet picture on the right is mounted ‘flush’, right to the edge of the page. Adding in a ‘feature’ page such as this punctuates the flow of the album with important details or events and gives the book as a whole a more interesting visual impression.
Most of our album layout designs – especially with the Premium Storybook – are very simple. Each 2-page spread is a small ‘slice’ of the day so as you flip through the album the story of the day unfolds without the themes and moods of each page becoming mixed up or over-fussy.
Andrew and Carolyn were thrilled with their album and as with all the books we hand over, we’re very proud of the work that went into it. We’ll be picking out other albums in the future to show off here in a bit more detail.
