Custom Designed Layflat Photo Coffee Books | Pet Photography
I’m published! (Kind of–one time copy :p) The awesome coffee book that I personally designed for Smudge, Snixle, Pippa, and Hannah-Piper’s parents went home this weekend. :)
I’m not gonna lie. Designing photo books is a serious labor of love. Each book has a minimum of 10 spreads (20 pages), and to me, each spread is a storyboard–not a haphazard collection of images thrown together. Combine that with my OCD, let’s just say this adds up to a lot of hours spent moving images and pages around in InDesign to get it right. Then right when I’m about ready to pull out all my hair and bang my head against the wall, everything magically fits together. At least for the first draft. Next comes the client design review.
The client design review is where I’ll meet with my client to get their feedback and make requested changes. Usually this lasts a couple of hours as we swipe out images to their most favorite ones and move pages around according to their liking. Once that’s done, I make any last minute edits to the images (Photoshopping out boogers, dandruff, random hairs, color balance, etc), and then it’s sent off to my printing lab. Next comes the wait.
Since I use a lab that caters to professional photographers only, the photo books are made with the highest quality materials and attention to detail. The images are printed on silver halide photographic paper (much thicker that the press papers that photobooks are usually made with), the pages have seamless gutters, and the cover can be custom designed to be of your favorite pet’s image.
After a couple of weeks, the book arrives, and it’s like tears of joy! It’s one thing to see your images on computer, but it’s a completely amazing feeling to see them in print, in a book that you designed. But it’s even better knowing that all your hard work is going home to someone who will forever cherish the book of their furry best friend(s).