If you've decided to create photo books, you might do well to think a little about page layout. Most likely your photo books are going to be combinations of words and photographs. You're probably aware that some online photo gallery and storage sites offer you the opportunity to make photo books. These photo books are professionally printed and look like real books. Why not invest a little effort and make the page layout look like a real book too?
There are a few basic principles graphic designers use to lay out pages that you should be aware of. While there are no hard and fast rules to a creative discipline like graphic design, there are some principles that all graphic designers are thoroughly versed in, and in practice rarely, if ever, violate. These principles are simple, and don't require the kind of visual talent you'd need to paint the Sistine chapel, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they don't require as much talent as taking good pictures to understand and apply.
The first thing you need to think about when you are arranging things on a page--in this case, you're arranging pictures and text to make a photo book--is how arrange the elements on the page. This includes thinking about what stuff goes on which page, and where to put it relative to the other elements. That is an important notion--the notion that things are placed relative to other elements. Graphic designers think not only about the elements they put on the page, they think about the arrangement in terms of what those elements, as shapes, do in terms of giving the page structure.
If you really want your pages to look aesthetically pleasing, you should think about the shapes that the elements make out of the empty space that remains on the page. This is called negative space, and your first priority is to make sure the pages of the photo book you are creating look organized. One way to do this is to think of the page in terms of a grid. The grid is never visible in the finished page, but think of your favorite newspaper. Think of how the columns, the photos and the headlines are arranged. Even though you don't actually see the grid itself, you can look at the pages of this newspaper and know where the grid is, can't you? A grid is a great way to organize pages, not just for beginners but for professional designers.
Are you planning on using text, either to tell a story or to caption your photographs when you create photo books? There are a couple of things to bear in mind. Firstly, color. As tempting as it is to use pretty colors on a prettily colored page for your text, if you want people to be able to read the text in your photo book, the color of the text and the color of the page need to be as different as possible. That's why most books are black and white--it makes it easier to read.
MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Digitalphotoalbumsite.com, site that offers advice on the quickest and easiest way to build a digital photo album , as well as free online photo storage.
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