Every summer has a story, so tell yours in a bonusprint photo book full of your favourite moments. To help make this your best photo book yet, here are ten simple tips so you can share your summer with your friends and family, and look back on those sunny days when autumn comes around.
1. Tell the story of your summer
For a traditional beginning, middle, and end story structure, arrange your photos in chronological order. This is a great way of plotting a travel journal because you can relive your adventure one day at a time.
Ordering it chronologically isn’t the only option, you can also group your photos by themes. Try pairing photos by location, people, special events, or dishes you’ve tried on your travels.
2. Save time with one of our pre-designs
If you’re stuck on your photo book design, then add your snaps to one of our pre-designed travel photo books instead. They’re all totally customisable, so you can be as creative as you like with them, or you can just drop your photos straight in – perfect if you’re in a bit of a rush.
3. Play with perspectives for your photo book cover
Have you ever had a go at playing with perspective in a holiday photo, like pushing the Leaning Tower of Pisa or holding the sunset in the palm of your hand? When they’re done well, and even when they miss the mark, photos like this put a smile on your face, so what better place for them than on the cover of your photo book? For more inspiration, check out our creative photo book cover ideas.
4. Create characters for your photo book
When you go away with friends or family, everyone brings their own personality or quirks to the group, so why not create characters based around them for your photo book? It’s a great way of bringing your summer story to life. You can label them with text and assign clip art to each character, so you can keep referring to them throughout your book.
5. Use maps to plot your journeys
If you’ve been on an epic adventure this summer or explored somewhere new on a city break, you can plot your journey with our clever Google Maps feature. It’s exclusive to our Windows editor, but if you’re using the Mac or online editor, add a screenshot of a map instead. You could use little clip art designs to pinpoint your locations too.
6. Create a full spread out of your best photo
When you’ve taken a photo you’re proud of you’ll want to show it off. Create a full spread across two pages with that image, and then you can add a couple of smaller photos to accompany it – almost like a mini collage.
7. Use layflat for your photo book
Our layflat premium photo books are perfect for showing off that shot that you love. The great thing about layflat is you can print an image across a double page without having the fold of the photo book interrupt your picture.
Pick your best summer snap, like a large landscape, and let it overlap the fold for maximum impact. You can leave your photo book open on your coffee table at home to impress your guests too. Just make sure it’s a high-quality shot though, if your image is too small it could come out blurry in print.
8. Vary the number of photos on each page
Creating a collage effect on the pages of your photo book is easy with our multi-photo layouts. This is a great layout style if you prefer smaller snaps or focusing in on little details, and it can help to add extra colour to your story. In a holiday photo book, for example, you could show the highlight of one day in a larger space, then fill the smaller squares around it with pictures of you and your friends from the same outing.
9. Get creative with clip art
Clip art makes the perfect finishing touch to your photo book. Our talented design team has created over 4000 different clip art designs to choose from, and there are loads of holiday and travel-themed illustrations that’ll make a summery addition to your book. We’ve got beachy clip art for your holiday snaps, themed city break designs for those weekend getaways, and if you’ve been on a hiking holiday, check out our ‘Flowers’ category for lots of leafy designs.
10. Make the most of extra pages
Summer’s full of so many great moments, so if you find you’ve already used up your pages on the big events, like holidays, birthdays, and weddings, add extra pages to relive the little moments too. You can add up to 96 extra pages to your book, so you can make sure you don’t miss anything out.
Now you’ve got plenty of creative tips to get you started you can create your summer bonusprint photo book in no time.
If you’ve got too many summer photos to sort through, why don’t you give our Smart Assistant a try? It’ll sort through all your snaps, pick the best ones, and put them into photo book layouts for you.
Have you created a summer photo book yet? Or are you planning on it? Do you have any other ideas for making it extra special? If you do, then comment below. We love being inspired by our creative customers.
