A few weeks ago, Audrey (of audacious designs) and I co-blogged for the daily digi. In the article we broke the album planning process down to eight essential steps. You can find the post HERE.

Today I am excited to be co-launching a new series of blog posts with Audrey called blueprints: conversations in album design. In this series we will address all things album-design related, from selecting a theme and deciding on an organizing structure, to organizing your photos and assembling the pages. Beyond that, we’re not sure what these “all things” will be – just that we want the topics to be defined by you. We welcome your questions, your comments, your requests (no topic is too broad and no detail is too minor) — use our formspring accounts to let us know what you’d like to see covered in this series.

We couldn’t think of a better way to start off this series than by addressing this set of questions that Janina submitted via email:

It is my Mother’s 70th Birthday in April and I would like to make her a coffee table photo book as a gift. I want to document her life. I am also asking her friends and family to write their first or best memories of her and provide their favourite photo of her for me to include.

If it were you, how would you approach it? Would you use an album or start from scratch? Any suggestions?

Whenever I begin an album, I start the process my asking myself these two main questions:

1. What is the theme?
2. What is the best way to present the content so that each part builds and adds on the theme?

What is the album’s theme?
All good albums begin with a clearly defined theme. A theme can be something that is event-oriented (a trip, birhtday, holiday, etc.) or something that is idea-oriented (lessons my mother taught me, 10 things I love about my mom, etc.) or a combination of both. Which approach do you want to use to document your mother’s life? The fact that other people are contributing content might have an impact on the overall theme of the album. So while you are thinking about the theme, you may want to wait until you see the written memories and photos before you make any final decisions because these things work hand in hand.

What is the album’s organizational style?
In other words, how do you want to organize the photos and written testimonials you collect from your family and friends? Do you want your content presented chronologically (based on the time period that the testimonial covers)? Or do you want to organize your content categorically (based on the various roles that she’s played: as a mother, a friend, or based on other topics such as personality attributed, for example)? If your family traveled a lot, you might want to consider organizing your content geographically (based on location: her birthplace, where she grew up, where she lives now, etc.).

Regarding your question about using pre-designed albums or starting from scratch, consider this:

How much time do you have?
This depends in part on how much time (realistically) you have for this project and in part on how you want your content to be laid out.

Stock templates. You may want to start your search by first checking the stock templates offered by photobook vendors (shutterfly, blurb, my publisher, to name a few) – the options vary from vendor to vendor. Some features that you should look for are: is there a wide selection of single and multi-photo layouts? Do the layouts provide lots of room for journaling? Does it allow you to customize fonts and font colors? Some photo vendors also allow you to invite guests to upload their photos directly to your photobook project. You may find this feature helpful.

Quick albums. If you don’t find stock templates that fit your needs, the next easiest option is using a pre-designed quick album. All of the design work – colors, elements, where to place the photo and text – which allows you to spend more of your time on other things: the journaling, photo editing, etc. If you find one that fits your needs, by all means use it!

Layered templates. If you are looking for help with design (where to place photos and text), but want control over what colors, patterns, etc. to use, then layered templates may be your best option.

Starting from scratch. If you think it will take you more time trying to get layered templates /stock templates /quick albums to work for you, then designing everything from scratch is probably the best way to go for you. Don’t be intimidated by this. This may be less work than you think. If you have a good idea of how you want your album to flow, perhaps all you need to do is make one (or two, or a few more) and keep reusing those templates throughout your album.

Creating an album is a project that will take some time. While it isn’t necessary to plan everything out step by step before you start working, it is important to have a general guide in place. This keeps you focused and keeps you from losing steam or feeling overwhelmed in the middle of things. Brainstorming methods and graphics organizers are both handy tools that can help you create and manage content; next week, Audrey will share a variety of these tools on her blog.