Welcome to the third post in our blueprints: conversations in album design series.

I want to spend a little time today walking you through the process of how I’m starting (or more accurately, how I’m re-starting) my 2009 Project 365 album. As I mentioned in a previous post, I began work on this album back in October 2009. The approach was supposed to be simple – simple in design (one photo + journaling per page) and simple to execute and complete.

I ran into one little snafu with that formula.

The journaling got me. Bugger. Trying to recall what happened on a particular day based on the photo alone proved to be too time consuming, too challenging. In retrospect, I wish I had done a better job of writing detailed descriptions of the photos I uploaded to Flickr. A valuable lesson learned. I’ll expand on this in another post. 🙂

I recently revisited my abandoned 2009 Project 365 album and decided it was time to try a different approach. Instead of forcing the journaling (my main source of stress), I’m going to keep the focus on the photos. A few more key things about the album:

Approach the album two pages at a time.
Building the album two pages at a time is a technique I use for every album that I make. This method is effective for several reasons. First, it helps to break the project down to small manageable mini tasks. I feel a sense of accomplishment with every two pages that I finish and that motivates me to keep going. Second, from a design standpoint, working with two pages, and treating them as a collective helps to ensure that the two pages are cohesive and flow well together.

Develop a simple 2-page design scheme.
I’m using this formula: one large photo on one page + multiple photos on the opposing page.

The above is just an example of a possible two page spread. The layout of the multiple photos page will change based on the number and orientation of my photos.

A word about chronological order.
My album will be organized chronologically, in the sense that each 2 page spread will cover a set time frame. BUT, I am going to give myself the creative liberty to arrange the photos within the 2 page spread based on aesthetics, not by dates.

Ex. In the layout below, I arranged the photos by aesthetics – I thought the indoor shots looked better paired on the same page, with the outdoor shot on its own page.

Including more than one photo per day is ok.
As I was working on the layouts I stumbled across a lot of photos that I loved but were not the photo of the day. What do I do with these “extras?” I found myself thinking, “oh, I should make a mini album with this set of photos.” But after the third time this crossed my mind, it occurred to me, why make mini albums with the “extra” photos when I can easily just include them IN the P365 album?

Why limit myself to showcasing only one photo per day?

So, on certain days (days with lots of activities, or days with lots of photos that I want to showcase) I’m going to include more than just one photo per day. I like this comprehensive approach. It makes me feel like I will be able to do 2009 justice. Here are a few examples of layouts using multiple photos from one day.

Ex. I like being able to show the entire series of our self portrait out takes – makes it more fun and gives it that photobooth-like effect that I love so much.
ex. I couldn’t settle on just one photo to represent our sunday afternoon excursion to Lamill, a cool little coffee place in Silverlake, so I selected a few of my favorites and arranged them in this 2 page spread. And then I was happy. I felt like I did that day justice!
That, my friends, is the way that my (slightly neurotic) mind works. Ok, maybe I’m a little more than just slightly neurotic. I definitely have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be and the way I keep things manageable is by using the two pages at a time method.

It works.

If you aren’t already doing this, give it a try. Here’s a set of coordinating layered templates for you to download so you can give it a whirl. It’s free but only for a limited time! Enjoy. 🙂

download the template
for personal use only. not for commercial use.

Join us again next week, Audrey Neal of Audacious Designs is going to do a share-out of the graphics organizers (that are free to download on her blog). And the week following, we will both share examples of project 365 albums that we love, so stay tuned!

As always, Audrey and I welcome your questions and comments via our Formspring accounts or the comments section of our blogs:

ask Audrey | ask Liz