(Translated by https://www.hiragana.jp/)
Coffee table photo books you design are printed one-off, easily and cheaply | Pixiq
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20130228235647/http://www.pixiq.com:80/article/cash-in-with-coffee-table-books

Cash in with Coffee Table Books

not just for do-it-yourselfers: a professional way to show and sell your work

Coffee table books, or “press books” are the new slide show. Faster, easier, more accessible technology and styles offer a desirable product that everybody wants to show off. Did I mention less boring? Here are my tips for great book design. They’ll get you organized and help you make choices in types and blueprinting your book.

Considering that there are lots of choices open to retail customers, you’re probably going to ask me why your books ever could be something people would pay for when they can just do their own books for free! Yes, that’s so, but have you ever seen most people’s books? Sad.

What clients don’t have is one essential ingredient - YOU. Your style, your far better photography, your ability to tell a story, your ability to create pertinent backgrounds, your creativity to make a series of images and text hang together, your ability in Photoshop or InDesign, your completed product that people are proud to display on their coffee table, not just stick in a bookcase somewhere.

Here are 2 pages by people I know well (who now know better how to design pages after following some simple directions). Unfortunately there isn’t much right about these first-effort pages - except the desire to create and communicate something fun. The inspiration is excellent, especially in the case of the cook book; the shaky execution can easily be improved.

poorlayout1sub.jpg

uninteresting, bland book layout

cookbooksub.jpg

illegible cook book

To be clear, let’s learn from the mistakes in these examples.

  • pictures too small
  • pictures not optimized for color, sharpness, light and dark
  • pictures not cropped properly (much less artistically)
  • dull colors
  • same pictures duplicated on other pages (one of them 3 times in the first book)
  • lack of professional special effects like drop shadow, frames, devices, vignettes
  • dull, empty backgrounds
  • backgrounds that have nothing to do with the pictures or text
  • canned backgrounds or detail embellishments that de-personalize
  • conflicting, optical background (can you actually read the recipe?)
  • books too small (after trim these were 6.5 inches square)
  • undifferentiated type style (identical headings and body copy make reading difficult)
  • type is good size, but formatted too close to all edges
  • blocky type too close to inner book gutter
  • inaccurate punctuation and grammar

Getting a Body of Work Suitable for Book Design

A great book starts with a large library of images on which to draw for the final content. Mix a variety of distant images, mid-range and close-ups, perhaps ultra close-ups, create interest and emotion. To tell the story. These are the absolute necessities common to every book subject:

  • usual minimum 20 sides or plates, 10 pages in the book, suggest min. 35-40 images total, max 3-4 pictures per page side
  • several “anchor” images + great start and ending images
  • near, far, medium distance images + background material + embellishments and FX
  • images in series the right idea, but not duplicates or close duplicates which lower impact
  • cohesive theme, technical presentation graphics or style, title
  • interesting angles, time of day, weather, good lighting and casual posing techniques are the big plusses that return larger $$
  • optimize images for continuity of color tone and light/dark

Different subjects demand different approaches:

  • Portrait or Family Book  Lifestyle imagery, lots of casual, fun, emotional pictures. Each person must be featured in a roughly equal number of images. (The family discord caused by one person not appearing in a family book was recently written up in a national advice column.) Often the family book is collected over time from old snap shots; dates/places are important.      
  • Family Activity Book  Theme is better and more effective storytelling when there is a holiday, travel,  birthday, trip to the zoo or some other fun thing going on.
  • Commercial Book   Products, architecture or a pr event can all be book material. Be sure to add company location/contact, logos, signage and a relevant theme about the subject.
  • Travel Book   Single place, event or trip, unless its one iconic picture of each place you’ve traveled during a single year. Landmarks and maps as well as images that demonstrate angles/weather/time of day boost interest level. Be sure to identify places. Think carefully about inclusions and exclusions - the book must not be like your neighbors’ boring 500+ slide show.
  • Photojournalistic Book   A more cohesive set of images about a specific event, place or idea. A documentary or picture essay. Can be an artistic collection of interpretive images. “National Geographic” level of tight critical selection is a must to move the story forward. Text may be essential.

When to Use Words or Text

  • Children really like to see their names in print.
  • Family activity with lots of people are the best memento when all names, dates, places are included.
  • Family archive of old photos absolutely must have all names and pertinent information.
  • Favorite poetry, original poetry, quotations.
  • Personal writing, such as letter excerpts; memories of people or events are excellent.
  • Anecdotal, personal writing good for photojournalistic or travel subjects.
  • Monograms, logos, signs, symbols, silhouettes.
  • Title and title page are a necessity; often a subtitle adds explanation.

Selecting the Type of Press Book

Basically these are digital offset printing technique, which means without film or plates, for short quantity runs or when frequent updates (like text books) are anticipated. Decide if your press book is the end product, or is there an art book for the main recipient, and “copy” press books are disseminated as gifts? Design for both at once.

  •  What is the look? matte/glossy, small/very big, odd sizes, page paper, cover type. All sizes end up smaller than you think, because of trim. Beware both too small and too large. In my opinion 7x7 is too small, and 12x12 is too big because neither handle well. There's always a "trim factor" wich lowers the finished size about 1/2 inch from the dimension. There is a huge visual and handling difference between 7x7 and 8x8 books. 8x8 hardbacks are ideal for a great many subjects and uses. 10x10s, 8x10s and 10x8s are my next favorite. Horizontal formats can be exciting.
  • Lay-flat books rather than books with thinner pages and a center gutter are a step up toward hand printed giclée art books. They're more expensive by far and are limited in sizes available - but they're cheaper than they used to be are well worth the price.
  • Choose a printer size and page count may dictate choice, as will cost level, MAC/PC compatibility, and template availability if you don’t do your own designs in Photoshop. Shutterfly is my personal favorite. 
  • Cost concerns of printing/production Wide pricing and quality variation.

Laying out the Story

This is the most fun of the entire process. Choosing the images and putting them in order is what you’re paid for. 

  • Analog layout is much easier than computerized, because you want to see it all at once, bigger than thumbnails. By analog, I mean gang printing thumbnails of all images on any type of printer attached to your computer. Then I cut them apart and group them for easy sequencing.
  • Decide on graphics, devices like drop shadow or pinlines, type face for text. Companies that offer templates will have a variety of options available. Photoshop obviously has infinite options. What does a certain device imply artistically? Choose only a few devices per book, otherwise you risk a disjointed effect without continuity, and looking amateurish.
  • Decide on backgrounds. This can be a simple as gradient colors, images specially made for the purpose, textured effects, or purchased backgrounds similar to ones used by scrapbookers.
  • Decide on an extra materials, such as items to be scanned. Event program, certificate, travel or event ticket, etc. You call this digital scrapbooking at its best.

Tip: look at scrapbooking sites both to get inspiration of really fine work and potentially to purchase backgrounds and embellishments. This scrapbooker's clearing house is my favorite. Hundreds and hundreds of samples and supplies. Shutterfly also has many samples to get ideas.

Technical concerns

Press books that command the most money are individually custom designed. Template compositing is not a totally wrong answer, but is easily seen as canned in comparison to hand work. Not the boutique approach that makes you money. The best customers are the toughest critics. Whether you use templates exclusively, do all your own Photoshop work, or a combination, here are the main technical points you need to take into account.

  • PPI size of each original file determines how large it can be used without stair interpolation. If you need to enlarge a file, do so before you put it into the layout. Use an automation such as Fred Miranda’s SIPro, or at least Bicubic Sharper in Photoshop (yes sharper to go both up and down in size per Scott Kelby).
  • RAW capture gives more options for sizing, alterations and color continuity right from the start, including making it a lot easier to show a great library of images to the client for their choice.
  • Color continuity, along with continuity of lighting, theme, devices, and style in general. Color is most easily evened out by use of careful white balance during capture and RAW format. White balance is even more important than exposure, though you want to be a close as possible with both. Do not discount the value of unusual white balance/exposure level for evoking mood. In any case, color continuity must be visually tight and believable start to finish.
  • Enhancements and retouching must be done before putting images in the layout. It could be said that less attention to faces is necessary than for portraiture, because image size is generally small. However, a group photo, for instance the pivotal family pose in a layout, must have careful work. Retouching done for the book will pay dividends, because that favorite image may well be printed large as a wall portrait.
  • Cropping is usually something I do before I drop an image in the layout. The crop may be dictated by the exterior book format, or strictly by the subject itself. It’s a good idea to make each image in a Photoshop layout into a smart object, which can be resized as desired, with not loss of detail/sharpness, so long as enlargement does not exceed the size of the original capture.
  • Sharpening usually improves images from small rez cameras or fuzzy images that must be included for content. Even RAW capture, which is slightly unsharp due to its very nature, may benefit - though be careful not to oversharpen, because it looks very poor in print. An elevated Clarity setting in Photoshop may be all you need. However, though is does not sound logical, small details in small images in books may require more sharpness. I prefer to sharpen each image separately, because they will be quite diverse in size and crop for a book. If all images are close to the same PPI size both as original capture and relation to each other, some photographers choose to sharpen an entire composite page at once.
  • Text must be applied at the very end and at the desired finished size of the book, because once you flatten it into a layout, it becomes a bitmap, and therefore looks poor if the overall size of the page is changed. Be picky about the type face you choose, whether from a limited selection in printer-provided templates or in Photoshop. Blocky, dense fields of type look awkward, lacking style and grace. Less is usually more. Break up longer passages with headings in a different size or font; same for “chapters” or new topics. Spell check (especially person’s names and place names and dates) and proof your work! 

tagline1.jpg

going pro with Sara Frances

 

Comments

Post new comment

Pixiq on Facebook

Join the 14792 Pixiq fans on Facebook

Share

Subscribe

Get weekly updates from Pixiq. Short, sweet, and always interesting.

ShareThis Copy and Paste

Sharing Successful!

Share again!

You've successfully shared using Po.st!

Welcome to po.st!