Friday, December 14, 2007

This project was for a client who literally travels all over the United States during the three months of Summer. He is a personal chef, who has his summers free and takes that time to visit his numerous friends. He is also quite the photographer and delivered over 400 pictures to me for this project.

The good thing, and the thing that will save your designer's time is he delivered the images all to me in "sequential" folders. That way, there could be no mistaking the time line or putting "Jane from San Francisco" next to an image of Tony from Wisconsin.....you get the picture. (No pun intended)

Loved this project and my client purchased multiple copies to give to every friend that was in the book!

Click here to see the book.

Monday, October 15, 2007

This book I did for a dear friend who has had four huskies in his life so far. But it was also for selfish reasons too, I happen to love dogs. I can't pass one in the street without stopping to pet it. And as some of my friends will tell you, I have a knack for finding abandoned dogs.

Anyway, my client had recently experienced a loss of one of his huskies and realized he wanted some special way to commemorate him. He had boxes of pictures he'd taken, pictures on his hard drive, on CD's and also on Picasa online. Time to collect and consolidate, wouldn't you say? Now he has this book in his living room that he can pull out and look at whenever he likes. And to be honest, I have the book on my bookshelf too.

What a great project. I never laughed so hard at some of these images. The trouble was in picking the right ones. We went through about 300 pictures. The more the merrier when it comes to that. Let your designer spend the time looking through them all. I find that clients who try to select the photos they want to use get very overwhelmed. Leave the decision making to us, give us all the pictures you can.

This was a small and quick project, but I loved it. Click here to see the book!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007



Designing a book for a personal event, other than a wedding can be a bit tricky. For instance, I don't know the characters (and I do mean characters) in this book, "THE MANSION". So ....what if I just happen to put a picture of Joe on the same page as Jim, and they don't particularly care for each other? Or what if I put pictures together that are out of relative time sequence?

It's always a risk when you are designing this type of book. You want the sequence right, you want the message and the feel to mirror what occurs at the event. That's not easy when you weren't there.

This is where the client can do their homework and come prepared for the process. Usually, I ask clients to put groupings together in folders. For example, in a wedding you would create "Getting Ready" Folder, "The Ceremony", "The Reception", etc. etc. This will always speed up the process and help the designer navigate through hundreds of images. Good news about this book was I only had to switch up a few pages and the client was pleased as....party punch.

Click here to view the book!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007




Aah, Viva Las Vegas. One of my all time favorite places to visit, well... only if it's a short trip; too long spells trouble. Unfortunately, this was a work project and not an actual trip. That's the bad news. The good news is I' had a real photographer shooting the images on this project. Thank goodness for our mutual friend Colin Vincent. He just happened to catch the most amazing shots and I can't tell you how much easier that makes my life.

This is one of the first books I did for a friend and I really got off relatively easy. I knew the people in the pictures, the "back story" to the event and I had creative license to design what I thought would look great.

Even if I do say so myself, quite proud of this one. And I can safely say that so did the client. So-o-o much better that sticking those pictures in a box under the bed, or filling up your hard drive, wouldn't you say?

Click here to view the book!