Picturia Press - Creating Books authored by you -->

It's been a busy few weeks around here!. Managed to build two websites, a tri-fold brochure and oh, also managed to squeeze in a book design too!

My dearest friend Natalie is getting married, so I helped her create a tri-fold "SAVE THE DATE" Card. This was supposed to be quick and dirty project - but are they ever? First I went to Kinko's to print the brochures, only to be told the printers were all down for service. Then they say they can do it on their own printer, but I have to use their paper, rather than the dye cut beautiful tri-fold paper I had brought. Then....I realize the CD I brought only had the layout and not the fonts included. And my client Natalie is waiting patiently to get her 125 brochures to mail out the next day!

During all this, we built a website for a San Francisco personal trainer, JJ Everett. I've had the privilege and the pain of training with him, and it was much easier to build his website than it is to build my muscles!! If you want a great workout, be sure to check out his site.

Onto the next job, which was a landing page for a Passion Parties consultant. This one was a breeze compared to the brochure and the website. One page, no heavy programming, and the best news is the client loved it. It's always great when your client likes your first draft on a design.

Now I can get back to book designing. Crazy week....

I'm excited to be working with a man who has been writing his own poetry for the last 10 years. Just like photographs however, they are all over the place and in many different forms. He's got them hand written, scanned, typed (on a REAL typewriter) and on his computer (remember Word Perfect?)

All his work needs to be edited before it's actually ready for a published book version, so we are taking all his content and retyping it all in a word document that he can edit and then resubmit to us for conversion and layout. This is one of those long running projects, but should be really rewarding to complete. We'll keep you posted.

Pleased to say I just finished another book. This one was a wedding album, which always makes me cry. Don't get me wrong, it's a good cry. I enjoy working with the photographs because they are taken by professionals, and that always makes our job easier. This was was especially good to do because most of the photographs were taken by my good friend Colin Vincent.

Click here to view the book!

Since being listed in Blurb as a preferred vendor, we've been hit with a magnitude of inquiries. Now the trick is to turn inquiries into books.....

Here are some of the more interesting projects being considered:

• Love letters from WW2
• A Professional LaCrosse Promotional Book
• A Book of old Christmas Caroles
• A PTA Recipe Book (Fundraiser)
• Pre-schooler/Kindergarten Yearbook
• How To Book on Motherly Advice
• 10 years of personal poetry
• Mother's blog of baby's first year

Can I just tell you how much I like Blurb? They are so great, the people there are so wonderful and supportive. Blurbidee, Blurbidee, Blurb. But seriously...for a Publishing On Demand business, they have really made an effort to work with good designers and give them the support and marketing they need to get business.

Just this week they asked a select few of us to be in their Blurb Nation. Which is a directory of approved vendors and designers. I was thrilled for the business it could potentially bring Picturia Press.

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.

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!

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!

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!