Key Layout Design Principles for Great
Creative Scrapbooks
by Michael Saunders
Scrapbooking at its essence is really about storytelling, but with a visual
and tactile, rather than oral, focus. Scrapbooking is also a method for
preserving a legacy or history in the form of photographs, printed media,
and memorabillia contained in decorated albums, or scrapbooks.
The tremendous growth of the Internet has resulted in more creative
scrapbook approaches as well as online scrapbooks. The digital photography
revolutions has been accompanied by an explosion in creative scrapbook
ideas.
Scrapbooking can be quick and easy if you simply copy other layouts or use
tools such as computer programs to create pages. However, if you want more
of a creative challenge, try your hand at designing your own layouts. Don't
be surprised at the difficulty you may have designing the pages for your
first album, because layout design is trickier than it first seems. With a
little imagination and a lot of inspiration, you are well on your way to
designing layouts, but you also need a good foundation of knowledge to take
this art to the next level.
Photograph placement is important. Generally, a layout, whether it is one
page or two, looks better with an odd number of pictures. Our eyes also find
it pleasing to scan the page in an "s" shaped pattern-that is, imagine a
giant letter S covering your page. Your most important pictures should lie
in the upper right-hand corner, at the start of the S, while your least
important picture should fall in the lower left-hand corner at the end of
the S. Of course, this is just a general guideline-many other techniques can
be used to create interest and focus your eyes on a particular spot on the
page.
Remember:
There is no wrong way to scrapbook. Typically, the more creative and
resourceful the person, the better the page. The main focus of each page
should be the picture, letter or other momento, whatever is the most
important to the creator. If you are interested in starting to digital
scrapbook, or incorporate digital techniques with traditional scrapbooking,
there are a myriad of Web resources available.
Part 2
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