Just sharing a little design inspiration straight from my mailbox. I love to look at catalogs and magazines for inspiration and we recently received this menswear catalog from Nordstrom. What caught my eye is this “side navigation bar” on the right side.
As you can see from the inspiration catalog, this bar is repeated on every page in the same spot. When you view it from the side you can see how the color blocking creates tabs highlighting each section of the catalog. You can easily create something similar in your photo books. The majority of my photo books show my images in chronological order but sometimes I group them by occasion, or topic. You can create any labels you want for the sidebar index.
In addition to adding a creative design element to your photo book, this could be an especially useful tool to highlight the progression of time through your book. For example if you’re making a pregnancy journal, the countdown to baby is usually expressed in weeks. You could use labels of “weeks 1-4”, “weeks 5-9” etc. to keep track of progress and a growing baby bump of course. Similarly, a baby book could be divided by month and a school memory book could be divided by grades. You could then show the month by highlighting it like the catalog example here, using a red circle to indicate the date, pointing to it with an arrow or, bolding the type for example.
I’ve also seen calendar type graphics often called “date strips” or “date stamps” by digital scrapbook designers that you can purchase. You typically get a set of month strips and a way to indicate the date with a circle or similar graphic.
By the way, if you’re looking for more photo book design ideas, be sure to check out my photo book gallery – I just added some new ones there. Also, don’t forget about the free photo books I posted this past week. You still have a bit of time to make yours! I’m going to work on mine right now!
Hope this inspires your photo book making!
