💬 Most asked question: WHERE DO I START?
I can help you: Gift Book Edition
Gift books are a collection of personal messages along with photos from friends, family, and colleagues, all put together into a book to create a celebration of the person it is dedicated to.
1. Start early! These books (and the people contributing) need time and if the book is needed by a specific date, you will need to factor that in. Six weeks usually works well.
2. Make a list of the people you are going to involve. Friends, family, colleagues? Have you got contact numbers or email addresses for all of them? Are you going to be asking for messages or photos too? Put together a message and send it out asap, specifying a deadline by when you need everything to be given to you.
3. When asking contributors to send through photos, encourage them to email their contributions rather than WhatsApp them to you, as WhatsApp drastically reduces the file quality which means you then have less flexibility with regards to how you can use the photos.
4. Any handwritten notes (which look lovely in a book!) will need to be written in dark ink on plain white paper and scanned in. (For scanning, use free apps such as Scannable or Adobe Scan.)
5. You are going to need to chase people for their contributions. There is always one or two people who forget to send things through. Some might struggle with ideas so providing a couple of prompts might help. (Eg What is your favourite memory with this person? Do you have a funny story that involves this person? How long have you known them?)
6. The best way to organise photos and material for this type of book is by creating a folder for each contributor and then saving any images and messages they send in their respective folder. This way things won’t get confused as they are being added to the book.
7. If you are going to have me create your gift book for you, this would be the point where you hand it all over to me. I would create an online folder which I give you access to, and you just drag and drop your finalised folders into it.
8. If you are going to create the book yourself, choose your printer (there may be different ways you’d need to design the book depending on where you’re getting it printed), and have fun designing!
9. Consider personal factors when designing the book to make it even more personal. Is there a hobby the person has that can be incorporated in some way into design elements? A favourite colour that we could use for the cover? And don’t forget a good name for the book!
10. Each page absolutely does not need to look the same. In fact, the more variety there is to the book content, the more interesting and fun it gets to leaf through once it is ready.
11. Enjoy gifting your loved one this collection of memories and moments. It is very special for them to know so many people took the time out to write something about them and maybe even look for old photos to help celebrate them! 💝
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