An album is the largest thing we make, so the gap between a competent one and the right one is widest here. That gap is closed by about twenty minutes of your time, before anything is designed.
The five things to send
1. The shape of the story. Not the photographs — the structure. “Arrivals, ceremony, portraits, reception, the end of the night.” Five or six chapters is enough, and it decides the whole sequence.
2. The three or four images that must be large. Every archive has a handful that carry the book. Naming them changes which files need to be biggest and where the spreads fall. Designing for the full spread →
3. The first and last image. The two most-remembered pages, and the two a designer cannot guess. If you do not decide, somebody else does.
4. Names, in full, with spellings. Especially for anything that might be inherited. This is the part that survives you. Albums as heirlooms →
5. What to leave out. More useful than people expect. An ex-partner, a relative nobody speaks to, a photograph the recipient dislikes of themselves. Say so at the start rather than at the proof.
What not to bother doing
Do not pre-edit down to exactly the count. Send more than you need — the layout uses the extras for pairing and pacing.
Do not sort into folders by spread. Chronological or thematic order is enough; the sequencing is our work.
Do not write finished captions. Send facts — a place, a date, what happened. Turning them into captions is included. Do you write the captions for me? →
What to send for the captions
Facts, as the section above says — but which facts? For each chapter, four lines are enough:
| For each chapter | Example |
|---|---|
| Where | “Nani’s house, Lajpat Nagar” |
| When | “The morning of the wedding, 12 December” |
| Who, in full | “Priya’s cousins Aditi and Kabir Malhotra” |
| One thing that happened | “The power went out during the haldi and nobody stopped” |
Then two lines about the book as a whole. The language: English, Hindi, or the Hinglish you actually speak — and any caption you do write yourself prints exactly as written. The tone: whether this is an album that can joke, or one that should stay quiet throughout. A memorial and a college farewell need opposite answers, and a designer cannot tell which from the photographs alone. And if a name is spelt more than one way in the family — Aditi or Aditee, Malhotra on one side and Malhautra on an old passport — say which spelling prints. How to write a caption that lands →
The order of decisions
| Decide | When |
|---|---|
| Format: square or A4 | Before sending anything |
| Page count | After counting usable photographs |
| Lamination | At order |
| Number of copies | Flag it in the brief; extras are arranged at the proof stage |
| Cover image and text | Can wait until the proof |
| Sequence and captions | Send facts; we build it |
The first three are hard to change later. Copies are best flagged now and confirmed on WhatsApp when the proof arrives — extra copies of the same design cost less than the first, and they are printed and sent with it. The last two are exactly what the proof stage is for.
A brief that works, in full
A4, 40 pages. Wedding, December 2024. Rohan Mehta and Priya Sharma. Five chapters: mehendi, haldi, ceremony, portraits, reception. The three across spreads: the entrance shot, the group on the stairs, the last one outdoors. Open on the empty mandap in the morning; end on the two of them leaving. Please leave out anything with the man in the grey suit. Two copies — one to us, one to Priya’s parents in Pune.
That is under a hundred words and it determines almost everything.
How to send it
The brief first, as one message. Type it into WhatsApp before any photographs, so it sits at the top of the thread rather than buried between four hundred images. If it is long, send it as a note or a short document instead.
Then the photographs, as documents. Sent as documents on WhatsApp, they arrive at full size; sent as photos, they are compressed. The upload link on your order confirmation takes JPG, PNG and HEIC files if that is easier from a laptop. How to send photos without losing quality →
Name the images that matter. Rename the must-be-large files before sending — SPREAD-1, SPREAD-2, FIRST, LAST — so the brief can refer to them without anyone guessing which “the group on the stairs” is among forty group photographs.
Use file names in the names list. If you are sending a list of who is who, refer to the file names, not to “the one in the blue saree”. Descriptions that are obvious to you are ambiguous to anyone else.
Briefs for other kinds of album
The wedding brief above is one kind. The same five things apply everywhere, but what goes into each changes with the occasion.
A baby’s first year.
Square, 40 pages. Our daughter Meher, born 3 March 2025. One spread per month, in order, then a closing spread of the first birthday. Must be large: the first photo at home, and the beach at Candolim in October. Grandparents are Nani (Kamla Sethi) and Dadi (Usha Kapoor). Leave out hospital photos.
Parents’ anniversary, from old prints and new.
A4, 60 pages. Sunil and Meera Nair, married 14 February 1996. Two halves: the scanned prints up to 2006, then the phone years. Open on their wedding portrait; end on last Onam. Captions: names and years only, in English. Leave out 2019, the hospital year.
A family history.
Square, 80 pages. The Rao family, 1950s to now. Chapters by house: Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Bengaluru. Every face captioned in full — a list mapping file names to people is attached. Nothing after 2020.
Each is under sixty words. None of them describes a layout, and none needs to.
When several people are feeding it
Weddings and family histories draw photographs from half the family, and everyone who sends photographs will have views. Decide at the start that one person writes the brief and approves the proof; everyone else sends photographs and nothing more. Relatives can add their images to the same WhatsApp thread, but a brief with four authors contradicts itself, and a proof with four approvers is never approved.
A brief that does not work
Make it nice. Use the best ones. You’ll know what to do.
It is well meant, and it hands every decision in this guide to someone who was not there: who the important people are, which evening mattered, what the recipient would rather not see. The album that comes back will be competent and slightly wrong, and the wrongness only shows at the proof, where it takes longer to fix than the twenty minutes it would have taken to write down.
What happens next
Files checked, anything too small flagged, then design, then a full digital proof of every page before anything prints. Revisions are included.
The timing runs on one rule: an order placed by Friday is designed, proofed, printed and dispatched on the coming Monday, provided you approve the proof when it arrives. A weekend order goes out the Monday after. That is why a brief sent with the photographs, rather than a day later, matters — the designer starts once the photographs arrive, and a brief that follows afterwards lands after the first decisions have been made.
5 to 14 days from order to doorstep, 5 to 12 to Delhi NCR. The design proof →
Frequently asked
What should I tell the designer? The chapter structure, the three or four images that must be large, the first and last image, full names, and anything to leave out.
Should I choose exactly the right number of photographs? No. Send more — the extras are what make the pairing and pacing work.
Do I need to write the captions? No. Send facts: a place, a date, what happened. The writing is included.
When do I have to decide the format? Before sending photographs. Every spread is laid out to the proportion, so it cannot change later.
Can I change the sequence after seeing it? Yes. Sequence, captions and cover are all open at the proof stage, and revisions are included.
Part of our guide to hardcover photo albums. See also: what goes wrong with albums and choosing an album cover.
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