Make the Perfect Gift (with a Little Help from Your Friends)

This is the big one. A “this is your life” photo book. A book you’ll put together to present to a really special person in your life, at a really special point in their life. 50th birthday, 50th anniversary, a wedding, a memorial—life’s big events look even bigger when you present a gift that’s a tribute to them, full of heartfelt stories and personal photographs from their most loved ones. Sound a little complicated? It’s not, especially when you have people on your book-making team (and handy instructions from Blurb).

Gather your siblings, some special friends, or a group of talented coworkers and get started on the memory book of a special person’s lifetime.

Here’s exactly how you can get a group together to make it work:

Steps

1. Choose a team of people to help you with your book
2. Have your team contact friends and family of your special person to collect stories and photos about them
3. Choose which stories and photos you actually want to use
4. Edit the stories and scan the photos
5. Lay out your book with text boxes and photo pages
6. Get feedback from your team and make final edits
7. Order your book!

And here’s the process in some more detail:

Choose who you want to help pitch in. Your team can be as small as two of you, or up to four or five key people, with one person managing the process (that’s probably you). Create a list of story prompts to give to people (What’s your favorite memory of this person? What’s the best time you had with this person?) and come up with a deadline by which you’ll need the submissions back. This process is probably most easily managed over email, but you can also use Facebook pages and even recorded phone calls. And people can always mail you photos.

Reach out to all kinds of people to give yourself the widest possible variety of materials to work with. The littlest kids can contribute short quotes, older people can tell longer tales, and everybody’s got a cache of digital or print photos. Ask your team to reach out to people in their networks who know the person at the heart of the book. The more people you ask, the better chance you’ll have of getting a great story.

Now it’s time to figure out what’s actually going in the book. Choose your best submissions, looking for a variety of anecdotes and stories. Don’t be afraid to solicit more if you don’t think you have what you need to make the book truly amazing.

Once you’ve gotten your stories and photos chosen, it’s time to get them in shape for print. Have the stories edited (or edit them yourself) for clarity, flow, and good grammar—it’s just another way to make your special person look good. Pick your photos, ideally at least one per story, and use a desktop scanner to create digital photo files of the hard copy pictures. Name the files carefully so it’s easy to tell what should go where.

Fire up your book-making tool. Arrange each story as a text box on a page, each with an accompanying photo (or more). Make sure each picture has a caption and that each story is attributed to the correct author. If you feel capable, check for correct spelling and grammar yourself, or hand it over to an expert. Either way, the more eyes on your book, the better. You can even print a small 7 x 7 softcover copy as a proof book to do an ultimate edit.

Now it comes time to order. Make it big—create a huge impression with a book that’s as big as their place in your life. Splash out on premium paper. The sky’s the limit. Any way you decide to print it, you’ll have a gift that’s something truly special.

And that’s it!

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