When we started COUTURE BOOK, we did it because we were tired of the boring, stale board style albums that were out there.  We wanted present our images in books that were exactly like the style of modern fine-art coffee table books that we had by our favorite artists and photographers.  The process to build these books required a different style of printing and binding that wasn't currently available outside of really large printing runs.  Our goal was to make this style of book available as a one-off, custom made book that you could offer to all of your customers.  





The key to these books, however, is not just the physical process of printing and binding, but more importantly it's in the design process.   Grab any one of your coffee-table books, even better grab your favorite one by your favorite photographer (lately my favorite has been Annie Liebovitz - "A Photographer's Life 1990-2005").  When you sit down and look at them, take a hard look at the design and layouts.   They are usually very simple, and really focus on the images.  For instance in the Annie Liebovitz book there is never more than two images per page.  Even better, most pages are single images and panoramic images that span two pages.  This style of design allows your viewer to focus on each image individually.  The design is only there to help you linger and appreciate each image.  This is very different from the designs I commonly see in board albums, albums where you have a very limited amount of pages, where you have to have many images compete for space on each page.





While this is great in theory and it may sound simple, for me personally it's hard to create this style of design and give my images the most impact.   I like to focus on my photography and my customers, so I let my expert handle the design process. 

To help others with this, COUTURE BOOK offers custom design services by our graphic designer for $2.25 an image.  With the custom design process we will create a completely custom layout for your book based on your images and style.   To give you a better idea of some different designs that we've done, here's a link to a slide show of several different styles: CUSTOM DESIGNS





Although each book is unique, we try to start with a general idea of the styles you like, and then we build your unique layout from there.  Not only does it save you time and energy, but your clients can see your images in the best way possible.

Let us know if you are interested in a custom book design or have any questions on custom designs, and we'll be happy to help you create some AMAZING books of your photography!

-Dave

If you haven't seen it yet, you gotta check out our new Aperture 3.0 plug-in: http://www.CoutureBook.com/Aperture

We love Apple's new Aperture for the book design option.  It's just so easy to use, and once you create your first book each book afterward just gets easier and easier.  Aperture can save custom templates as you create them, making that next book that much faster to design.  Even if you use another program for your image editing, the design piece of Aperture makes it worth your while to check it out.  Here's the link to download the trial version: Aperture

Once you have installed Aperture and our plug-in, here's how to get started with a book design for COUTURE BOOK, and how export it to us when done:

First, select the image you want to use (highlight the images at the bottom or hold "Command A" to select all of them).  Then click on the "New" link at the top, and select book.



Second, this should open a new window with all of the book options available. 



Third, in the "Book Type" drop down window, you can choose COUTURE BOOK.  



Fourth, once you have book picked, you can then pick the size of book you want to design, and name your project.



After that, you'll go through and design your book layouts.  Keep in mind that the provided templates can all be adjusted and you can even make and save your own templates for future COUTURE BOOK project.



Lastly, when your book design is completed, just hit the "Send Book" link in the upper right to send the book to COUTURE BOOK.   This will then connect you to COUTURE BOOK, and will walk you through the ordering process.   You'll be able to pick out your book style and all of the options associated with that style. 



If you do choose a book with a designed cover layout or cover image, we'll follow up after you place your order with instructions on how to upload the cover image(s) separately.

Hope you like the new plug-in, and please let us know if you have any questions comments on it.

Happy Designing!!

-Dave

One of the first questions I get from photographers about our books is "How am I going to create layouts for so many pages?!?"

At first building a 100 page or 200 or even 300 page book may seem daunting, but I think you'll find that designing layouts for COUTURE BOOK ends up being much easier and faster than designing books for flush mount style albums.

The inspiration for creating our book collections comes from looking at the fine art coffee table books by our favorite artists.  The image layouts in these books are very simple and classic designs, designs that focuses on individual images rather than complicated layouts with multiple images.   For instance, in an Annie Leibovitz book I recently picked up, it's almost all full bleed images and double page spreads.  The images are amazing, and the layout focuses you on the images.   Because each page is a single image your attention in only on that page, making that image much more powerful.




With our books, we encourage that style of design.  We want you to take advantage of all of those pages.  We want you give your customers tons of images, and still have them look fantastic, and we want your customers to rave about your images and treat their book like the fine art heirloom it should be. 

Designing 100 pages in a flush mount style is daunting, but designing 100+ pages in a simple, classic style is EASY, and even better, it's much more flattering for your images.

With this in mind, we have three options for the book layouts:
1. Design using our online templates:   With this option, it keeps the layouts very simple.  The online design tool gives you a single image per page with different border options.  To check out this option, just head to the site and upload some images to a sample project.  That will let you preview the layout tool and see how easy it is to create a fine art style layout.

2. You can have our graphic designer create a custom layout for you:   With this option, you'll upload all of the images to our site, and our graphic designer will create a completely custom layout for you.  These layouts are custom tailored to your specifications, and focus on simplicity and your images.   You'll tell me what type of design style you like, how many double page spreads (or not), and we'll build the layouts based on your input.  



Here's a couple of links to custom layouts we've recently done:
http://couturebook.com/build/viewer.html?productId=100028087
http://couturebook.com/build/viewer.html?productId=100028577
http://couturebook.com/build/viewer.html?productId=100028197


For custom layouts, we recommend a minimum of 100 images (maximum of around 400).  Just upload your images to a new project and let me know when you have it ready.   We'll then follow up to get your book specifications and general style guidelines, and we'll get started on your custom design right away.

3. You can design your own custom layouts:   You can design your book with any program you like, just as long as you can export your final layouts as Jpeg files.  Create your layouts on canvases sized at the exact book size at 300 dpi (9x6 books should be sized at 8.5x6).   Once you have the blank canvas setup, start your layouts.  Again, we recommend keeping your layouts focused on the images.  Make them simple and clean with a lot of pano pages and full bleed pages. 

Also, don't be afraid to leave blank pages or blank space.  You have a ton of real-estate to work with and sometimes a blank page can really accent the image on the other page:




For more info on page specifications, check out this blog post: http://www.couturebook.com/blog/2008/07/03/PageLayoutFAQ.aspx

The other great thing about being able to offer this many pages, and keeping your design simple is it's much easier to offer more images to your customers in their books.  Instead of having to pick their favorite 30 or 40 images from the 1500 images you edited down to, they can almost pick as many as they want!   That eliminates one huge frustrating part of the design process.  No longer are you or your customers agonizing over which images they love best, and which ones they have to cut.  Instead you can include ALL of their favorites!

Several of our book styles have printed covers, covers that either have an image on the front, or wrap around the entire cover of the book.  With these different styles, especially the ones that wrap around the spine of the book, you'll need a template to properly layout your cover designs.  

We've created the cover templates for all of our printed cover books, in all of the sizes and page counts.  Just download the appropriate zip file for the book style you are working on, and the cover you need should be there.

New York SoHo: SoHo Covers
New York East Hamptons: East Hamptons Covers

German Munich: Munich Covers
German Berlin: Berlin Covers

When you are designing the cover, please keep in mind that the spine widths can change slightly with different paper types and page counts.   Also, on the templates, the edge area that is marked off is the edge wrap.  This is the area that is wrapped around the side/edges of the cover, so you'll want your image to go all the way to the edge of the template. 

After you design the layout in Photoshop, flatten it and save it as a Jpeg.   Then just upload the finished Jpeg as your cover image for that project. 

Please let us know if you have any questions.

-Team Couture

I can't believe how fast this year has gone by, and already the holiday deadlines are nearing!

Here's our deadlines for holiday ordering:
-November 14th for the Spanish Madrid, all of the Italian books, and all of the Swiss books
-November 21 for everything else

If you have your order in by that day, we will guarantee that your book will arrive in time for Christmas.  If not, we'll still try our best, but we won't be able to guarantee it'll arrive in time.  

Let us know if you have any questions, and Happy Holidays!!

1. Location on book - Where on the book you'd like the stamping: front cover, inside front cover, back cover, etc
2. Position on page - Where on the page you'd like the stamping: upper center, lower right, dead center, etc
3. Font - Please download this file to see your font options: Stamping FONTS.doc (60.5 KB)
4. Color - Black, silver, gold, blind (no color, just stamping), or smoke (clear)
5. Text - this should be the exact text you need

If you are ordering a book that does not include stamping, or you want to add in additional lines of stamping, it's only $20.00 a line.

We can also have custom stamps made up for your books, either a custom logo that can be stamped on the inside of the book, or a custom stamp for your customers.   There is a custom charge to have the logo made up (most logos are around $95.00), and once you pay the one time charge, it's again only $20.00 for each additional stamp.

Custom blind stamping on cover of slipcase

For the custom stamping, we need to have your file sent to us as a B&W Illustrator file, or a B&W Jpeg sized at exactly the size you need it at 600 dpi.

If you have any questions on the stamping or preparing your file for a custom stamping, please don't hesitate to let us know.

-Team COUTURE BOOK

Several of our books have the option to have printed vellum pages inserted into the books, and the on the French Paris line, it includes a printed vellum cover wrap.

The vellum pages are added into the book after it is bound and can create a really interesting design element. 



We've also seen them used with text printed on them as chapter markers, or even wedding vows!

These books include five pages per 100 ordered, and can be either blank or printed vellum.  If you do not indicate which style you would like, we will place the blank vellum pages randomly throughout the book.  If you do want to have a specific placement of the vellum, just note this in the special instructions during the checkout process.

If you want to have the printed vellum pages, please note this in the special instructions area as well.   We'll then follow up with the FTP instructions so that you can upload those additional images to us.




You'll need to setup the vellum pages in photoshop.  Here's the instructions:

1. Download these templates: Vellum page templates1.zip (308.3 KB)
2. Create your layout, image or text on the template
3. Include your order number and the page number you want this placed after on the bottom of the page
4. Save as a Jpeg
5. Upload to the FTP account
6. Email Support@couturebook.com to let us know when they are ready.

After you have done that, we'll have those pages printed up and added into the book.

Please keep in mind that you'll either want to use an image with a lot of white in it, or you'll want to add some transparency to your images if you'd like to be able to see the printed image on the page behind it.   For text, just keep the white background, and use a solid black text.

For the Vellum cover wraps, you'll do basically the same process, just with a different template.  Here's the templates for the cover wraps: Vellum cover templates.zip (101.52 KB)

We get many questions regarding the specifications for page layout on our books.  The short and sweet answer is your working canvas should be set to the size of the book at 300 DPI in sRGB. 

For instance, if you were laying out an 8x10 book, you'd start with a canvas that was 8 inches wide, by 10 inches tall at 300 dpi.   The only book size that is not exactly the right size is the 9x6, which is actually 8.5x6.

What about the trimming on the edges?    We do trim about 1/16 of an inch off the outside edges, and between 1/16th and an 1/8th of an inch on the books with the hand torn edges.     You'll still want to setup your pages exactly the same way, but just be aware that the edges will be trimmed a hair.

By the way, the full bleed pages look fantastic with the hand torn edges!  See below:




What about double page spreads, or panoramic images?   You can absolutely setup a double page spread with images going across the middle.   The only tricky part about pano pages is they need to be split into the left page and the right page before uploading.  The way I layout my books is I start with a double page canvas, layout all of my pages, and then on the last step, I crop it to split it into the left side and right side.

There is basically no center gutter to worry about in the design either.   There is a fold, as you can see in the picture above, so I wouldn't run text across the middle or put the brides head there, but you can definitely run a full image through the center.

Back to our 8x10 example, for a double page spread, we'd start with a 16x10 page, create the layout and then split it into the 8x10 sides.  Those of you more savvy with Photoshop can probably whip up an action to batch process all of those spreads into the sides, thus saving a bunch of time.

Hope that helps and happy designing!