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| Written by Katie Humphreys | |||||||
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Album Design. About a year ago, if you had mentioned these two words, a look of utter dread would have come over me, sweat would have started trickling down my face, and I would have wanted to crawl back into bed. (I’m only halfway joking here.) For me, album design had come to mean endless hours of back and forth correspondence with the client, utter frustration when the client said they didn’t want to purchase additional pages of my pre-design, and complete bewilderment when a client would change a beautiful sequence I had crafted into an odd arrangement of some of my not-so-favorite images. As anyone who has even slightly ventured into the world of album design has figured out, there are many, many different ways to tackle the album design process - some swear that the pre-design and “upsell” method is the way to do it. Some allow their clients to choose all of the album images. Some, wanting to avoid the issue altogether, outsource the whole thing. Of course, for different people, these different strategies work quite well. For us though, we had become trapped in the following process: Do album pre-design. Show pre-design to client. Client scales back the number of pages to fit their already allotted album credit. Client butchers design in an attempt to cut down the album and choose the pictures they love. After many hours of additional work, album is complete and I am utterly exhausted. Something had to change. So we went back to the drawing board and reevaluated how we had set up the process. There are a lot of people who have great success with all kinds of different methods and they make a great profit doing design that way. The process I outline here is by no means the only way to do album design, and may not even be right for you. But if you find yourself struggling with the album design process like we once were, hopefully this is a helpful start. Please Log In or Sign Up for a FREE Silver Account to access the rest of this article or others on ProPhotoResource.com{rokaccess !guest} Our basic process begins with our client choosing the images they’d like in their album, after viewing a folder of images up on Pictage that we call the “Favorites” folder. This folder gives the client a starting point so they don’t have to choose all of their images, since most people find that to be way too overwhelming. Clients are given a pdf about the album process that lays out exactly how many images may be included in each sized album, and they can decide if they’d like to upgrade to the next album size based on the number of images they want included. Once the couple has finalized their picture selection and we get their choice for album color, cover, format, etc, we let them know that their album will arrive on their doorstep in about eight weeks. In this new process, the one major thing we stopped doing was giving clients the option to be involved in proofing the design layout. From the beginning, we set the client’s expectation to be that they will have a direct hand in picking their album pictures, but from there, we’ll handle the design process. Setting expectations are the key here and because the client knows the process from the beginning, they don’t ever ask to see a proof of the layout or question why they don’t get to see the design before the completed album. This process also works because, as a general rule, clients are much more concerned about the image choices than the layout choices. However, if clients get a chance to proof the layout, they’ll feel that they should be concerned about the layout and therefore will make changes, if given the option. Prior to implementing this new process, we felt frustrated that we spent time designing extra pages in a pre-design, and in the end we had many clients decide not to upgrade. Ironically, we now have more clients who choose to upgrade their album size than we did when we were doing the pre-design process. When we would do pre-design, the clients knew ahead of time that we would design a larger album for them, but they still ended up sometimes feeling disappointed and frustrated when they realized they couldn’t afford the entire album. This resulted in a long string of communication as we went back and forth cutting the album and re-designing. Because the client now can make the decision up front about the upgrade before the design begins, the communication back and forth has literally been cut in half and I can go through the design process only once, knowing for certain what images are to be included. The frustrations and eventual revamping of the album process taught us some lessons not only about album design, but also about some bigger principles in our business. We had thought that by giving the client fewer options in the album design process, we would be taking away from their overall experience. However, taking from the wisdom that sometimes what people want is freedom from choice rather than freedom of choice, we’ve found that cutting out some of their options has simplified the process and leaves them feeling positive about their interaction with us from start to finish. Further, we realized that perhaps there are many areas in our business that we all can (and should) be reevaluating in the same way that we did our album process. Are we doing what is the most simple and efficient process for our clients, or are we making things more complicated because we think we’re offering clients something that they want? Are there ways we can eliminate options and simplify our processes so that we strengthen clients’ overall experience? Whether it’s album design, online proofing, or just your general conversation with clients, it’s important to always be evaluating our processes, asking for client feedback, and making changes from there. | |||||||
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