Make a Book of Your Family Reunion

Submitted By: Jeff McRitchie
A souvenir book can help to make your family reunion a more memorable experience. Here are some ideas you can use to get started.
Theme and Preparation:
Your first plan of attack when creating your family reunion book is to contact all the members of your family who will be attending the event ahead of time. Before you do that, though, you may want to put some time into coming up with a theme for your book. You could create a book that simply features a short bio of each family along with all the photos they want to provide, or you could come up with a theme that is more specific. For instance, each family member could be featured by way of a shirt bio along with both a current photo and perhaps a photo from the awkward teenage years. It might be fun, for instance, to see a representation of Uncle Harry back when he was the king of the disco roller rink, just to gain a little perspective on the portly, sartorially challenged guy sitting over by the cooler.
The key is to get as much participation as possible, and to that end, you'll have to lay the groundwork early. Contact all of your family and let them know what kind of photos you need. If you are going for the historical and embarrassing, you might get more eager participation from siblings and spouses that you will from the people themselves. Nothing wrong with that, and turnabout is fair play, two can play at that game, etc. etc.
Organization and Layout:
There are a number of ways to organize your book. You can either go by age, family group, or geographical region. Do what ever works best for you, and what ever you believe your audience will find the most entertaining.
When it comes to laying the book out, if you have, and are able to use, such software programs as InDesign, Illustrator, or QuarkXpress, you are ahead of the pack. If you don't, but know someone who does, and might be willing to help, that is a bonus too. That being said, you should be able to get away with creating your book in MS Word, or in any word processing program that allows you to work with photos.
Have your cover and title match your theme, and find a good template or design it yourself, if you are so inclined.
Printing and Binding:
Your options here are many as well. If you are going to use color photographs, and you can afford to go whole hog, you may want to go for a four color digital printing process. If you are looking to save a few bucks or desire to keep to black and white, you can still get great quality laser prints.
As far as binding, one option to consider is to order your own binding machine and do the books yourself. The machines that are meant for home and small office use can be had for less that $100 brand new, and are very easy and fun to use. If you have a mind to do any or these sorts of projects on a regular basis, you really should consider having your own machine on hand, as you will save money right off the bat, and will have the ability to create a book at a moment's notice.

Published At: Isnare.com