How to make a photobook people actually open
Most photobooks are a hundred good photos in no order. The ones people reach for are edited, sequenced and shorter.
Fondays · 16 August 2026 · 2 min read
A photobook fails in a specific, predictable way: it is a hundred good photographs in no particular order. Every page is fine and no page is a reason to turn to the next one. It gets opened once, admired politely, and shelved.
The books people actually reach for are shorter, edited harder, and built like a story.
Cut far more than feels comfortable
The first instinct is to include everything worth including. Resist it. A book of 40 photographs where every one earns its place beats a book of 120 where a third are near-duplicates.
The test for each photo is not "is this good?" It is "does this show something no other photo in the book shows?"
Sequence by time, not by quality
Chronological order almost always beats grouping by favourite. Time gives a book a beginning and an end — morning to night, arrival to departure — and that shape is what makes someone turn the page.
Opening with your five best photographs is the most common mistake. It leaves everything after them feeling like a decline.
Let single photos be single
A grid of six photos on a page says none of them mattered much. Give the important ones a page of their own and put the smaller moments together. The rhythm of full pages against groups is most of what makes a book feel designed.
Leave space
White space around a photograph is not wasted paper. It is what tells the eye where to stop.
Pick the size for the photos, not the budget
- Landscape suits travel and events — most photos taken on a phone at an occasion are horizontal.
- Square is forgiving when the mix of orientations is messy.
- Portrait works when the subject is people rather than places.
Check the resolution before you lay out
This is where most books are quietly ruined. Photos that came through a chat app have been compressed and will print soft, and you usually discover it after the book arrives. Work from the original files.
A book of forty photographs gets opened. A book of a hundred and twenty gets shelved.
Write a few words
Not captions on every page — a date, a place, a name. In five years the photographs will still be clear and the details will not be.
Fondays makes photobooks from the shared pool, so you are laying out the originals rather than compressed copies. See sizes and pricing.
