How to create the perfect travel photo book from your holiday photos

A safari adventure, a transatlantic cruise, your dream vacation in Lapland or a long weekend in Europe. Wherever you go, every trip you make is a unique chapter in your life. Preserve your holiday memories in a photo book to revisit your dream destinations time and time again. Here are some tips on how to create the perfect holiday photo book as a personal memento or a gift for your fellow travellers.

The first step to creating a travel photo book is to choose the photos. Instead of trying to cram all the holiday photos you took on your trip between the covers, focus on shots that have a special meaning to you. Also, think about the story you want to tell with your photo book. Organizing your photos chronologically, day by day or destination by destination, is the most natural choice, but you can also organize the photos by theme.

Once you have selected the photos you want to use, download the free Designer software onto your device to help you turn your vision into reality. Designer gives you access to numerous tools, various templates and the freedom to design your photo book just the way you want.

There are plenty of book formats to choose from. If you appreciate high-quality photos and story-telling, we recommend the Premium photo book. Printed on genuine photo paper, the book renders colours vividly and accurately. The high-quality binding ensures that your holiday memories will be preserved for years to come.

The cover is the first impression that readers will get of your book. If you want the book to be seen – perhaps on your coffee table or displayed nicely on a dresser – you want the cover to be truly eye-catching. The cover photo could be a famous landmark, a stunning landscape, an emotional moment or simply a photo of you and your travelling companions. Your photo can occupy the entire cover, but if you want an especially elegant design, leave plenty of white background around the image.

What about the title of your photo book? Choosing a title can be one of the biggest challenges of the process. There is no shame in keeping it simple. The simplest choice is to use the name of the country or city that you travelled in as the title.

Include a brief introduction or a table of contents on the first page of your photo book to give readers some idea of what will follow. For example, you could list the places you visited and the sections that make up the photo book. You can also add brief introductions of the members of your group of travellers and add their photos in round frames near the edge of the page. There are a number of different shapes and frames in Designer that you can use for any photo.

Make the page even more impressive by using a faded background photo under the text. Choose a photo that is as calm as possible so that the text remains readable.

Add texts to your photo book to deepen your story, tie different photos together and provide more information to the reader. Texts also provide an easy way to jot down the dates, districts, names of restaurants and other important details that may fade from memory over time.

Stick to no more than a few fonts to keep the book design as consistent as possible from beginning to end. One font for the headings, one for the body text. There are several fonts available in Designer and the software also recognizes the fonts on your computer.

Arrange your holiday photos in different layouts on the pages of your photo book. One page can have just one larger photo, while another can have several smaller photos grouped nicely. Choose both wide shots and close-ups, and different angles to enrich your story.

Avoid placing photos right next to each other without any space in between to ensure that each photo has enough room to shine. Leaving some space between the photos also makes the book more readable. Use colour effects to make the photos stand out even more. For example, using a black background colour creates a powerful contrast and is visually impressive, whereas earthy tones convey warmth and atmosphere.

Gorgeous panorama photos deserve a full spread. Premium photo books come with lay-flat binding, which means that there is no fold between the pages, but the spread creates one even surface. This way, readers can admire the photos without losing part of the photo to the fold.

Compile a list of the highlights of your trip at the end of the book. You could also ask the other members of your group about the moments they would like to include in the book.

End your book with some words of thanks or a summary. You can also add an impressive photo collage at the end to display the best moments of your trip. This is a souvenir that your fellow travellers will also appreciate.