How to Create a Family Yearbook

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So What Is A Family Yearbook?
Gone are the days of 4×6 prints stuck onto photo album pages. The modern family version of a photo album is the customized photo book.

Why Should I Create A Family Yearbook?
As a photographer, I always urge my clients to print their photos rather than just store their digital files on a computer. But a few years ago, I realized I wasn’t really practicing what I preached. When our first daughter was born, I started creating a photo scrapbook but it became too time consuming so I switched to a digital scrapbook format that I thought I was doing great with. Then I realized, we now have 5 kids and I have never printed a single digital scrapbooking page – TOTAL MOM FAIL!
So I began to figure out a better option to have our memories printed in a way that we would all love to look back on in the years to come.

Where Do I Even Start?
The hardest part of creating a family yearbook is the organization that needs to happen before you print. Once you get that down, you can get your book made within 15-20 minutes!

Before we get started, it’s important to first decide what year you will start printing your yearbooks from. Since I began this goal in 2019, I decided to go back 2 years and print 2017 & 2018. In the future, I will work on printing 2 yearbooks per year until I have caught up (this year I will do 2016 & 2019). You can do more or less, depending on your budget, but they are well worth the cost!

1. Organize
The method I use for organizing my photos has worked for many years and helped me plan out my family yearbooks quickly. Try not to get frustrated with this organization task all in one sitting. Plan to spend 10-15 minutes per day for a week to get organized. I’ll tell you how I organize all my digital files below:

Start with a Family Folder
Create a sub-folder for each child and
Create a sub-folder for family photos
Within each child’s folder, create a folder for every year
– Now you can organize your children’s photos for every age.
Within the family photos folder, create a folder for every year
– Now you can organize your family photos by year and even further, by event (Christmas, Halloween, Fall Family Photos, Summer Vacation, etc.)

2. Pick Your Favorites
This can be difficult but try to pick your favorite photos from each event or milestone for the year. Copy and paste these favorites into a new folder just for the yearbook. For example, I have a folder on my desktop called “2019 Book”. This method will allow you to grab all the photos from one place rather than messing with multiple locations. Then you can simply delete the temporary folder when you are done.

3. Select Your Product
My Family Yearbooks are from Artifact Uprising. I use the Everyday Photo Book (40 pages) which are 7×7 hard cover books in a selection of fabric colors with thick layflat pages. I wanted something classic looking that will last for years on a shelf or coffee table. I use the copper foil for the cover and spine. Each of my yearbooks say “The House Family” on the cover and the year on the spine.

4. Upload Your Photos
Since you have all your photos for this project in one folder, this task is made easy.

5. Create Your Book
Using the AE Editor is very easy and straightforward. Select your page layouts (I make all my pages full bleed) and drag & drop your photo to the page. Once you have used an image, a check mark appears over it in your gallery, making it simple to see what you have left until you have completed your book. Add it to your shopping cart and checkout!

I’m absolutely thrilled with the quality and beauty of these photo books! There are definitely lots of photos that did not fit in my yearbooks but they are nicely organized on my computer (and backed up) and available anytime we want to look at them.