How To Create A Family Yearbook

What do you do with all of the photos you take of your family?
(You DO take photos of your family, right?)

For years, I lived with guilt over not knowing what to do with the photos I took of my life.
Do I print them as 4×6’s and put them in a shoebox? (I tried that, but didn’t see the point.)
Do I print them and scrapbook them? (I tried that, but learned VERY quickly that I don’t care for scrapbooking – too much time and money involved.)
Do I just leave them on my harddrives, hoping to one day to find a solution?

So, that is where I was at the end of 2019. I didn’t have a process or any idea of what I should do with my photos. It didn’t discourage me from taking photos – I just didn’t know what to do with them after-the-fact (besides blogging a few and posting them on social media.)

Enter: Katelyn James. She is a wedding photographer and educator in Virginia. I’ve followed KJ (as a wedding photographer) forever – probably over a decade now. And somewhere around 2017/2018, she started sharing her own process for what she does with her personal photos – and I decided: I wanted to give it a try.

So, as 2019 came to a close, I started pulling images to create a family yearbook. My process was disjointed and clumsy – I had no idea what I was doing! But I pressed on and in March of 2020, I ordered my first family yearbook.

It came in the mail and I have NEVER looked back.

Since then, I have designed four massive family yearbooks, chronicling our lives from 2019 through 2022. My books are a mix of iPhone photos and “big camera” photos and over the last few years, I’ve really refined and honed in my process. It’s a monumental task, but one I’ve dedicated to doing because I see the rewards of the work.

Here’s my process to creating a family yearbook:

STEP 1: Choose your images

I sit down in January and “cull” (which simply means “to select from a large group) through every single image I took over the course of the previous year.
Yes, it’s a huge task.
Yes, it takes me several days.
Yes, it can be overwhelming.
But, I break it down in manageable chunks and do my best to enjoy the process (if you stop looking at it as a “chore” and instead enjoy the process of re-living your memories, it becomes much more enjoyable!)

I copy all of my MOST favorite images into their own monthly folder (which I break down by month) called “FAMILY FAVORITES” that is saved on my Desktop.

After you’ve pulled your images, you are ready to get designing!

STEP 2: Designing your book

Depending on where you plan to order your album from, will determine how you design your book.

Many book-printing companies have their own design software built into their website or as an app you can download. Chatbooks, Shutterfly, and Blurb all have their own design software!

I use a program called AlbumStomp – mostly because I’m familiar with it from using it to design wedding albums. It’s SUPER easy and if you are going to be designing lots of albums, it might be something to consider investing in. (As of the writing of this blog post, AlbumStomp is $99 – they do run sales and typically have a really great Black Friday sale!)

From there – you just start putting photos on your pages!

I design and save each month individually (otherwise, it gets overwhelming and the app gets REALLY slow). Again, this process can feel very long and overwhelming, but if you break it down by MONTH, it will be easier to tackle!

For my family yearbooks: I start each month by printing the month’s name at the top of the page.
I know other people not only document the month’s name, but also type up a small overview of the month (adding words along with their photos). I don’t add words to my yearbooks, but that’s the beauty of these these books! You can do whatever works best (and seems like it makes the most sense) to you! The sky is the limit!

STEP 3: Ordering your book

I order my family yearbooks from Blub. Because I’m on their email list, and I know they do “big” sales about once a quarter, SO I design my book, but then WAIT (which is painful sometimes) for one of those sales to come around. It’s tough to wait, but it saves me $100-150, so it’s totally worth it!

The last “design” step is to create your cover. I do this in Photoshop, but you can do it within your design software as well. Blurb recommends waiting until you finish your book design to design your cover, because depending on how many pages you have, will determine how thick your spine needs to be.

I order a 12×12 inch book and I typically come very close to maxing out the size (the largest 12×12 book that Blurb prints is 440 pages – and I usually end up with around 420-430 pages!). Because I’m maxing a book of this size, the only paper option I can utilize is the “standard paper” – there are more premium papers available, but they are thicker, and there are smaller limits to how many pages fit in a book. I’ve always been happy with the “standard paper” – so that’s what I continue to go with!

STEP 4: Enjoying your book

The hardest part of the whole process is ordering your book and then WAITING for it to be printed, assembled, and mailed to you. This process typically takes about 2-3 weeks – and during that time, I do my best not to think about my book!

But once I get that email that says it’s been shipped – you better believe I watch that tracking like a hawk and run to the door the second I see it’s being delivered!

My family yearbooks are PRECIOUS to me.
But they are huge and heavy, so we don’t break them out to look at them that often. My kids aren’t quite old enough for me to let them have full access to my books independently and whenever they want, so we will sit and look at them together. So many beautiful memories are instantly re-lived when we open up these books and that makes them absolutely PRICELESS.

If you have specific questions about the process of designing a family yearbook – I’d love to answer them! Either leave me a comment below or send me a message! I’m happy to help in any way!