Nowadays creating a stylish photo book to eternalize certain moments is child’s play; it only requires a few clicks in an online photo book builder and the photo book is already on its way to becoming part of an ever-growing collection. But in the case of photo books it’s particularly true that the final product is judged by its cover – and if the wrong cover is chosen it could easily ruin the experience, no matter how spectacular the book’s content is.
As such, the best thing you can do before wrapping the project up is to stop for a moment and think about which cover would be most fitting for the book.
Decisions, Decisions…
The good news is that photo printing services never prevent customers from creating their photo books exactly the way they envisioned them. This means that no matter what the content of the book is, designing the cover and selecting its material is always down to the customer.
However, since the photo book’s cover is the very first thing that readers will encounter when seeing the final product with their own eyes, avoiding a stylistic hodgepodge where the cover and the book’s content are not relevant to one another is basically a must – unless, of course, an unconventional cover was intentional from the start. To get the perfect cover, one good strategy is to prepare for the photo book’s construction in advance by going through the following questionnaire:
- What’s the story the photo book will tell?
- What’s the overall color scheme of the book’s content?
- What kind of photo paper and binding will be used?
- What is the size of the book going to be?
- Will it be just one copy or more?
- Where will the photo book(s) be displayed?
Granted, these questions may seem quite generic – and most photo book editors provide the option to change the book’s cover any time before ordering – but with the answers to these in mind it’s easier to select a matching cover and therefore imagine the final product.
Now there is only one question left: what options are available for photo book covers?
The Most Common Photo Book Covers
Softcover
Not only are softcover books the cheapest but they’re also the easiest to reproduce and to carry around. Softcovers are fully customizable too, meaning that when it comes to the design of the book there are no limits but the imagination. It’s worth noting, however, that softcover photo books usually cannot be ordered in larger sizes – any bigger than 8×8 or 10×10 inches – and/or with higher-quality photo paper and special bindings like layflat as they cannot provide the same sturdiness as their hardcover counterparts.
And since it’s mostly associated with capturing conventional moments in a quick yet stylish way, a softcover is usually ideal for covering books with more casual content like travelling, recipes, or the recap of the previous year.
Hardcover
Basically, hardcover – the image wrap version in particular – is perhaps the best option for a number of reasons. For starters, it provides the sturdiness that photo books are associated with, but it’s also fully customizable just like softcovers. And not only are hardcover photo books available in almost every size and shape – with the exception of smaller books – but they are perfect for virtually any occasion and can even be upgraded with many extras like a dust jacket, layflat binding, or finer photo paper.
Simply put, unless you are looking for covers made out of more refined materials, a hardcover can be chosen any time.
Linen and Leather Cover
Although they are only available for medium or large photo books and the customization options are usually limited to just the color and whether the front cover should be created with a die-cut window, there is often the option to opt for linen and (genuine) leather cover types. These are by far the best types to opt for if you want to make the book truly stand out from the rest. And since these covers easily grab the attention of readers with their stellar appearance, the book’s content should also be equally spectacular. As such, linen and leather cover books are ideal for eternalizing once-in-a-lifetime moments like a wedding, as well as adding special touches to the final product in the form of better photo paper and special bindings.
Best Photo Books of 2024
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