Top 10 Design Tips for Creating a Beautiful Design

   #5 [ Use Only 3 Spread Designs Per Storybook ]

Minimize Your Design Work

As beginning designers, you do not need to over complicate your lives with having to come up with 10 different design spreads. Think of the book in terms of creating a simple introduction page, a simple closing page and a few spreads in between.

For the intro and closing of a sports book, such as Hockey, maybe a picture of the coach, some thank you/dedication text and the players names. The closing can just be an autograph page or some closing thoughts.

 Introduction / Dedication





 Closing / Autograph Page


Then all you need to do is come up with 3 different spreads that you really like and then duplicate them. Go to your Manage Pages and simply copy the spread. If you will notice in the example below, my headlines, top bar, photo sizes and placements are all exactly the same. All I've done to make them look different and unique is to change up the papers, change the headlines and pictures and then add a few unique embellishments or quotes.

Note: There is absolutely no need to re-invent the wheel on every spread. Changing simple elements on each page will completely change the look of the spread. I wouldn't place two of the identical spreads back-to-back but I would place a similar page arrangement every 3rd spread. For instance: Intro page, Spread A, Spread B, Spread C, Spread A, Spread B, Spread C, Spread A, Spread B, Spread C, Closing page

DESIGN TIP: Once you have developed your 3 spreads, you can duplicate the pages over and over again. As you begin to feel more comfortable, you might try mixing up some of the spreads that you have created but always make sure that the background remains consistent from page to page.