Project Diptych | Creating Your Own Photographic Book

Bookmaking combines almost all of my passions in life; being visual, inspiring others, planning/thinking of creative adventures, writing text, documenting life and enjoying beautiful smart books in general. It’s all there!

iHanna

I’m reading my own post How to make a Blurb Photo Book published in April last year and I realize I’ve already discussed most of the methods of making a book using InDesign and Blurb there, but never showed you images from inside the Diptych book! It’s for sale at Blurb and I think it’s a great little gem of a book. It would be a great read if you want to do a photographic project together with someone else or as a gift for a friend that is into photography!

Let’t take a look at our diptych project and the book that came out of it.

It’s a square book 18×18 centimeter (7×7 inches) with 70 full color pages on premium paper (a 100-pound text silk-finish paper that provides, according to Blurb, stellar image quality)!

I wrote a few pages about the project as a foreword in it, and ended with resources and further inspiration – just like a real book!

An excerpt from my foreword

This book was born out of my need to inspire others as well as myself. In a way this is a small contribution to the world saying it’s possible to sit by yourself at home and still not be that lonely. There are like minded out there. You can reach out, grab someone and ask for friendship. I was lucky this time and was grabbed. I was smart this time, and said yes please.

You don’t have to be single or alone to feel lonely sometimes. As a creative whirlwind and introvert person I know this. It can be a mindset hard to shift.

With this project, for thirty days, I felt that my mind did shift. I couldn’t even meet Sophie but as my brain was occupied with our project I felt the togetherness of a joint venture.

It is a small project yes, but one that reminded me of how much I enjoy everyday photography, creative collaborations and the power of friendship. As you look through the book, I hope you will feel this too.

I then go on to explain how we got started, how we set up our project and what a diptych is and invite the reader to join in and do a similar project.

If you’re shopping at Blurb maybe you would be interested in other books there? I haven’t bought them but if I had money I’d add these to my shopping cart:

• Number 47 – a personal art journal by Becky New
• I can’t Apologise Enough – humorous sketches by David Fullarton
• Me time self published drawings by Danny Gregory
• Hats for Haiti – silly beautiful self portraits from flickr with people in hats (you can preview the whole book, nice! I love silly portraits like these!)
• Oh, and don’t forget because 2 is better than 1 – 30 diptychs to inspire creativity by iHanna. Yeah, add this one too! ;-) You can preview it below!

The joy of making and receiving a book in the mail is tremendous. The joy factor could be forgotten but should not be overlooked! I am reminded of this when I watch the book video from the happy day I got my first self-published book in the mail. I want to experience that feeling again and again – so I better get started on the next one!

Some more photos from the because 2 is better than 1 book.

Pin it to remember this idea:

Blurb has created a widget that lets the publisher use the preview anywhere. It is a bit slow, but I think it is fun that it turns the pages just like a real book! Flip through a few pages of the book here: because 2 is better than 1 by Hanna Andersson.

If you’re instead shopping books at Lulu get my first book, A Creative Year there, and also add Suzi Blu’s image book Student Gallery 2009. It looks very inspiring to me.

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