So for Christmas we recieved a set of flourish borders for design purposes (from my sister in law who is also a photographer). Matt and I have been wanting to play around with borders, create a new logo, work with borders, composites, and slowly work our way into album design. This is our first attempt. Let us know what you think, how we can improve, any pitfalls in designing templates etc...we want to learn and grow so critique and suggest away: ) (Note these were just composites for our blog not album pages)

As we begin to think about album design what are some rules of thumb we should be aware of...or good books on the subject?

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I like the idea of borders. If done right, they can look great. Ed is a good example...

I like the brown and the black one although the blue doesn't do it for me. If I were you, I would pick one color and stick with it.

I like the brown and black, but really, the blue rocks my socks... it might all be in lemon though. In that set, was there a birthday being celebrated at the reception too? It really screams birthday to me......

I'm glad that you mentioned that these were composites for your blog not album pages though because you changed up the moon so much between them.

The pictures are very nice and the borders are not too terrible. (brown is better)

Thanks Marianne, Tony and Red for commenting!
The blue composit is crazy and off the wall because they were celebrating New Year's Eve, the white balance for the flash shot was balanced for tungsten room lights but our flash wasn't gelled so it came out blue, and then we had the blue drink shot so we went a little crazy. Thanks for your honesty!

Hey guys your stuff looks awesone. I am loving what you post . great to see you posting stuff on FM.

First thing I noticed is that they reminded me of Ed's presentations. Ed's look....refined and very much a part of the image. I'm not sure what it is. maybe I've just seen his that way for such a long time that it just feels right. I didn't get that with these. I think it's his very alive, dynamic lighting and poses. These kinda give a counter feel to your and the design fights for my attention with the pictures them selves. If your gonna use them to the blog I'd test out another look here. Your blog presentation is very important. Hope it helps.

~Sam

Hi Sam,
Fair enough, now that I look it does resemble Ed's stuff that wasn't the intention we were just playing around with our new template. Thanks for the advice: )

I really like the borders, I also use something similiar. Maybe move your studio name into the border and out of the image, it's kinda big.