Creating a Heritage Photobook - Part II

This post is a continuation of my previous post - Creating a Heritage Photobook - Part I. This post focuses on the part of the process dealing with deciding what scrap booking kit(s) to use and some things to consider with regard to that. I will then follow up with a third post to discuss a method for planning the book layout.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, for my Heritage book I have decided that I want it to have a cohesive look, and so I am leaning toward using one large mega-kit to build all of the pages. That way the book will hopefully have a cohesive, coordinated look, but still have variety. Another way to achieve this, as ForgetMeNots pointed out in a comment to my earlier post, is to choose multiple kits by the same designer, since many designers have a particular style that carries through in their various kits. Just to expand on that idea, if the colors aren't quite right, elements and/or papers could be recolored to coordinate.

Another thing to be aware of when choosing the kit(s) is the designer TOU. While I am starting to see more kits marked S4H/S4O (scrap for hire/scrap for others) friendly, many are PU (personal use) only. If you are planning on only printing out one book for yourself, personal use kits would be okay to use. I am thinking in my case, however, I would need the kit I use to be S4H/S4O friendly. Since the Heritage book I am making will focus on the lives of my grandparents and their ancestors, it may also be of interest to my aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins and possibly other relatives. And I would want them to be able to have copies should they want one. I would think that making additional copies of a photobook or even just a single layout or two would fall under the S4O (scrap for others) category. (Particularly if the recipient is paying the copying fees.)

It is my understanding that if you want to use a kit marked for personal use kit as I described above (i.e. making copies of layouts for others), you would have to contact the designer to see if she (or he) will allow it.  It is possible that the designer will ask you to purchase a commercial license. This whole issue of licensing and commercial use vs. personal use is actually another reason why I am thinking about designing my own kit for the book I am making. Then I won't have to worry about copyrights, terms of use, commercial licenses or any of the legal stuff if later on down the line a relative would like a copy of one or more of the pages.

That's it for this post. I'll follow up with more on the planning the book layout later.

~J