We’re off to a wedding this weekend! I’m very excited to see one of my uni flatmates get married (good luck Beth!) and feeling a little nostalgic, so have been flicking through my uni memories photobook. If like me your university days were full of quirky activities and in jokes I'm sure you'd be thrilled to have somewhere to gather the memories and remind you of the fun you had. Creating a university photobook is a great excuse to reminisce over old photos and even get in touch with old friends.
This was the first photobook I ever made. A colleague recommended Bonusprint, so that’s where I began.
I was fortunate to go to university in "the most beautiful of all the capitals of Europe", more commonly known as Edinburgh. I started the book with a scanned-in map of the city and a two-page spread of my favourite views. Some are my photos, others were taken by friends and one is a photo of a print that I bought in a local charity shop. Bonusprint had an interesting cobble effect background that worked perfectly behind these pictures.
The book progresses in roughly chronological order. I scanned my matriculation card and included that on top of a full page photo of my first year accommodation. I’m a bit of a hoarder, but once I’d included a picture of the card in the book I felt better about throwing it away - great for decluttering!
I added photos of places we used to hang out (coffee shops, sports clubs, outdoor spaces, pubs) and views of the university buildings. Little secret, some of these photos were taken on visits back, long after I’d graduated, so if you don’t have the pictures already it’s not too late to capture something that represents the memories.
It’s worth asking your friends to share their photos. When Beth and I travelled to Egypt I took a film camera, and have no idea what I did with the prints. Beth had a digital camera and was kind enough to share her pictures with me. The pages about Egypt were made almost entirely with her pictures, but they’re my memories too.
I included a page about exams and technical drawings from my dissertation project. I spent hours drawing those sketches, so I’m pleased that they’ve made it out of my dissertation and into my photobook. Did you know that if you stay up late enough with the radio on they eventually play the National Anthem? Everytime I see those pictures I’m reminded of burning the midnight oil that night!
I made lists of the music, books and films that I was obsessed with enjoyed. A few seconds of each instantly takes me back (Snow Patrol especially) so it was important to me to capture these in the book. I wanted it to look like they were pinned on a noticeboard, so I took photos of a corkboard and uploaded those, placing them behind the images of the notepad paper. It’s not perfect but it captures the spirit and I love the effect. This is one of the reasons I was glad to have chosen Bonusprint, as not all printing companies would have allowed me to place photos wherever I liked or size them to non-conventional dimensions.
I tried to think of a story for each page / 2 pages, for example where we lived, friends from my course, sporting activities, holidays, graduation etc). I’m glad I chose a 30cm square book as this allowed me to fit in lots of photos on each page, but I tried to intersperse these with full page spreads to give the eye somewhere to rest. As my pages were fairly busy I kept my backgrounds plain. For holiday pages I colour-coordinated the backgrounds and text to match the flag of the country I was visiting.
I can still remember how excited I was to receive my book and see the pictures printed. The pages are glossy and a decent weight. The book has plain sheets of paper and vellum at the beginning and end, which make it look expensive and would be a lovely spot to write a dedication if you’re giving the book as a gift. One of my favourite parts of the book is the photographic cover. I stretched a photograph of the Edinburgh skyline around the cover and particularly like the way I can see a tiny section of it on the spine when the book is lined up on the bookshelf.
The paper in the book is nice and thick and the colours are bright and true to life. Some of the pictures could be sharper, but I think this says more about the quality of my photography at the time! No matter, a picture doesn't have to be sharp to spark a memory.
This book never fails to put a smile on my face, and I can only imagine how much more it will mean to me the further I get from those uni years. Why not put your favourite memories down on paper too? And if you do, let me know how it turned out in the comments below.
Comments