Hey! It’s Charlotte from the customer service team 😊 One of the most common questions I get is “how do I create custom embossings?” so I’ve put together a super simple Canva tutorial to help you out! Why Canva? Canva is an easy-to-use online design tool that makes design accessible to everyone —no need for complex software like Illustrator! With a library full of modern fonts and illustrations, your ability to create beautiful, custom embossing designs for your clients is endless. 1) Gather Inspiration Start by heading to Pinterest to collect inspiration for your To View More >>

Previous |  Contents | Next Download the eBook Bad taste takes a while to show up, but as soon as it does it’s embarrassing. How to avoid it? Start by keeping it simple. If in doubt, leave it out. The half life of crap In her book The Mesh, Lisa Gansky talks about “the half life of crap” – about cheap manufactured products and how long they last. Or rather don’t last. Her point is that the half life of crap products is way too short. They get boring or they break. They end up at the back of your garage or as land fill. Our poor planet can’t afford To View More >>

Previous |  Contents | Next Download the eBook These are conversation starters, not a test. There’s more than one “right answer”. 1. Are there too many photographers? Do you think it’s different now to 10-20 years ago? If so, why? How does it impact your business, and can you do anything about it? 2. What is it that enables people to earn a living cooking, writing or taking pictures when almost everyone can do those things? What’s special about them? 3. How many commissions — weddings, portrait sittings etc — do you need, and how much does To View More >>

We believe that the best way to sell albums and other products is to create a tailored line that suits your market, personal imagery and brand. And we’ve realised that one little thing standing in the way is that you can’t customise our current cover material swatches to help you do that — select products, materials and colours, and then guide your clients to the right choice. So we've decided to relaunch our cover swatches to suit. We're now offering two different cover swatch tools, to choose your materials and to display them beautifully to clients.  The first is To View More >>

As everyone knows, Covid has been very disruptive for business — from product availability to courier services to prices — and it’s starting to feel like the “new normal”. So we’re starting the year with an updated cover material range, and a new strategy to move this forward in the future. We’re excited about it, but we also know that any change can raise questions, which we’ve tried to answer in advance here. We’d love your feedback! Please take a few minutes to read the following, but if you just want to see the updates follow To View More >>

We love seeing our books and albums used for out-of-the-ordinary projects, so were delighted when Doyle Yachts asked us to create a book to promote their handmade sails. Months later and we get to share it with you. We love how powerful the full bleed pages look, and think this is going to really help set them apart. Doyle chose to order two 12x12 Q Book Lights, and asked us for a complete 80 page design (160 sides). This meant we had enough room for large images, but also space to incorporate text throughout the design to explain different aspects of the sails. Projects To View More >>

Studios who want to offer "everything Queensberry" have found our starter kits and treasure boxes very useful in the past, but increasingly the data tells us that • Sample Albums are far more effective sales tools, and • not everyone wants to offer all our materials or colours! In fact many studios show nothing but their samples, and offer alternatives only if they're asked.  Which is why we’ve redesigned our cover swatches and paper samplers to make them more affordable, and also more flexible — so you can show what you want To View More >>

Following on from last week's post, here are a few more album design tips. For all you photographers designing your own.  Let them breathe… We touched on cropping last time, but it's worth repeating! Sure photo-bombing is fun, but generally we like the core elements of an image to have a nice amount of breathing space to the edge of the page, or image "frame". In fact think of it exactly like framing a picture: it gives the subject a sense of intent and importance. Jamming things up against the image edge often looks awkward. But "breathing To View More >>

We caught up with two of the design team,  Simon and Rachel, to talk all things album design. Here are their top four tips for creating beautiful, clean layouts. Less is more Rachel: Unclutter your design. It’s simple. Let the key images and high quality materials of an album speak for themselves. If you notice the design, it’s taking precedence over the images – good design is effortless. Simon: If the design is loaded with images the hero shots can be lost among a forest of images. By keeping the image selection minimal, you’ll free up space and make the rest To View More >>

Here's a handy tip if you're using our free design service. Please hit the SEND button, or we won't get your feedback. (SAVE adds them to the database but doesn't pass them to us.) You'll find the button at the bottom right of the screen, as in the graphic. We normally have design edits done within 24 hours, so if you don't hear from us promptly, take a look in Workspace to double check that you sent the comments. By the way the same applies to feedback from your clients. If you haven't heard from them, ask them to check that they've hit the Send Feedback button, To View More >>