Next to go are the hand made albums (£80, really for an empty album?), the ones with little jewels, horrible windows cut into the cover and any kind of pretentious transparency. I don't like the ones at the top of a google list and I'm very dubious about the sponsored links, but seeing as this is already taking ages I'm forced to take these into consideration. I have found a site that appears to offer a decent balance between quality and price and it even has a site design that doesn't make me want to spoon-feed my own eyeballs to street urchins hanging about in the woods when they should by rights be at least pretending to attend their classes. So that's a plus then, out of interest the site is called: http://www.bobbooks.co.uk
The major pain is that it appears you have to use their own designing software, the awfully titled: 'Bob Designer' in order to compile your design. Presumably you are also forced into using their own set of templates re-appropriated with your own photos. I can see what the benefit of a system like this might be to someone whose design and artwork game is weak and I am sure that this system cost Bob a lot of money to develop. I'm also sure that were I ever to speak to Bob that he would tell me that his productivity has soared and that his customers love using it blah blah. Well, I don't wanna use Bob Designer thanks Bob, I want to use InDesign because I have spent a hundred yonks learning it's every in and out and thereafter making a custom design that is so slick Captain Stick wearing teflon boots, holding ski-poles and being fastly secured to two stationary objects (wall and counter) would slip on his arse quick as lightening. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! "Oh no!' He'd say as he tumbled to his slippery fate "In the face of such slickness" I just didn't stand a chance".
As I delved deeper and deeper looking for alternatives I was struck dumb by just how many of these places have a similar (if not exactly the same) system. Most of these places actually stipulated that designers can only supply PDFs or custom artwork if they place a minimum order or pay a £200!! surcharge. So you are actually being penalised for doing it right!
What is the worst Bob thinks is going to happen? That people make shitty design using Publisher or Word and submit these to his book firm together with a bunch of low-res RGB images or stuff stolen from Google? That's why professional designers exist isn't it and it's a large proportion of our whole industry, the ethos being: employ someone who knows about what they are doing in order to do a better job. By restricting people to a particular system and forcing them to use templates you might feel that you are empowering your customers but you are actually adding bricks to the wall of vanilla mediocrity that has become so prevalent in mainly template driven design. I will continue this thought stream with an opinion about the rise and rise of template driven advertising - but now I have found Blurb with their wealth of InDesign capability I'm off to do the wedding album.
