Publisher's Corner

Continuing our series on publishing your portfolio through MagCloud, today we take a look at a few design ideas for using the new Digest product to present your work in a more compact format. Digest publications provide the same professional image quality and finishing you’ve always gotten with MagCloud, but with a trim size of 5.25″ wide by 8.25″ tall, they take up only about half the space in your bag. Plus with a cheaper price point (16 cents per page) you can stretch your budget a bit further, and get your work into the hands of even more potential customers.

The question is, how to design within this more constrained space and still highlight your work? To help you get started, we’ve listed a few ideas below…

Use Both Pages

Take full advantage of the available space with images of your work spanning both pages, and bleeding off the trim edges. If you are going to be opting for perfect binding and want to place your images across the spine, be sure to check out our tips for designing for perfect binding.

Highlight One Piece of Work Per Page

Place one image per page to create a kind of photobook. This format is particularly conducive to lookbooks for fashion collections, with each page containing one look.

Combine Images and Text Across a Spread

Make a photo of your work the focus of one page, either with a full bleed or as a contained image, and then include descriptive text on the opposing page. This way each spread focuses on one project, combining both imagery and text to tell the story of each piece of work.

Think Outside Portrait Orientation

Until we are able to offer a true landscape product, show off your work in a landscape format by rotating your content 90 degrees, such that the spine of the publication is on the top edge of the page. If you want to add some practically to your portfolio, and ensure it gets kept around for the coming year, use this rotated format to make a mini calendar, with each month highlighting a different piece of past work.

Create a Themed Booklet with a Segment of Your Work

When photographer Trey Hill learned about our new Digest format, he used it to combine a collection of his images into a photo story called Untouchable. These are images that are included as part of his larger 2010 Photography Annual, but the smaller form factor offers a more focused look at the story this series of photos tells. See for yourself how Trey has used this smaller format to tell his photo story: we’re taking 25% off the production costs on all print orders of Untouchable from now until the end of October.

Have you had a chance to experiment with our new Digest format to create your portfolio? Let us know in the comments what your design strategy has been.