This layout is special not just because of the memories. This event marked the point where I switched from 35mm to digital photos. Remember those days? I’m extremely happy to be rid of the photo boxes, but this is a new creative path for me.
Not being wedded to 4×6 photos meant I had too many choices! I went through at least 5 ideas over 3 days before I came up with something.
My final sketch of the first page.
This was one of the most challenging pages I’ve done for this book and I really thought I’d lost my mojo for a while. Here were the goals:
- Resist the temptation to print every single picture, even if I could do tons of mini photo strips to make them fit.
- Make it interesting without having to fill the page. Filling the page completely was what I meant to do for my Big Game layouts, but I wanted to do something different here.
- Pick only the best couple clippings of all the newspapers I saved.
- Still make this a sports layout, but diversify a bit and not make the entire page blue and gold.
Here is what I came up with:
Draft of the first page.
First, I did a set of small photos running down the side of the first page. This way I can show a few more photos but still keep some “white space.” I added a couple larger feature pictures, a newspaper clipping and my game ticket to round everything out.
I kept the same headline style as I do for all sports pages, making sure to list important information about the game.
But how was I going to make the page different and not exclusively blue and gold? I thought about how traveling to get to the game was a huge part of the memory. I think we spent more time in the car than at the actual city where the game was.
Solution? Maps.
I got a California and Arizona map and backed each page with them. If you are a AAA member, you can get maps for free at your branch! We drove to Phoenix, so I traced the route and circled Phoenix on the page.
Drawing the route onto the page.
On the second page, I kept it simple with one newspaper clipping and a block at the bottom telling the story of the whirlwind trip.
First digital page, down! A lifetime to go!
