Guidance - Coffee table (large format) book

[Aaron____B]

Hi all,

In 35 years of PM/ID usage I've mostly designed b/w newsletters, books, and flyers. Now I'm helping my wife put together a memoir of both classic photos and longer-than-usual memories (probably 20,000 words of text), and I've realized I've got something the photobook sites can't handle. So here we go with ID.

I'm having trouble finding guidance on the usual help sites (Lynda, Adobe, etc.)

Does someone design big format books in this community? If so can you recommend some resources? I'm thinking

• templates for large formats
• how-to guides geared to ID + large format (including workflow — how do you do proofs when all you own is a b/w laser?)
• printing and material specs (most common sizes, paper stocks, etc.)

Our book was originally designed for friends and family, but I've come up with a marketing plan to crowdfund it. The thing will be 160-200 pages with interiors in color. I have the images in Lightroom. 

Thanks!

[Derek Cross]

It depends on what you call a large format book.

There are a number of companies that offer short-run case-bound Photo-books using InDesign and, alternatively, their own propriety software – Blurb is typical:

https://www.blurb.com

[Aaron____B]

Aha! Blurb! I have an account there — thanks! That's a good start. I've just downloaded the plug-in. And there are lots of resources there.

To answer your question, most photo books have far too little breathing room in them for text. If we were writing just captions they would be fine, but our text consists of 15 to 20 chapters plus captions. Think of a catalog for an artist's retrospective, or an art book on a style or historical period, that's pretty close to describing a long life with some interesting episodes and 200 to 300 curated pieces of photo art and ephemera.