The photo album was once a stalwart of family life. The tradition of bringing out the dusty books on special occasions, treating guests and new partners to the hundreds of photos from your 2005 package trip to Malaga is now all but lost. As photography went digital, the practice of printing out one’s snaps became more and more old hat, before mostly disappearing altogether to be replaced by the flicking through of a few pics on a small screen.
Amsterdam-based photo book brand, Foto Foto, however, is endeavouring to bring back this once-treasured pastime. The company’s affordable aim, with hardcover books starting at €30, is to encourage people of all ages to return to physical photo viewing by turning their digital photographs into curated hardcover coffee-table books.
The process is designed to be simple, putting in as few barriers as possible to create something that looks and feels very nice. Customers upload their chosen images to the platform, and the book’s design is automated, generating the page layout and proposed photographic sequence using its metadata, taking into account the times, dates and locations of the pics.
It’s not set in stone by any means – you can go in and rearrange as you like, adding copy and swap out images to help tell the story they wish to present. The automatic typography layouts help a lot too. All one needs to do is add the copy and Foto Foto systematically (and tastefully) arranges the type for you. Making any changes to text is then as simple as shuffling the layout, with no manual dragging needed. This customisation continues into the cover and material choices, such as inner and outer paper stock, print finish and binding, including layflat binding.
Foto Foto has collaborated with creatives, regularly publishing books made by photographers and creative directors to show off the aesthetic potential of its offering, as well as the reach that something as accessible as their photo books can have. Take David Van Dartel’s book Bluets, a calming collection of the photographer’s works featuring the colour blue, or Guido De Bruin’s Sin El Sol No Hay Nada, sunkissed publication that holds his documentary series about Spain.
For a photographer, it can serve as an incredibly simple, efficient form of creating a quality photobook. But equally, for a small business owner, it can offer a tactile brand touchpoint for audiences to engage with your practice, showing off what you’ve done and what you can do. It’s ultimately a straightforward way to create a striking, physical object with little inconvenience. Making it incredibly easy to bring the beloved item back into the home, and the studio too.