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This is a question for all of you who have gotten books made by a printing service or are thinking of doing so:

 

I have recently switched from square pages to 8.5x11 pages and I that proportion, and that size paper is far less expensive too. So far I have made mine oriented in landscape, the 11" being the width, which works well for viewing on a monitor. But I am now planning to start using printing services which create bound books. I know you can get the books with the pages oriented either way, and for simplicity I'd like to pick one orientation and stay with it for all my layouts. I'm wondering if the portrait orientation is a better choice, since an 11" tall x 8.5" wide book would sit better on a shelf and might also be more pleasing to look at and just generally feel more balanced when viewing and turning pages in a book.

 

Can I ask, for those using an 8.5x11 type layout configuration, which orientation do you prefer and why?

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I have not had books printed professionally. But I do print my project 52 pages each year and the first year I did mine Portrait the size you are speaking of and this year I am doing them landscape and much prefer working with the landscape. I am finding it easier for placement of photos than the portrait orientation. Try it for yourself in the portrait orientation before you make the final decision.

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I haven't done this, but it doesn't seem like 11 inches wide would be unwieldy. This is a common format for cartoon collections, too. Just my opinion, but if your layouts are already landscape, I'd keep them like that.

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Coincidentally I am switching from square to rectangle. I've done a bit of research in the past few weeks and I've decided to go with landscape orientation. I have also changed my canvas size to 11.25 x 8.75 so that my pages will be sized for book printing with bleed. I tried several templates with portrait and landscape orientation and landscape worked better for me. The downside is that my landscape oriented books overhang by about 1/2" on my IKEA bookshelf which doesn't have much depth.

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I wasn't able to find a company that would do photo books in letter size in portrait orientation, although maybe I haven't looked far enough.

All I found did only landscape.

Cathrine did the Dental School yearbook in the portrait format. She used Mpix and they offer both formats. Her book turned out beautifully.

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I make an annual photobook of every day life, special events, adventures, etc. I use a landscape orientation and have my books printed by Blurb. The major advantage for me in using Blurb is that the book can have up to 440 pages. Some years I've come close to the max number of pages. My favorite size is the 8 X 10. I used that size in portrait orientation for a photobook of my daughter's engagement. For whatever reason, I found it really difficult to scrap pages in a portrait orientation. I found that Scrapgirl layout templates are easy to adapt to an 8 X 10 landscape format also.

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All of your comments are very helpful and have been inspiring me. I have done layouts in both orientations. I have realized that the reason I have preferred to lay out photos in landscape is that the monitor orientation is landscape. When I turned my monitor on end so it was oriented in portrait, it became easier to lay out in portrait orientation. The conclusion I draw, for myself anyway, is that I can create pages I like either way, it just takes a short amount of time to get used to the change. But pages created in landscape are nicer if they are intended to be viewed on the monitor, because the monitor itself is landscape.

 

But for printing books...I may have to alter my thinking. I own only 1 bound book, a sewing book, printed in landscape and I store it upwards on its spine so it fits into the bookshelf with the others. When I'm reading it, holding it open, it is very short and double-wide. When I read it I don't see any advantage in having it so wide compared to the height, in fact the flow from page to page is not as good, perhaps because I am used to reading books that are taller than they are wide. An 8.5 tall x 11 wide book held open is 8.5 tall by 22 wide, whereas an 11" tall x 8.5 wide opens only to 17" wide. See what I mean? The proportions when the book is held open are more square when the pages are printed in portrait and the two pages read more as a single page when the whole thing is more square.

 

Thinking about creating a book rather than a page is causing me to rethink a lot of things about my layouts, but books are the way that I want to go so I may have to consider a new set of best practices for making pages. Like gutters and bleed, which some have mentioned, and text placement. I wonder too if it would be okay to put a few landscape oriented individual pages into portrait oriented books. Has anyone done that?

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  • 3 months later...

Thanks girls. I've been having a hard time finding places that print 8.5x11 (a size I think is much easier to look at than a huge 12x12).

I am going to take the advice of you folks when I get ready to print.

*food for thought: photographers will tell you that whatever photos you want to retain, PRINT THEM. CD's digital pics on your computers, etc will denature over time. Even those stored in cloud. So, make your printed books often:)

 

Fellow scrapper,

Dede

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