Three points! 1. Investigate and determine your clients needs, limitations, and dreams. 2. Establish design objectives. 3. Exceed your clients' expectations.

We set the parameters of size, style, and content from discussions with our client prior to the wedding. Having a series of questions to answer on a sheet means you get the information you need. Album type, size, and budget are the first questions. Then how many albums and what these would do. We gauge their response to our sample albums and ask questions about what might be important. We define the style by giving them a key description and asking them to elaborate on what that might mean for them. We use words like Story Book, Creative, Classic, Contemporary, Simple, to give us a general direction to work with. And then we create a skeleton. This has the ‘thread(s)’ for the story and gaps for the things we are not sure of. We most often use the sequence of events to determine the order of appearance. Then we go crazy. Play some vintage Split Enz and let our hair down. It's that Flow thing. We design beyond their expectations. We look for images they must have and, if we can, we do some artwork on them. We leave gaps for things like the family images. And then we stop and review... Give the images a reason for being, so that you can discuss them as part of a whole rather than as unique entities. This gives them a geater chance of being in the final selection. Include more pages than they wanted - to tell the story better - to give them something to decide on, and to potentially make a better sale. The key things are to let them change anything they need to … and commit to better research if you got any of the fundamentals wrong. Making changes and choices means that they are involved. PJ Remix is important to this. It makes editing, hunting for images and interacting with the clients quick and easy, but not too easy. Very important - we only make changes to a duplicate of the original design. Think about duplicating the album design in the Browse window of PJ Remix so you can offer alternative designs. Easily turn your plan into an amazing slideshow for them to view when they walk in the door, before they see the rest of their images. [caption id="attachment_671" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Use the x2 button to duplicate your design"][/caption] If it is taking too long consider using templates to streamline the workflow, or listen to more upbeat music. There you go. This works. Make the time for this to happen. Even if you don't make the sale, if you have done your job right, they will share the experience with their friends who could come to you in the fututre.  At all times remember that everything you do is for the long term benefits not the cash in your pocket today. Take care Johannes