Our Favourite Things About Momento

09 Oct Our Favourite Things About Momento

I’ve recently been working on a photo book project for my mum for her 70th birthday which we celebrated late last month – Happy Birthday Mum! Today I wanted to give you a little peak inside that book and also go into a bit of detail about WHY we love Momento so much.

BACKGROUND

If you have been reading this blog for some time you will know that my mum is one of 11 children. A big family means LOTS of stories and what better way to capture those stories than in a photo book. Knowing that I had a lot of photos and data to collect I started working on this book earlier this year in between jobs and mostly late at night. I even tricked mum into writing the stories herself for a creative writing class she has been attending and then repurposed them in this book (cheeky, I know). It has been a labour of love, especially getting all the dates right but one I have relished and enjoyed and much of that was thanks to the wonderful software from Momento. Please note that this post will not receive any commission from Momento we simply love their products and services and trust me we have tried A LOT of different ones. In saying that we don’t get anything but YOU DO… click here for 20% off your first book from Momento.

A FEW OF OUR FAVOURITE THINGS ABOUT MOMENTO SOFTWARE, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

• FLEXIBILITY

For anyone that has used photo book software you will be familiar with theme package options, that you pre-select when you are first creating your book. For many of those themes you are locked into designs with little flexibility options to change or amend elements to suit your personal taste. Sure they are easy to use if you like every single element in the package, but what if you don’t like particular frames, backgrounds, embellishments, etc? Take this example below from the 70th Birthday Book:

Being a family history book I wanted to include a tree theme to metaphorically represent the family tree branches. Momento had this tree image available in it’s embellishment sets in a bright green. I had already selected my colour palette (more about that soon) and I was looking for more subdued tones (as you can see above the original green clashed with my background). Because of the preset colour tools available to me, namely in this case the option to change the image to grayscale I was able to, with the click of one button, change the tree to grey. I will note that I was also able to use the opacity tool and try a lighter version of the green but in this case, below was what I went with. I was not locked into one colour, shape or version of the embellishment that I had chosen for my theme.

I was also able to continue the theme with some leaves for each family tree branch and again customise them to my personal taste rather than be locked into the ‘out of the box’ options.

• COLOUR PALETTE

This ties into flexibility but for this book I choose 3 main colours to theme the family tree chapters. Green for my grandparents pages and the pages with all 11 siblings, mauve for the 6 girls and blue for the 5 boys. You can see the green and mauve above and the blue below.  Those colours were all chosen from a large number of background page options but once again they have been customised to my personal taste using the opacity tool. Check out just how bright they were to start with.

You might wonder where the colour palette idea came from?  Well see Uncle George’s singlet above? Blue is my favourite colour 🙂 I just played around with matching tones and options with all the choices I had from Momento it wasn’t hard to find a combination I liked.

• OPTIONAL EXTRAS
  • This was always going to be a special book (for a special occasion) so I gave myself full range in the choice of optional extras. Like layflat to compliment my double page spread designs, LINEN cover with embossed title that I will share with you as soon as she unwraps it. Keep an eye on social media for an unwrapping video.
  • I also added one of Momento’s gift boxes, they also have clam shell boxes and a variety of types of paper to suit your project.
• CUSTOMER SERVICE
  • To me this is one of the most important things any business can get right, be it a service or a product and Momento get it right on both accounts. Having never ordered a linen cover I was unsure of how closely the colours on display on my screen were going to be to the real thing. What to do? The linen cover option as an extra is a financial investment so I wanted to get it right and not have it clash with my internal pages. I had 3 options. I could email my proof file to customer service and ask for a designer’s advice. Pick up the phone and talk to them direct or even jump in the car and physically touch and see a sample in their Chippendale display rooms. I took the first option and was as expected happy with the speedy phone call I received and the advice I was given.
  • They also have some great tutorial videos for anyone needing help with their design tools.

There are many more things we love about Momento and we highly recommend that you use them for your next special project, don’t forget the discount on your first book.