In Loving Memory

In Loving Memory is a remembrance booklet for a service, a wake, or the weeks after, when people ask for a photo and you would rather give them a small book. It is designed so that one person can put it together in an evening and print thirty copies on a home printer the next morning. The wedding style suits it: ivory paper, Cormorant Garamond for the name, thin gold rules and a soft fade that helps old prints and recent phone photos sit together. The cover holds a photo with the name and the dates. Page two is a title page for the service details or a dedication. The inside pages give framed portraits with wide margins, two quote pages for readings or their own words, photos with captions and dates that can walk through the decades, a two-photo page, two stacked, a photo with a journal block for a tribute of about seventy words, and a five-photo collage for the family around them. The back cover has a small photo and a closing line.

Scan or photograph old prints flat in daylight; the frames hide worn edges and the fade evens colour. Order the caption pages by date so the book reads as a life. Ask two or three people for a sentence each for the quote pages. Print on a heavier ivory or white stock, 120 to 160 gsm, so it feels considered; score the spine before folding if you use the heavier paper. Sixteen pages is four sheets and two staples, and thirty copies is two hours at a kitchen table with help. Nineteen photos is the full count; a book with twelve looks just as complete.

Printing this booklet means two pages per side on both sides of the sheet: 16 pages is 4 sheets of A4 or Letter, nested and folded to A5 or half-letter. If your printer duplexes, use the flip-edge setting shown on the download card; if not, print Side A, reload the stack and print Side B, and run the free one-sheet test page first so you learn your printer's flip before spending photo paper. 100 to 120 gsm matte paper for the inside, 160 to 200 gsm for the cover if your printer's bypass tray takes it, and score the fold on anything heavier than 160 gsm. Two staples on the spine with a long-arm stapler, or open a normal stapler flat over a folded towel. The template uses 19 photos across 16 pages.