Field Notes

Field Notes is a travel booklet with room to write. It is built for the trip that had a story, the two weeks with a route, the honeymoon, the walk that took a month, and for the traveller who kept notes on their phone and wants them next to the pictures. The kraft style prints a brown paper tone with dark ink, Fraunces for the headings and a small shadow under each photo, so it looks like a well-used notebook. The cover has a photo, the destination and the dates. Three journal pages spaced through the booklet each hold a photo over a block of text of about seventy words, enough for one leg of the journey each. Around them sit full-bleed landscapes, a two-photo page with a caption, photos with captions and dates, a three-frame strip, a four-photo grid, two photos stacked, a six-photo contact sheet for the food and the signs and the tickets, and a framed photo before a closing quote.

The back cover carries a small photo and a sign-off. Structure the book by day or by place and write the journal pages first; they set the order of everything else. Landscapes belong on the full pages, phone portraits and food shots in the grids and the contact sheet, where the small squares suit them. The brown page colour is printed, so any white paper works, though an inkjet on a slightly cream 120 gsm stock looks closest to real kraft. Photos on a printed kraft background read best if they are bright; the style's shadow separates them from the page. Twenty-seven photos is the count for the full book; if you have fewer, the editor drops layouts rather than leaving holes.

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 27 photos across 16 pages.