Book du jour - three generations

The book uses single sheets and drum leaf binding; the photos are of my grandmother, mother, and me, at various ages.

Many details are yet to be changed, many small decisions made. Getting to the maquette stage is quick, but making it as good as it could be takes longer! For instance, you can see above that the gold cover (the first reasonably appropriate paper that came to hand) is shoddy; and below, you get a glimpse of the endpapers, which are wrong, wrong, wrong - but again, came to hand in the heat of the moment -

So - once you have your idea, you need to think carefully about the materials. Proper books need proper planning; the wise words about "think it through to the end, know how you're going to present it" are as important with books, despite their seemingly standard format, as with more diverse artworks.

I rejected the idea of using this photo either on the title page or at the end -

"Too much information" to have "real people" in the book ... when you see just eyes, they could be anyone ... though they aren't quite anonymous. Does the same "personalisation" happen if you can read the names of the people (at the end of the book)? Does it matter that none of these women have middle names? (Thinking about all this, I realise I must revisit what the book is "about"... to get some distance from my own history.)

Before making another copy, I'll consider using some different photos, and how many of them (and what sequence) to use - and how much photoediting is needed. Also the book needs a good title, and maybe some other text - or at least the wording of the colophon needs to be decided. There is of course the small matter of what kind of endpapers and cover (and spine), and the size of the book, and what font for the title and colophon. I'm happy with the paper ... but maybe I shouldn't be? 

And whatever happened to the idea of using tracing paper overlays...