One book, fewer decisions
So many options, and yet - does the size of the spine really matter to you?
Sit down to make a photo book on most systems and the first thing you meet is a wall of choices. Portrait or landscape or square. Six sizes. Four cover types. Matte or gloss or lustre. Layflat or standard. Three paper weights. Before you've placed a single photo, you've been asked to have opinions about things you've never thought about and may never think about again.
Some people enjoy that. Many more find it quietly draining - not because any one choice is hard, but because together they turn a nice afternoon of arranging photos into a series of small decisions with no obvious right answer. Choice feels like generosity, but past a point it mostly buys anxiety.
So we did the deciding once, on your behalf, and then stopped.
RGBloom makes one book: a 21 by 21 centimetre square, 28 pages on 150gsm silk paper, with a gloss-laminated cover on 300gsm silk card. We chose those because they make a lovely book across the widest range of photos, and because a square suits both a portrait and a landscape shot without a fuss. That's the whole range. You don't choose the size, because we already have, and we think the one we chose is a good one.
The same thinking runs through the editor. We've worked hard to keep it calm: to show you your book and the few things you actually need, and to keep everything else out of the way until you want it. A screen crowded with panels and toolbars is its own kind of choice-anxiety - a dozen buttons all asking for attention at once - and we'd rather the photos were the loudest thing on the page.
There's an honest limit to admit. One book won't be the right book for every person or every occasion, and we know it. We'd rather do a single thing genuinely well than fifteen things adequately. When there's a second size worth adding - one that earns its place rather than just lengthening the menu - we'll add it, and not before.
Fewer decisions, made with care, so you can get on with the part that matters: which photos, and where they go.