A Special Way to Celebrate my Dad’s 70th Birthday!

​
​This is a big day for my family! It’s my dad’s birthday and he is now 70!!! Unfortunately for us, he is not one to enjoy parties and big celebrations. He would rather crawl into a hole than endure being the spotlight. So my family and I had to get real creative and figure out another way to celebrate this big milestone.

​That’s when my mom had the grand idea of a photo book entitled “70 Reasons to Celebrate David Squier.” We had to gather 70 reasons to celebrate my dad so we invited all our friends and family to contribute a little something. After gathering MANY notes, photos, and trinkets, I got the lucky job of putting it all together. This was no simple task! And with a little more than a month to complete it, I had to get busy!

Nailing down the theme and overall design was the hardest part. I had a vision of gold stars but wasn’t quite sure how to execute it. I also knew that I needed a solid design to create unity between so many different contributed pieces. I played around and finally settled on some basic star shapes and colors paired with stylized text boxes which I would carry out through the entire book. I finalized the design with a star on each page indicating the number of the reason for celebrating. Then began the design execution – page by page the book began to quickly take shape. Integrating photos and messages from my dad’s childhood, college years, work life friends and family was a mountainous task. It took hours and hours to put everything together but now that it is done, we are thrilled with the result! No doubt this book will be something my dad can treasure!

Please check out some of my favorite pages in the book:

​If you would like to see more, you can view the entire book on blurb’s website here: http://blur.by/1aC5GUo

This was a really fun project for me as a designer and as a daughter! Making a book is always a challenge but the reward is so worth the effort. This was the fourth time I designed the book completely on my own in InDesign and then used Blurb to print it. I have always been VERY happy with the results. If you would like to do a similar project or have questions, please let me know and I would be happy to help.

But in the meantime, here’s to celebrating my dad’s 70th!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAPA!!!!!!! WE LOVE YOU 🙂

– Naphtalie Joy Joiner