Master's Monday: Remember Your Audience

In a perfect world friendships would last into our old years, our memory would continue to function perfectly and our descendants would know our life stories with 100% accuracy. We don’t live in perfect world, however. Most friendships end at some point, most memories start to fade and most of the time we consider ourselves smart if we can name our great grandparents and some tidbit more about them. Let’s fix that.

Let’s think for a minute who we’re making our scrapbooks for. I know there are some people who just scrapbook as a creative outlet, but I think for a majority of us, it’s to record our lives and our memories. So, we need to think about our audience. Who’s going to view our scrapbooks and what bits of information do they need that they might not know?

I remember working on an album for my grandma a few years ago, and while she could recall most first names of people in photographs – last names were difficult to recall. Our kids most likely aren’t going to know our childhood best friends last name, or our first crush’s name, unless we document that.

My husband has a great group of friends and they’ve been friends for at least 10 years, but I doubt they will always stay friends. A few years ago one of his buddies had a surprise birthday party and the took some pictures. While I recall each of his buddies last names currently, I know that in my later years their last names will be the farthest thing from my mind. So, I made sure to include each last name on the layout I made. This way, years from now, we’ll be able to recall exactly who these men were.

I used Out Of This World for this layout. Please remember to think about who your audience will be when scrapping. It’ll save everyone time and heartache in years to come.