From Paper to Digital – Telling our Stories in Scrap: Part I

This is the first in a short series of posts on understanding how we tell our stories using both words and pictures. It is based on a series of Visual Literacy workshops I offer for teachers and students in middle and high school.

A LITTLE HISTORY

We’ve been telling stories with pictures for centuries, but in the 19th and 20th centuries scrapbooking became a popular way for people to tell their own stories.  In the beginning scrapbooks were collections of memorabilia: letters, notes, matchbooks, napkins, dried flowers and of course, photos.

Sometime in the early 1980’s Marielen Christensen first shared her 50 volumes of her family memory books at the World Conference on Records in Utah. She opened Keeping Memories Alive, a scrapbooking store, and an industry was born.

I made my first scrapbook right about then, 1980-1982.  It was mostly a collection of paper keepsakes with a few photos.  I decorated with rubberstamps that I hand cut from erasers with an Exacto knife! (I still have them!)

Fortunately, the craft industry rose to the occasion and created thousands of amazing products dedicated to helping us tell our stories.

FROM PAPER TO DIGI

In the early 1990’s scanners and digital cameras became affordable for consumers.  More and more people owned home computers, and were familiar with graphic and publishing software from work.  This led to a small group of digital scrapbooking pioneers setting out to capture their memories on their computers.  They discovered that scrapping with the computer let them share their layouts more easily, create them more quickly, and with less expense.

While initially it was people experienced in graphic design and publishing driving the trend, software and other companies stepped up with software aimed at the scrapbooker that was easy to use and priced accessibly.  In addition, a whole industry grew online dedicated to sharing knowledge and skills and advancing the craft.  Digiscrap was here to stay!

I started digital scrapbooking around 2001, when I realized I could use the skills I’d acquired as a professional photo retoucher to lay out my daughter’s elementary school yearbook! And of course, what is a yearbook but a community scrapbook!  I had a total “headslap” moment, and my life in digiscrap was born.

ALWAYS EVOLVING

Early digital layouts reflected the paper scrapbooking styles of the times.  As people got more accomplished with their software, they started taking advantage of some of the techniques that were only available digitally.  Resized photos, text effects, blending and other neat ideas all contributed to the unique new digiscrap style.

Paper scrap trends continue to influence digiscrap trends, and we’re even seeing the influence starting to flow the other way a little bit.  But digital scrapbooking is also heavily influenced by the medium itself!  We often work on smaller screens which may push us to make our photos larger and our layouts simpler.  Many people don’t print their layouts and need to make them readable in galleries and online in even smaller formats, requiring more simplicity than most paper layouts.

Is this a good thing?  Yes and no.  Digital scrapbooking is maturing into its very own art form, with distinguishing characteristics, trends, and techniques.  Some might argue that we’ve lost the story some.  A focus on techniques and a desire for simplicity have led us to use fewer photos and less journaling in some cases.  Others might argue that we’re just telling the story differently, with more pages than ever before instead of more pictures on a page.

What do you see as the digital era influence on your pages?  If you paper scrapped before, do you scrap differently digitally?  Where do you see the digital influence taking us?

Next week we’ll explore the four ways we communicate stories graphically and how we can apply them to our storytelling.