I've had the great fortune to having had (& now lost) 2 very wonderful, very different best friends (who knew each other) in my adult life. The first loss was almost 14 years ago. I'd put together a regular photo album of pictures, had wanted for years to do something more with them, something I could share with Christopher's mom, as well as to keep my memories alive for me. I didn't want to do it until I could do it "right". Finally, last year, inspiration struck.
Since Christopher was a night person & often wore black, I broke out of my white background mold & went with white text on a black background. To achieve the look I wanted, I printed "full bleed" on 11x17 paper & cropped each page to 8.5x11 resulting in no white border around the page. The cover is done the same way, & is behind the plastic cover of a black view binder, making it appear almost as tho the cover page & album background are one.
I wanted to share my memories with Christopher's mom, so I wrote them down chronologically, adding my photos where I had them, & other images (ephemera of mine & images from the web) to fill out the pages. A few of the pages are writing only, but I tried to avoid having too many of those. Each page is headlined with "Christopher" (actually his full name is on the real album) on the left-hand pages & "Memories of a Friend" on the right-hand pages. To be more different, & to go along with the theme that I was writing down memories to share, I chose a handwriting font (breaking out & being different! LOL)
Will post the cover & 2 pages of the album to give you a feel for them. Sorry I can't post more (with this style it's difficult to delete all the personal information without compromising the "flavor" & intent of the pages).
It's album #8 at