Skills: Rule of Thirds

Have you ever struggled with where to put your photos on a digital scrapbooking page? I tend to scrap with a lot of templates, so I struggle when I need to make a page from scratch. That’s when the Rule of Thirds is most helpful to me. You’ve probably read about it with regard to photography, but the same principle can apply to design of a good scrapbook page. Basically, you imagine placing a “tic-tac-toe” grid on your page, dividing it into 9 equal sections. Then, place the main focal point of your layout design on one of the crossing points. SusyQScraps wrote a terrific article about this a few few years back, and you can read it here if you want to know more.

Let me show you a page from Krista, one of our Creative Team Members. She used Chelle’s Anchor’s Away and Anchor’s Away {alpha} to make her page. She also took some help from a template freebie from Fiddle-Dee-Dee Designs and shifted the elements a bit to follow the design principle in the Rule of Thirds. The focal point is clearly the large photo in the group of three. It is placed on the imaginary cross point on the bottom right of the tic-tac-toe grid, and my eye is immediately drawn to it. Then, for further emphasis, Krista has placed the title banner directly below the large image, and she has repeated the image in the smaller two photo spots.

Likewise, Jennifer used the same lower corner spot to place her focal point, but she used a single photo on her page. She used Chelle’s Choose the Right {TREK} for her page. I love the wooden letters in that included alpha.

Would you like some help making your page? Fiddle-Dee-Dee Designs has a freebie on the Scrap Orchard blog that follows the Rule of Thirds perfectly. Her focal point is a single photo, and she has placed it in the top right cross of the imaginary grid. Here’s a look at that template; the image in linked to the Scrap Orchard blog where you can grab the template as a free download.