A Kolo friend snapped this picture when she spotted a Kolo Newbury photo album displaying a local restaurant's drink menu. The Alcove is a French café and bakery located in Los Feliz, CA.

-Kate

Liz Tamanaha, owner and blog editor of Paislee Press, recently started a discussion through her blog on album design called Blueprints: Conversations In Album Design. Liz suggests using Kolo Cortina and Kolo Catalina photo albums due to their design and simplicity. Paislee Press inspires the visitors to be creative while also “embracing the inner minimalist.” Simplicity can often bring out the most creative and elegant designs. Read a past post about using white space in an album to let your pictures breathe.

Each post in the series will answer a question from a visitor (from album experts to beginners). Discussions will start with questions ranging from as simple as “where do I begin?” to thoughts on complex album design.

Paislee Press also offers different templates to download to make creating an album even easier.

Stay tuned for more.

-Kate

The influential web site TopTen Reviews recently ranked myKOLO Photo Books in the Top 10 out of hundreds of companies, even though myKOLO is relatively new to the digital photo book market. myKOLO beat out some pretty big names, so the folks at Kolo are delighted, and say they’re just getting started.

The review said:

With Kolo, presentation comes first and foremost. Detailing is impeccable, with attention given duly to both photo quality and binding quality.

Simply access myKOLO at kolo.com. Just upload your photographs and have Kolo print and assemble a custom Kolo photo book for you. You can choose a Kolo Newport photo album, and have your photos printed directly onto the pages, with captions if you like.

Or have 4”x6” prints made and loaded into a Kolo Noci for you. (It’s actually quite a bargain at only $15 plus shipping, so it’s do-able to have multiple Kolo Noci brag books made for you.)

Check out Joy Bianchi Brown's myKOLO "Vegas Baby" photo book or Kelli Taylor's myKOLO Baby Book.

Read the full Top Ten Reviews article, here.

-Kate

How cool is it that the family photo album on Stephen Colbert's coffee table is a Kolo Newport.

It’s presented to everyone's favorite political satirist by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on the PBS mini-series, “Faces of America,” which airs tonight (Wed. March 3rd) in most U.S. markets at 8 p.m. (but check your local listings). Tonight, at least two of the featured celebrities coincidentally find out they're related. Talk about a small world.

Colbert’s archival Kolo Newport contains illuminating information about his forebears. This is Steve Colbert as we rarely see him; not in character, just being himself. He explains his curiosity about his ancestral roots:

It’s so great to know what they went through, that I should exist.

He recalls a moment he was overcome with respect for his Irish immigrant ancestors’ sacrifice, the hardship they faced to make it in the “New World,” most of them to escape Ireland’s Great Famine. It hit him once on his way to the theater, as he was crossing the Erie Canal:

I looked to my right and I saw this line just shooting off into almost infinite distance up ahead of me. And I thought… THAT, I know, helped bring my ancestors over here. That’s what kept them alive, was work in that pit. That ditch right there is part of my legacy as an American.

Tune into PBS tonight for Colbert's and many other famous Americans' interesting ancestral stories.

- Ugo

Berlin native Florian Bartelt has worked throughout the city using different outlets to express his art. In 2005, his work was displayed at the large ceramic exhibition, "Der helle Wahnsinn." He used a red Kolo Newport photo album to illustrate his interpretation of the city where he was raised.

As the subject of his book, Florian illustrates the varying and everyday cultural influences which are present throughout the city. The city's complex diversity of culture is brought to the reader’s attention by the combination of pictures, lino-prints and photocopies collaged together.

To see other Berlin books, go here and here.

-Kate