Our profiles
Our agency has guided us in the process of creating a profile for birthparents. This profile, professionally printed, is sent to birthmothers and/or birthfathers considering adoption as an option for their babies. The agency interviews the birthparents and, based on their answers, sends out the profiles of the clients that best fit the answers provided in the interview. Every time this happens it puts us closer to the possibility of being chosen by a birthparent.
We're very proud of our profile because we created it ourselves. It took us many hours of work. The first step was to dig through our pile of pictures and select the ones we like the most. It was sometimes painful not to use certain photos, but the cost of printing was escalating at every new page added to the book. We also didn't want to publish an enciclopedia of our lives, and our goal was to keep it simple. To design the first draft of the profile, I used Mac's iPhoto software. But the templates are very limited and I knew I could do better, so after our initial layout I exported the entire book into Photoshop and then I was able to recreate some of the pages, mixing the simple but stylish design of the iPhoto templates with my own graphic style, which usually involves big photos and fancy cropping — busier than iPhoto but I like it!.
After I was done in Photoshop, I simply recreated the book in iPhoto, now mixing my designs with theirs, and the result was very satisfactory to both Joe and I. Ordering was a breeze and the books arrived at our home a few days later. The print quality was very good and acceptable to most people, but not excellent to a graphic designer's trained eyes. It does the job nevertheless.
Joe's job in the creation of the book was to help me choose the photos and also the order in which they should appear in the book. Joe was also responsible to write the text and captions of every photo, and he did a great job doing so. Our goal was not to overwhelm the book with massive paragraphs of text, because we felt like the pictures could speak louder than blocks of words, and they would better represent who we really are instead of us having to spell it out.
If you would like to see the finished version of our profile, just click on the links below. The print version was made in order to fit two pages per sheet of paper in order to save ink and time when printing. The screen version views better on the computer screen, but it is time consuming to print, because it is 32 pages long.
Our Profile (PDF file, version to view on screen)
Our Profile (PDF file, version to print)
You need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free download) to open these files.
Each file is about 3 megs and it should download quickly if you have broaband internet.
Profile cover
We're very proud of our profile because we created it ourselves. It took us many hours of work. The first step was to dig through our pile of pictures and select the ones we like the most. It was sometimes painful not to use certain photos, but the cost of printing was escalating at every new page added to the book. We also didn't want to publish an enciclopedia of our lives, and our goal was to keep it simple. To design the first draft of the profile, I used Mac's iPhoto software. But the templates are very limited and I knew I could do better, so after our initial layout I exported the entire book into Photoshop and then I was able to recreate some of the pages, mixing the simple but stylish design of the iPhoto templates with my own graphic style, which usually involves big photos and fancy cropping — busier than iPhoto but I like it!.
After I was done in Photoshop, I simply recreated the book in iPhoto, now mixing my designs with theirs, and the result was very satisfactory to both Joe and I. Ordering was a breeze and the books arrived at our home a few days later. The print quality was very good and acceptable to most people, but not excellent to a graphic designer's trained eyes. It does the job nevertheless.
Joe's job in the creation of the book was to help me choose the photos and also the order in which they should appear in the book. Joe was also responsible to write the text and captions of every photo, and he did a great job doing so. Our goal was not to overwhelm the book with massive paragraphs of text, because we felt like the pictures could speak louder than blocks of words, and they would better represent who we really are instead of us having to spell it out.
If you would like to see the finished version of our profile, just click on the links below. The print version was made in order to fit two pages per sheet of paper in order to save ink and time when printing. The screen version views better on the computer screen, but it is time consuming to print, because it is 32 pages long.
Our Profile (PDF file, version to view on screen)
Our Profile (PDF file, version to print)
You need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free download) to open these files.
Each file is about 3 megs and it should download quickly if you have broaband internet.
Profile cover
Posted by JoeJeanCharles at 8/6/2006 11:22 AM 
Categories: The Two of Us, Adoption--Paperwork, Adoption--Learning-About-It, English
Categories: The Two of Us, Adoption--Paperwork, Adoption--Learning-About-It, English
Sara is so lucky to have the two of you as parents!!! Your profile is amazing and shows how much love your daughter will have in her life.
Parabens!
The Parikka Family
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