What to Put on Your Custom Photo Booth Print

The photo on a photo booth print changes with every guest. The design around it is the part you choose once, and it ends up on every print that leaves the room, every file guests send to their phones, and every photo that gets posted afterward. It is also the part that turns a fun snapshot into a keepsake of your event rather than of photo booths in general.

Here is what to put on a custom print, how the layouts differ, what works for weddings, companies, and milestones, and the small choices that keep a design looking clean.

What every design needs

Most good designs come down to three things, and it is worth getting those right before adding anything else.

  • Who or what it is for. Your names for a wedding, or the event name for a company, a gala, or a milestone.
  • The date. It seems obvious, but a print without a date loses half its meaning ten years later.
  • One visual idea. A monogram, a logo, a motif from your invitations, or a style that matches the room, rather than several competing ones.

Everything beyond that is optional, and a design with less on it almost always looks better than one trying to hold everything.

A 2×6 wedding strip for Briahna and Christopher, three frames on a white backdrop with their names and date in simple type at the bottom

The strip and the 4×6 are different shapes

A design has to work in the space the layout gives it, and the two print sizes give it very different space.

  • The 2×6 strip. Three frames down a narrow strip of paper, with the design along the bottom. There is room for names, a date, and a small monogram or logo, and not much more, so type needs to be clear and short.
  • The 4×6 print. A single, larger photo with the design in a corner, along one side, or framing the photo. There is more room for an illustration, a border, or a sponsor logo without crowding the people in the picture.

On the Glam Booth, the AI Booth, and the Keychain Booth your guests choose the strip, the 4×6, or one of each at the booth, so your design is built for both. The Classic Booth prints the strip, and on the Keychain Booth the photo inside each keychain is laid out to your design as well.

For a wedding

Start with your names and your date, then borrow from what you have already designed. The fonts and colors from your invitations are a good guide, because they are already chosen to belong together, and a monogram ties the print to everything else on the day.

A hashtag earns its place only if your guests will actually use it. Madi and John put theirs along the bottom of every strip, which gives everyone posting from the night one place to find each other’s photos. If nobody will search for it, leave it off and give the space to your names.

For a company or a gala

Your logo, the event name, and the year are the essentials, in your brand colors. Beyond that, think about who else needs to be seen. At a gala or a fundraiser, sponsor recognition on every print is a benefit you can put in a sponsorship deck and then genuinely deliver on, because the print goes into a pocket and onto a refrigerator rather than being glanced at once on a banner.

A theme can carry the whole design, too. GALAvant 1925 at the Appell Center in York used an art deco design in black and gold, so that every strip looked like it belonged to that night.

A 2×6 strip from GALAvant 1925 at the Appell Center in York, with an art deco design in black and gold
A 4×6 gala print from the Penn-Mar Human Services 34th Annual Gala with the sponsor's logo along the bottom

For milestones and anniversaries

A milestone print is about the number. A fiftieth birthday, a fifty fifth wedding anniversary, or a company’s hundredth year all deserve the number front and center, set large enough to read from across a room, with the name and the date beside it.

The Yorktowne Hotel’s hundredth anniversary put a large gold 100 in the corner of every print, which is simple, elegant, and impossible to mistake for any other event.

A 4×6 print from The Yorktowne Hotel's 100th anniversary, a guest with a red fan and a large gold 100 in the corner

Words beyond the names

Some designs carry a short line as well, and a good one can make a print feel personal. A lyric from your first dance, a phrase your family always says, the name of the party, or a line from the invitation all work, as long as it stays short enough to read at a glance.

The test is whether a guest would understand it in ten years without being told the story. A short, warm line usually passes, while an inside joke that only four people will get usually does not.

Getting your logo ready

For a company event, the quality of the logo file decides how sharp it looks on every print. Send the best version you have, ideally a vector file or a large image with a transparent background, rather than a small graphic pulled from a website or an email signature.

Include your brand colors if you have them, and send sponsor logos the same way, along with any rules about how large each sponsor should appear relative to the others. If you are selling sponsorship tiers, it is worth deciding the sizes before the logos arrive, so that the print matches what each sponsor was promised.

Keep it clean

A few habits make almost any design look better.

  • Keep text short and large. A print is small, and a line of fine script that looks elegant on a screen can disappear on paper.
  • Keep important details away from the edges. Anything tight against the edge risks looking cramped, so give names and logos a little breathing room.
  • Leave the photo alone. The design should frame your guests, not sit on top of their faces.
  • Think about black and white. If you run the booth all black and white, the whole print goes black and white, including your colors and your logo.
  • Match the start screen. The screen guests tap to begin carries your names or your logo too, so it is worth designing both together.
A 55th wedding anniversary print for Dan and Agnes with three guests and a gold anniversary design in the corner

You also get every photo without the design

However much you love the design, there will be photos you want clean. We include every photo from the night both ways, with your design and without it, so that the plain versions are ready for a thank-you card, a slideshow, or your photographer.

How the design gets made

The design is included on every booth, never an upgrade. A short questionnaire lands in your booking portal a few weeks before your event, asking what the night is, your colors, your names or your logo, and anything you already know you want. We design the print and the start screen from that, and you see the real thing, laid out, before anything is printed or loaded onto the booth. Changes at that stage cost nothing and are expected.

You can see more designs on our customization page, and our article on what’s included in a photo booth rental covers what else should come with any booth. Tell us about your event, and we will start with the design.